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This was probably the most enjoyable film I saw in the theater last year. I liked the first STAR TREK series but everything after that I've either tolerated or hated, with a few exceptions.

What I found truly refreshing was the sense I got that Abrams just didn't give a damn about 'canon', which is a fixation of so many fans. Who cares? The episodes and movies that existed are there, and they're not going anywhere. In the past everyone accepted that in series like Tarzan and such the creators of the films wouldn't let established ideas get in their way. You can't be ridiculous about this--Kirk can't suddenly be a three-foot tall blue woman with blue hair--and no one expects or wants that. But freaking out over registration numbers of ships or who met who when seems self-defeating.


Here, Abrams seemed to be much closer to my way of thinking about the old show than all those who followed. He didn't care about the boring "UN in Space" of the Next Generation with its English-accented French captain (look at our show, it's not just spaceships, this guy's done SHAKESPEARE on stage!) and endless jawboning about peace and equality. It's like what Pauline Kael once said about a James Bond movie, where the action and thrills were interrupted so Bond could tell us how awful it would be if a bomb went off and millions died. Yeah, that's why we came to a James Bond movie, because we're concerned about nuclear disarmament. Abrams seemed to be thinking, "I didn't like the original show because of some goofy half-baked Roddenberry sixties philosophy. I liked it because the characters are fun, and zipping around in space to excitement, adventure, and conflict is FUN."

I keep seeing the criticism that the bridge looked like an Apple store (the first guy who wrote that should have patented that), but to me it was refreshing--who needs to see another bridge that looks like a sub, another boring gray bridge? It was visually alive and startling. No, it's not realistic--this is a STAR TREK movie! The show was NEVER realistic, with its salt shaker devices and marbles in the panels.

Abrams isn't interested in being a phony about making movies about peace as a way of the actors and creators hiding their embarassment about making an entertaining adventure. I was caught up in this from beginning to end. When the beautiful end credits ran, I turned to the friend who dragged me to this, and said, "That was really fun!" And I couldn't recall having that reaction to any of the post-ST 3 movies.

Uchujin65,

I loved the clean look and felt it went along with the original conception. I'm not a Trekkie or whatever but I enjoyed the original show when I saw it years ago, and the completely unrealistic look of it was one of the things I enjoyed. The sets are so clean, with their blinky lights and marbles for buttons, and the colors so bright, that it was almost like one of those stage plays with almost no sets. I think the worst thing for Trek would be to go for the gritty ALIEN look (which is why the engine room scenes stuck out, obviously they were taking place in real life industrial locations refitted or augmented by CGI). The bridge set seems to be the source of the most criticism, but to me it's the modern equivalent of the unreality of the old one, and I found it a lot more interesting than yet another gray attempt at copying a modern day submarine interior.

The look of the cast was no problem. The original Spock got tons of fan mail from women, and the young Shatner and Nichols were certainly not your average-looking people. I think there are just as many model-looking members of the cast in this as there were in the original.

One thing I loved about this one--and I did love it, surprisingly--was that some of the effects shots, and esepcially the end credit backgrounds, were in the style of the covers to the 70's Blish novelizations. Those covers captured a mystery and wonder that the original show just couldn't afford, and there are numerous shots in this one that live up to what those covers promised.

The friend who dragged me to see this is more of a Trek fan than I am, but even he doesn't watch the subsequent shows, and like me he likes only the original cast. I think we're the perfect audience for this--folks who know and have good memories of the original but never bought DVDs of it or even saw many reruns once we got out of our teen years. Our memories of the original aren't as precise as those of the real fans, so we're more open to playing around with the material. But I've long learned not to expect any kind of faithful remake--has there ever been one that most fans of the original liked?