Star Trek is the latest from Hollywood in the reboot trend. J.J. Abrams, also directed Mission: Impossible III, decides to take his creative thoughts to the basically dead franchise. It can be easily said that this film is not a reboot/remake but rather a sequel due to an amazing use of a time travel plot device which I thought was amazing. Due to the use of this plot device J.J. Abrams and his writers, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, were given the room to do almost anything they wanted in the Star Trek universe and the fans of the original films and series wouldn’t be able to dispute the story presented to them. The only thing Abrams has to worry about at this point is whether the story he presents to the fans is entertaining, which I have to say it is.

I’ve hated Star Trek all my days, from my experiences seeing some of the later films and some of The Next Generation series. However, if you would like to hear the views of a couple of true trekkies about the movie check out this recording  I had over the weekend with Dave from ScreenGeeks and Shannon the MovieMoxie.

Forgetting all of the years of rubbish that I saw from this beloved franchise, this movie is easily the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. I found myself continually engaged throughout the just over two hour runtime of this movie. Orci and Kurtzman display some great screenwriting skills in order to keep the film always on the go and never stopping, on occasion will we get a short – maybe a minute or two – moment of calm to dwell on the problem at hand or that was just solved but overall this movie is a great rollercoaster ride of a film.

One thing I love about movies is that it gives you a chance to get to know some characters and sometimes it leaves you wishing you could hang out with them some more. This film definitely did that. I found myself particularly attached to two specific characters, Spock [Zachary Quinto] and Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy [Karl Urban].

Spock gave us the opportunity to anally analyze every scenario given to us and at times allowing us to express numerous emotions so subtly that made us either never notice, since he doesn’t want you to, or love Quinto’s acting even more since we did notice it. Zachary Quinto some may say drew a lot on his character Sylar from the TV show Heroes since a lot of the emotionless style delivery of dialogue is used there as well. I actually finished watching the final episode of the most recent season of Heroes before watching this movie for the first time and found many similarities between Spock and Sylar. Sylar as well as Spock have interesting and major dysfunctional relations with his parents. Spock since is half Human and half Vulcan finds himself unsure at all times which side of himself to be and Sylar, after a few seasons, finds out that he wasn’t the son of a clockmaker and also found himself unsure of who he really was. Spock as well as Sylar seem to switch between when he wants to follow his law to the T and when he wants to bend it, whether it be logical or not. So to put the thought to rest I believe that the casting of Quinto was the best choice for the role and I doubt anyone else could give us a better performance today.

Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy was a great mix of seriousness and comedy. He worked so well as more or less the sidekick/buddy for James Kirk [Chris Pine]. From Bones’ entry into the story when he meets Kirk to the end of the movie at no point do you ever think badly of him or his role. My favourite scene of the movie is when he is running around the Enterprise with Kirk while trying to treat a reaction to a vaccine that he gave Kirk earlier in the film.

J.J. Abrams was possibly the only director I could see making this Star Trek. The camera style is his and his alone and it works so wonderfully. One aspect of the movie that was so special, but got slightly annoying as we got deeper into the movie, was the use of flares on screen. Due to the look of the ships in the movie it made some sense to add to the space feel of the movie to have these glaring lights go across the screen throughout the movie. I loved especially the swooping camera movements whenever we were entering the bridge of the SS Enterprise and watching crewmembers run about from one room to another. I definitely felt like I was in a submarine, except in space. One final detail that I noticed the second time around and enjoyed was the fact that anytime we went outside of a ship and into space the sound went completely and the lack of sound gave me a claustrophobic feeling that I can only imagine is what it feels like to be in space.

Overall this movie is a must watch and will be the first movie of 2009 to be put into my must buy list of Blu-Ray DVDs that I want. There are a lot of nods to Trek fans and a lot of great movie for nonfans of the franchise. I can’t wait to hear if they will be getting Abrams back for a sequel and what they plan to do with that, but for now all I can do is consider whether it is feasible and a good idea to go see this movie for a third time in theatres.

IMDB says 8.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 96%

I say 9.5/10