Kirk’s Movie Blogspot May 27th

Finally managed to get and see the new Star Trek film at the cinema the other night. Expectations were pretty high after the glowing reviews it seems to have received everywhere. After seeing it, whilst very good, I’m not sure that it quite lived up to those raised expectations. Now don’t get me wrong it’s a very good film and if I’d seen it without reading those reviews it would’ve exceeded the expectations I’d previously held for it. The problem was that I read all those reviews.

I’m 35 now, you’d think I’d have learned! When Star Wars Episode I came out I remember combing the interenet for every scrap of infomation out there. In the end it pretty much ruined the film for me as I already knew so much going in, all the surprises were gone (it wasn’t that great a film anyway, but my advanced knowledge ruined it even more).

Anyway back to Star Trek. This franchise re-boot is definitely a steo in the right direction, the pacing was very good, it wasn’t break neck speed all the way through, there were peaks and troughs. There was good character development and some nice humourous touches for those with a lot of Star Trek knowledge. The actors madea  pretty good show of it as well. i have to admit when I saw the list I was a bit unsure of a couple of them. Zachary Quinto I cuold immediately see was a good pick for Spock and Simon Pegg would handle the comedy provided by Scotty with his usual aplomb. Chris Pine as Kirk was a bit of a stretch seeing as I’d only previously seen him in The Princess Diaries 2, but I was willing to go with it. John Cho as Sulu could work and I knew nothing about Anton Yelchin, so that could all be good as well. My biggest doubt, and he turned out to give the best chaacter performance in my opinion, was Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy. After seeing him rampaging thorugh middle earth as Eomer in Lord of the Rings it was difficult to see him as the grumpy, scrawny Leonard McCoy. In the end his delivery was spot on and believing this guy to be a younger version of the character we all know and love was no leap at all.

The leap had to be made on the plot. BEWARE, there may be spoilers ahead………….only read on if you’ve either already seen the film or are not bothered about doing so. Now I can see the advantage in re-booting the franchise in such a way as to change the timeline, giving you extra scope to do different things in the future rather than having to stick to the events already set down in the Star Trek universe that we know up until this point. Time travel plots generally mess with people’s heads and it’s no different here, although personally I have no problem with it. The only real problem I have is they went one paradox too far.

For them to alter events from the time of Kirk at the academy forwards is fine, but in having the Romulan vessel go back to the day of Kirk’s birth and change the circumstances of his childhood was a little bit too much for me. All of the other characters, up until the timeline changing event that forms the main body of the film, grew up in the same manner as they always had. Their inherant character, formed during childhood would therefore still be the same, the character’s essences would be the same. Kirk on the other hand grew up in totally different circumstances from his birth. His father who would’ve influenced his character to a pretty large degree, was no longer there. The Kirk we therefore now have is possibly a totally different person to the one we grew up with.

Is this taking it all a bit too seriously? Probably. Am I loosing sleep over this? No. At the end of the day it’s a piece of entertainment and I think the general message of the film was that although he grew up in different circumstances he still ends up becoming a hero, ready to lead the Enterprise into any tricky situation that arises. I can see however that some of the real Trekies out there will not be happy with the changes that have been made (these are the guys and gals that have had their ears surgically altered so they can look like Vulcans etc.). What us more moderate fans get is the promise of more action/sci-fi to come. On balance I hope J.J. Abrams stays on to take the Enterprise out for another spin around the galaxy.