Star Trek - Movie Review

WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

Let's get to it: Yes, the new Star Trek movie is all kinds of awesome! Fan or not, that's all you really need to know but I do have a quibble and it's the same as Jonah Goldberg's so I'll let him make the point:

. . . Leonard Nimoy nearly ruins the whole thing. . . Literally, in every scene Nimoy’s Spock — “Spock Prime,” as he’s called in the credits — makes the movie worse, the plot less plausible, the experience less enjoyable. Everything Spock says and does lowers the IQ not just of Spock, but of everyone in earshot, including his fellow cast members, the writers, the director, the audience, and the movie-theater ushers. The black hole of Leonard Nimoy’s Spock is so staggeringly asinine, so stupefyingly insulting to the audience’s intelligence, if the movie could achieve escape velocity from its gravitational pull it would slingshot back in time to an age when Teri Garr wore mini-skirts, Klingons were just white guys with brown-shoe-polished faces, and William Shatner’s hair was his own.

Bringing Nimoy in as Spock Prime reeks of a stunt to put more Star Trek faithful rearends into seats - I imagine non-fans care not one whit about the actors from the old series - and though the character is important to this particular plot, you can be sure that the task of bringing Nimoy in was first and writing a plot around him was second.

The issue of Nimoy and Spock Prime aside, this really is a terrific re-imagining of the Star Trek franchise. It's fun, funny, exciting, moving - something that's been lacking in the last few Star Trek movies and, heck, from most of the dreck coming from Hollywood these days. Much like the re-boot of the Bond series, this movie paves the way for more to come and if they're made up to this standard, we'll have much to enjoy.

A final note: This kind of movie reminds you that the real creative work being done in Hollywood isn't being done by the writers or directors or actors but by the special effects crew who manage to put onscreen seemingly anything that can be imagined in a realistic, or reality-based, way. There seems to be nothing they can't do.