Star Trek

I saw the original Trek movie and I'm thankful not to remember it. Wrath of Khan was pretty good, and from everything I hear is considered by far the best of the Trek movies until this one. The next film or two went downhill so precipitously that I stopped seeing them; but I'd heard enough good about the new one that, when Josh said he was going, I figured I might as well go along. And I'm glad I did.

The film isn't perfect. There are not a lot of quotable lines, the way there are in The Princess Bride or Holy Grail. There were some serious lapses of logic: How can a mining ship defeat dozens of Klingon ships? Why is a human (Spock's mother) is one of the conservators of Vulcan culture? Why doesn't Nero just say "Hey, there's going to be a supernova, deal with it now" rather than doing what he does? However, this is Trek, so I wasn't expecting it to make perfect sense, and these lapses didn't really bother me. One thing which was distracting is that the writers felt compelled to give each of the regular characters some time in the spotlight. I understand why, but Chekov running down to the transporter was a bit much.  

It's not going into my All Time Top Five....but it was fun, and worth going to, and I'd be willing to go see the next one.

Without giving anything away, here were some particularly enjoyable points:

• The actor playing Kirk did it well enough that at some point I thought, "Yes, that's Kirk." The same thing for McCoy. The other actors weren't bad, but Kirk and McCoy nailed it.
  
• Enterprise uses point defense fire, and it work!
• As they're preparing for the last fight, Kirk gives Sulu an order. Sulu doesn't argue with him or ignore him--he obeys the order! 
• When Enterprise hailed Nero for the last time, Kirk did exactly what he should have done.