This is an outstanding movie – bursting with great ideas, edge-of-the-seat excitement, top quality style and FX, and (praise the Roddenberry) a literate, inventive, witty script that confidently combines humour with drama and thrills with conflict. OK, I admit it, I am a Trekkie, and in a way I can’t imagine what it would be like watching this movie if you hadn’t grown up as a child with Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Chekhov, Sulu and the rest, but I’m pretty sure that even if I weren’t I would still be raving about this film. It’s easily the best space movie since the wonderful Serenity.
It breathes devastating new life into the tired Star Trek franchise, which in effect collapsed under the weight of its own reverence for itself. It does this with breath-taking nerve, by changing history – in this story, the villain (a tastefully tattooed and splendidly savage Eric Bana) has come back in time and tinkered with the past in order that Spock, whom he blames for the destruction of his home world, will have to witness the destruction of the planet Vulcan (which, by the way, is awesome). A side-effect of the tinkering with time is that Kirk’s father does not (as enshrined in previous ST lore) live to bring him up as an upstanding young American hero and glow with pride at his achievements in Star Fleet, but instead sacrifices his life so that his pregnant wife can escape certain death, and as a result the young fatherless Kirk grows up to be a wild and naughty Bad Boy, absolutely guaranteed to get on even the rock-steady nerves of goody two-shoes Spock.
At once, as you can see, this blows out of the water the previous comfy and well-established rapport and friendship between the two, and the rest of the film hinges on their mounting antagonism, even hatred for one another. And the new history is vastly different from the old familiar one. Not only does Kirk not get the girl – any girl, despite his tall athletic figure and eyes the colour of a summer sky – but in this version of history, Spock and Uhura have got it on – shock after shock for learned Trekkies, but also an endless stream of delights – I almost had to stuff my knuckles in my mouth to stop myself giggling out loud with pleasure as one after another we meet the familiar and yet not familiar characters and revel in their wonderfulness.
The cast are all excellent – Chris Pine is a convincing and charismatic maverick, a far cry from his previous shot at international movie stardom, as the bloke who gets to snog Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries: the Disappointing Sequel – but the revelation has got to be Zachary Quinto, probably familiar to most people as the creepy evil bad guy in US tv series Heroes, who is just amazing as the young Spock in his first film role. He does actually look like a young Leonard Nimoy, but his acting ability is in another league, and he seems to have the magical ability to convey profound emotion without actually moving a single muscle in his face. I could rave on about this all day, but the short version is – go and see this movie now. You won’t regret it.
