Today's Fine Thing: Star Trek

Okay, I saw Star Trek two nights ago, but I was just too lazy to actually write about it. So here we go. I have never been a fan of Star Trek, always seeing it as a lesser version of Star Wars. The old TV show always seemed so campy and pointless and The Next Generation seemed alright, but still had an amount of distance that kept me from engaging with it. It happened when I saw the trailer for this Star Trek that I thought to myself "holy cow, Star Trek is about to be cool." Soon the reviews began to pour out, each one more praising than the last. I said to myself "holy beans, I need to see this movie in theatres" and that, my friends, is exactly what I did.

The film opens with a spectacular sequence in which George Kirk must save his crew from certain death including his wife and soon-to-be son James Tiberius Kirk. This opening is filled with images of sheer awe and sets the bar for the rest of the movie. The rest of the movie then begins with Kirk joining starfleet after a barroom brawl and the film kicks into high gear introducing us to all the staples of Star Trek such as the vulcan Spock, the beautiful communications officer Uhura, the hilarious Chekhov, Sulu and his combat skills, the spunky Scotty, and the everything-phobic Dr. Bones McCoy. I could explain the story but frankly don't feel like it as what makes this movie such a delightful ride is the characters and the casting. Not since Hairspray a few years back has a movie relied and banked so heavily on its intelligent casting in which each member plays its part fully and only adds to the overall. They make the film move and the audience move with it. Okay, so maybe I should explain the story a little which is about a romulan (bad guy) who wants revenge on the person who let his planet die in the explosion of a dead star. The crew of the Enterprise must stop him. The rest is all character development at lightspeed.

This is the kind of movie the summer needs to kick it off right, like Iron Man did last year. Here we have a movie that has officially made Star Trek cool and it is one fine thing.