Star Trek

By Elizabeth Marchetti
05.06.2009

Personally, I have never been a huge Star Trek fan. Maybe it's because I was born in 1989, and the novelty had already faded off by the time I paid attention to it. Nonetheless, every time it came on TV, I switched channel, because I got the impression that it was an endless dialogue between weird looking people dressed in spandex suits, and sitting on their asses on a spaceship, while referring to odd stuff (oh it actually has a name, treknobabble) and avoiding any sort of action. I thought to myself: where are the lasers and the explosions? Where is the goddamn action?

Well, I certainly found them in JJ Abram's "Start Trek", an ode to the geek phenomenon par excellence.

Star Trek is the perfect blockbuster of 2009, giving a good name to Hollywood and wow, remakes too. It has everything you'd want for the prize of the ticket: a talented and ridiculously good looking cast, a script that manages to give just enough gringe-worthy and emotional lines without overdoing it (and at the right momentum), humor, suspence, flesh, explosions, and much more action. With this prequel "Lost" director JJ Abrams focused on the beginning of the story, thankfully clearing up the confusion and explaining things for Star trek dummies like me: Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) meet on board of the USS Enterprise as space cadets and with time, develop a combative friendship. The two share an intertwined origin and have eyes for the same girl, Uhura (Zoe Zaldana), however they still unite for the sake of the universe against a vicious Romulan, Captain Nero (Eric Bana). So, it's a fast-paced, anxious frenzy (yet somehow a deep and meaningful one), and the cast is disseminated with famously known faces which grant the presence of the original Spock, Leornad Lemoy.

It's clear that advanced technology played a great part in revamping the old series, but judging from the response in my Trekkie friends, as the original's series fans are known, the film did nothing to upset them and actually accentuated what was a classic into a glorious modern rerun, without turning it into a digital era pastiche (i.e, Wolverine).

This film, had a lot to live up to, as Star Trek was something of a phenomenon itself, featuring the first ever interracial cast on TV in 1967 putting blacks, asians, Russians and aliens together under the quest for human knowledge and intergalactic exploration.

For sure, I never expected Star Trek to be this good and adrenaline pumping, but the truth is that I suggest you go to your nearest Imax too, and test it yourself for full potential.