Star Trek : The belated review

I had watched Star Trek about 2 weeks ago, so I apologize for any factual errors.


Star Trek, by JJ Abrams, is not a reboot. A reboot would be a movie that takes the original concept and "updates" it. No, thanks to some temporal shenanigans, this Star Trek has no connection to previous ones, other than names and pivotal events. So what is it? Its an alternate universe. Where as a reboot would create a new universe , this movie didn't do that. A temporal anomaly created a subtly different universe, where in James T Kirk had developed differently.

In the original series, Kirk was a boisterous and confident womanizer, who looked up to his father and was inspired by him to became a captain. In the new Star Trek, Kirk never met his father due to time travelling Romulans. As such, he was boisterous and a womanizer but most importantly , he wasn't confident in himself. JJ Abrams Kirk was a rebellious yet unmotivated individual , content with being the big fish in the small pond that is Kansas. Though brilliant in comparison to his peers, the alternate universe Kirk decided not to push himself further.

A chance meeting with Captain Pike though, changes his mind. Pike's recollection of George's Kirks 17 minutes of bravery, that saved his pregnant mother and the 800 member crew of the Kelvin. Pike , in essence, asks Kirk "Can you do better?".

Well, he certainly does just as well as his father. The alternate reality Kirk just as easily cheats on the Kobayashi Maru exam, beds beautiful women while skipping classes at the Star Fleet academy, and is boisterous as ever. But, he is a bit more jaded than the original Kirk. Without his father to lead him into adulthood, he is less than appreciative of authority and treats Spock like a chump.

Spock is just as screwed up as Kirk. Being a human-Vulcan hybrid , his peers tormented him into exercising his more human aspects, a very unfavorable set of uncontrolled emotions. Spock becomes cynical, if a Vulcan is even capable of cynicism. This is a departure from the cool and confident Spock of the original series.

The major temporal fissure is the destruction of Spocks home world. This is the major turning point that splits JJverse from the original series. The culprits were time travelling Romulans seeking revenge for the destruction of their own home.

Battles are fought, and technology still beats numbers, as the technology on a mining ship from about 100 years into the future can take out the combined arms of half a dozen Starfleet ships.

Our heroes save the day, with a new timeline birthed. This is an alternate universe, not totally new, but not a reboot. Its the same world, just a little (a lot) different.


Liked :
New Story : This isn't the old Star Trek, but it also has many of the qualities of it, most importantly the characters. It was genuinely interesting to see a story that never appeared in the previous series. This is a big plus for me, because many of the previous movies were just terrible stories trying to fit into an established time line. With a new timeline, we don't have to worry about fitting things, so good stories can flourish.

Battle sequences : Its been so long since Ive seen ship-to-ship combat in a big budget movie. The effects made the action positively amazing.

Presentation : The movie had high production values, with great vistas and long shots that revealed a subtly futuristic landscape. Music was great as well, and so was the acting for the most part. The main players ,Kirk and Spock, were handled very well.

Didn't Like:

Villains : The villains were miners on board a Romulan mining ship. The leader, Nero, was a sort of WTF character. He lost his wife and child in the destruction of Romulus, so he spends 25 years trying to destroy his universes Spock, and Vulcan. It would have made more sense if he had lost more (maybe his honor, or something), to elicit this kind of deranged response from a civilian, of all people.


Overall, the movie was great, and its sure to be a classic in the alternate universe of JJ Abrams. It would be very interesting , though, if the alterverse had hints of Mirror, Mirror, perhaps a stand-off between an ultra-xenophobic Terran Empire analogue and Starfleet.