Star Trek (2009)

Since around 8th grade or so, I have been a pretty diehard Star Wars fan through and through. I loved everything Star Wars. It was my real catalyst into the sci-fi genre in general, despite being more of a fantasy-oriented space epic than actual science fiction. But yes, I played the video games, I read a bunch of the books, I bought a couple LEGO sets... I even named a few of my stuffed animals after Star Wars characters, or derived their names from them anyway. I was pretty well entrenched as a Star Wars guy, then as I am now.

Which meant, for whatever reason that I can't really explain, I was never all that into Star Trek.

I truly don't understand why I wasn't more interested. I liked the whole sci-fi thing, sure, but Star Trek just always seemed a little foreign to me. I've seen some episodes of Star Trek: Generations, and I probably saw more episodes of Voyager than I could even remember, but that was moreso just because it happened to be on TV, not because I was going out of my way to see it. I'd never seen any of the feature films, either.

That is, until this past week.

I'd been interested in seeing the new Star Trek movie in large part because of my personal history (or lack thereof) with the franchise. Basically, I felt like this would be a good chance to really introduce myself to the series, and to the characters. I mean, everyone knows who Captain Kirk is, who Mr. Spock is, and most people are familiar with characters like Scotty, Sulu, and Uhura. But to actually get a feel for the characters? Well, I was going to have to actually see them. Plus, the previews just plain looked awesome. How could I resist?

Well, I've seen it. And I can't really say much about it. Other than it's just plain awesome.

Seriously, why bother breaking down the plot or anything? It's a Star Trek movie. The main thing to understand is that it's truly a reboot of the series, with a literal alternate timeline being created to pave the way for an entirely new retelling of Star Trek however the producers want to take it. Other than that, it's pretty much two hours and change of delightfully brilliant sci-fi scenes intermixed with genuinely compelling drama and surprisingly hilarious comedy. I was literally blown away by how impressed I was. The characters were all spot-on, regardless of whether or not they protrayed their original counterparts correctly (I'm gonna go ahead and say they did), and every scene is just so darn good. About the only problem I had with it was that Scotty (deftly portrayed by Simon Pegg) was only on screen for the final quarter of the film. I could watch an entire movie dedicated to him and enjoy it. Hilarious.

Rating: 9 out of 10. The only reason I'm not giving it a 10 is because I'm going to attempt to really reserve that for what I believe is absolute cinematic perfection. This is close... but let's not overstep our bounds here. I really loved this movie, though. It gives wonderful fan service the whole movie through, referencing as many little things from the original series as I could remember ("Damnit, I'm a doctor not a physicist!"), while directing us through a spectacular sight to behold in every scene that flies by. The die-hard trekkie can't be disappointed by this (or it'd be difficult, anyway), and the casual observer ought to love it too. All-around great sci-fi action-y fun.