Todd’s Movie Blog

Showing my age there by reworking  a R Crumb catch prase that we all used back in  the 70’s. With the new Star Trek movie, like with Batman and James Bond, the franchise has been rebooted for a new generation, with enough of the familar aspects to appeal  to older fans, while updating and expanding it to appeal to newcomers.  The plot concerns a time traveling Romulan who is seeking revenge for something Spock does in the future.  His arrival inadvertantly changes Kirk’s past, as his father is killed at his birth.  The story that follows this event tracks Kirk and Spock as they both eventually join Starfleet for different reasons, and make their way from outright contempt for each other into a grudging repect and eventually friendship.  The revenge plot is an action packed extravaganza that allows each of the crew, from Sulu to Scotty, to have a moment to shine in the spotlight, with fights and space battles, where they all get to utter their patented catch phrases.  But the heart of the film is the relationship between the two leads, which is what made the original show and the best of the films work.   All the eye popping special efects won’t mean anything if you don’t have a hman element to hang them on. Abrams does a good job of setting up the franchise for a new series of films and the time travel aspect will allow him to take the characters in a new direction without contradicting the Trek canon.