Wednesday Movie Night: Star Trek (2009)

J.J Abram seems to be building on his sci-fi field he has planted. With Super 8 and Star Trek in his resume, and the upcoming Star Wars continuation he is a guy some fanboys or going to hate or love seeing around. Oddly, for a guy who claimed not to be a Star Trek fan though I have no idea why he would want to direct, but he seems to try with good effort, but you can tell his passion isn't in the characters. He does have a flare for color though, and he really amps up he action all the way through. Plus, as someone who watched Lost from beginning to end (with repeat versions of some episodes) I couldn't help but repeating so many shots in my head as if they flew up out of that show.

Summary: After George Kirk dies at the time of his son's birth he leaves his son, James Kirk, to live up to huge shoes to fill. The notoriety of his dad though, and the confidence he has that he inherited the ability to do it give him a huge ego. Spock is around to keep him in check though as they will all need to be able to work as a team when a vengeful Romulan is set on creating black holes to destroy the Federation until all the planets are destroyed.


Star Trek has a lot of to visually look at. It has deep colors, pretty good acting, and interesting shots that convey the action well. There is something about the characters you're really wanting to connect to though, but something just seems to be keeping you at bay the whole time. On top of that the story seems to develop quickly and go forth quickly into progressing.

Acting: It seems like more focus on anything was spent on making the characters look like the earlier characters they were portraying, but without much depth into who they were than just cut outs of them. Besides the fact the actors didn't have much in the screenplay to grow as far as character development they still do a good job at acting though. Zachary Quinto could be noted as being the strongest of the bunch as Spock who has the delicate task of pretending at times to have given into his human side of wanting to show emotion instead of living up to the Vulcan's ideal of being emotionless. Chris Pine may have just been perfect for the role of Kirk. He hasn't ever been exceedingly likable, but he does bring something human to the character. Even the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy drops in. Probably the one who gives this movie a ton of life is Simon Pegg as Scotty. He's funny and he seems more real than a lot of the other characters.

Cinematography: There are lots of good CGI effects and the color is brought to life to make the  movie very visually appealing. On top of that J.J. Abrams does have a lot of trademarks that come into play including how he frames the scenes, which works to build up a lot of the action in the movie. The weakest part though is the lighting. I was blinded what seemed a million times during the movie. It's shaky and every changing with the color. It's not appealing to look at with or without a migraine. I always dreaded the scenes back in the shuttle because I knew I was about to have to watch the very sharp and present lighting.

As intended, Star Trek, is just fun. Here's to hoping though that Into the Darkness does provide some great character development. There are some good twist that keep the movie moving along, and the actors do seem to bring the old versions of themselves to life. It almost seems like they focused too much on looking like the old characters that they forgot to give them a bit of life though as well. It's very Abrams. Very modern. Depending on how you feel about those things will determine your like of the updated version.  It's visually amazing minus a few migraine moments.

Rating 7 of 10.