Star Trek: Boldly go, indeed

May 8, 4:43 PMPortland Movie ExaminerIan Sawyer

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J.J. Abrams has boldly gone where George Lucas has failed to go in over 20 years, and I am thankful. Finally, someone has taken an element of my childhood imagination and modernized it without adding superfluous fluff and fodder for the sake of action figure merchandising. Admittedly, I’ve always been more of a Star Wars fan than a “Trekkie.” But, after seeing a thoroughly eye-popping, adult-friendly Star Trek, I might have to reconsider. Star Trek will probably be one of the more appreciated and cherished ‘popcorn’ movies of the summer, following in the footsteps of last year’s Iron Man. This reboot of Gene Roddenberry’s original TV series has the all the sexiness, the humor, and the balls of great science fiction without any of the camp and silliness. Believe me, I love panning movies, and was ready and willing to churn out lines like, “Spock's ears have more of a point than this masturbatory nerd porn,” but that’s simply not true. For better or worse, Star Trek, is the new model for what blockbusters should be—frakking fun!

 I won’t bother laying out the plot—that would be illogical. All I need to say is that the casting, the direction, the writing, and the production (effects out the ass!) are about as spot-on as Hollywood can seem to deliver these days. I wasn’t expecting to really enjoy each and every young, relatively unknown actor reprising such previously iconic sci-fi characters. Not only do the new Kirk (a perfectly cocky, yet vulnerable Chris Pine), Spock (a delightfully wooden, yet vulnerable Zachary Quinto), ‘Bones’ McCoy (a smolderingly stoic Karl Urban), Uhura (a smolderingly hot Zoe Saldana ), Sulu (a surprisingly serious John Cho), and Scotty (a hilariously Scottish Simon Pegg) fill the shoes of the original actors, they accept these characters as their own with refreshed vigor.

The only moments of possible failure occur halfway through the film’s briskly paced two hours when the plot suffers the near-fatal sci-fi condition of time-travel. Abrams, as cocky a director as Capt. Kirk is, well, a Captain, seems to enjoy melting our brains with Lost-esque time-travel twists. Thankfully, Star Trek pulls out of the tailspin gracefully and actually uses the time-travel conceit as a way to ease the audience into accepting the fact that not only is Star Trek back as a franchise, it may just be even better than before.

George Lucas, take a lesson here: professional screen writers, a concern for actual character over ‘Space Politics,’ and a love for humanity over special effects are what make a truly inspiring science fiction epic. Apparently the learner has now become the master.