Michael & Yuhui – Our Life Journey

Star Trek – Entertaining a new generation

• Romulan Warship (Mining Ship?!) kicking Federation starships ass – Check!
• Kirk in Orion Female’s Bed (I predict green body paint sales volume increasing) – Check!
• Scotty’s Technobabble about transportation to another destination while in warp – Check!
• Spock’s Vulcan Nerve Pinch – Check!
• Spock and Uhura (what was her first name again?) KISSING (more than once!) – Check!
• Lens flare in every scene (do we view the world like this in real life?!) – Wish they hadn’t done it, Check!

Just got back from the gala screening! The 11th film to bear the Star Trek brand is definitely a modern rewrite with a brand new cast. There’s humor between the characters as they get to know each other for the first time and action scenes galore with very well done special effects (just that the lens flare was a tad too much at times).

We watched this movie from two very different perspectives, myself with the experience of watching TOS, TNG, VOY, DS9, ENT (at least twice of each episode, yes I’m a trek fan! ) and reading lots of fiction on the characters in storybook and comic form and YH who is totally new to the Star Trek franchise. I sat down to the movie hoping that they wouldn’t ruin all the years of history and came out feeling that perhaps its a good thing they had done a refresh. After all, the last seven years has been without a new trek movie or series being aired. The new Kirk (Chris Pine) is definitely reminiscent of Shatner’s Kirk with his swagger and all about the action character. Spock (both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto) shine in their performance. The usual time travel trick allows them to interact and gives a nice twist to how the storyline has changed to accommodate the new cast and direction.

Some minor gripes would be perhaps after getting used to the clean, utilitarian design of the engine room, here we are shown a sprawling network of pipes and archways that looked more in place in a brewery. While it definitely added to the set design and lots of explosions, it felt very cluttered. The bridge with its brand new white tones made me wonder who would want to work in an environment that gave you constant white glare. And “red matter” for the plot device, did we just step into an Alias set (you know what I mean if you watch Alias)?

The villain in the show is the Romulans this time, though we only see a facet of them with Eric Bana being the sad, lonely and psychotic person who seeks revenge for future deeds. There has been many times when this has been done (Voyager’s Year Of Hell) so it’s nothing new as a plot. After Trek II Wrath of Khan, it would perhaps be hard to write another interesting villain but one can only hope with the new direction, we’ll see lots more quality Trek in the years to come.