John’s Movie Musings

Everyone knows the rules about Star Trek movies.  Even numbered movies are the best, except for Star Trek 10 – it sucked.  Officially, this is Star Trek 11.  But it’s with Kirk and Spock and Co. and takes place before Star Trek 1, so maybe this should be Star Trek 0.  But it’s also a reboot, so you should forget everything you know about Star Trek and start over.  Except, you should keep your knowledge of Kirk, Spock, The Enterprise, Klingons, and Romulans…and pretty much everything else you remember.

Still with me?  Star Trek 0/11 takes place with Kirk just out of Star Fleet Academy.  You can think of the movie as a reboot, but this is the first reboot that stays within the canon of the original series.  It was only after I thought about how awesome that was that I realized this is Star Trek where they can do anything and stay in canon.  Bare with me, I’m slow.

JJ Abrams is quickly becoming a great director.  He has a gift of  exploring relationship problems, specifically parental relationships, that you can see all the time in LOST.  Star Trek explores some of those issues, but they are more of a groundwork that I hope come into play in the sequels. What’s presented in this outing is good enough, for now.

Star Trek is definitely worth your time.  Things have changed from what you know – some drastic – but they keep it all familiar enough to elicit some laughs.  And they didn’t change the theme song to Star Trekkin.  That’s worth a few points.

Grade: A