Despite being such a geeky person, I was never into Star Trek, in fact, I never watched any of the Star Trek TV shows or movies. So aside from the name of Captain Kirk and Spock and the actors behind them, I know nothing about the Star Trek universe. (well, maybe i do know about their ship is USS Enterprise and George Takei and Patrick Stewart and the weird hand gesture for the trekkies…but that’s about it) Therefore I am completely “new” when watching JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek movie with no prior knowledge or judgement. And the result is, I love it! This might be the Iron Man of this year! Aged property that got updated to the new generation with the right amount of action and adventure. It’s classic Abrams with time traveling and messing up the time line. It’s like I am watching Alias/Lost/Fringe in space!

The movie is extremely fast-paced. Even before the Title screen the action was non-stop and I was already on the edge of my seat. And aside from a few minutes of set up scenes of how the young Kirk and Spock growing up, we pretty much jump right into action. The space battle is exciting, so is the hand-to-hand combat and alien creatures in the snow planet – even though they are obviously CG, but never a dull moment where the CG elements suck all the life out of the movie – it is what Star Wars suppose to depict! (George, please tell me you learn something here!) (and BTW George, Scotty’s tiny alien co-worker in the ice planet is way cuter than ewoks!)

Because of the director and the casting, the movie at times seems to be a product of a TV industry – not only the entire Star Trek universe was orginated on TV, Abrams is the creator of Alias/Lost/Fringe, main actor Zachary Quinto is from Heroes, Kirk’s mom was Jennifer Morrison from House, I even spotted Megan, Felicity’s Wiccan roommate from Felicity! (and I m pretty sure if we look hard enough, Greg Grunberg would be in the movie somewhere, cos he’s in EVERY single JJ Abrams production~ The most surprising casting was Winona Ryder as Spock’s mom – i didn’t know she suddenly “graduated” into playing somebody’s mom, wow, how time flies!

And after the movie I started to see the appeal of Star Trek, even though there is always danger, the optimistic feeling and the adventure make space a whole lot more hopeful than many other sci-fi films where the future is grim and depressing (Terminator, I am looking at you!) Just look at the Federation! It sounds like a space version of the United Nations with the peace-keeping mission and consitution and such! It’s just, I dunno, it makes you feel better and have faith in the future rather than those corrupting republic and empires we saw in Star Wars! I surely hope this movie do well in the box office because not every movie has to go “dark”, I know Dark Knight made a ton of money and it was a GREAT movie, but don’t make everything like they are looking through the mask of Batman~

One warning to all: You might need to bring sun glasses into the theater, thet totally over-used lens flare, everything is blindingly shiney!

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Tagged: JJ Abrams · Movies · Star Trek