Aside from these and other examples of random oddness, I really enjoyed Star Trek. My understanding is that J.J. Abrams intended it to be enjoyable for both Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike, and if this weekend's box-office numbers are any indication, he's succeeded at that much at least. As for where I stand with regard to Trekdom, I never saw a whole lot of the original series, though I enjoyed what I did see; I was pretty dedicated to The Next Generation as a kid, though my interest waned with each successive series (I don't think I've seen an episode of Enterprise all the way through). I've seen most of the movies at least once, though The Voyage Home and First Contact are probably the only ones I've seen more than once. In other words, I'm familiar with the Star Trek universe, but I'm by no means what you'd call a Trekkie. Maybe that makes me the target audience for the new movie; I don't need it explained to me what the Federation is, or why someone passes out when Spock pinches his neck, but I wouldn't necessarily run out to see a movie just because it has "Star Trek" in its title.
If that's the case, and I am the demographic this movie is shooting for, then I can see why it's doing well at the box office. Regardless of how good it was as a Star Trek movie, it was pretty damn good as a summer sci-fi-adventure movie. There's plenty of action—in fact, the movie rarely slows down for more than a couple minutes at a time. Though the pace is pretty breathless, they still manage to give us a good sense of most of the characters amidst all the running and explosions. As I said before, I'm not the biggest expert on the original series beyond the basics—Kirk is a confident womanizer, Spock is logical but with a dry sense of humor, McCoy tends to be irritable—but most of the cast got the chance to convey their character in a particular and memorable way. Unlike the other actors, Karl Urban went beyond this by not just playing Leonard McCoy, but playing DeForest Kelley playing Leonard McCoy, down to matching his speech patterns and mannerisms. It wasn't just an impression, though, more of an "embodiment," like when a good actor portrays a well known historical person (here's an example of what I have in mind), so what could easily have been an impediment in Urban's performance actually made it memorable (in a good way).
The only major character that gets shortchanged is John Cho's Sulu, who only gets one brief scene with dialogue (in which he embarrassingly does the starship equivalent of leaving the parking brake on) and one action scene where he shows off his ability as a swordsman; unfortunately, neither of these scenes gives the opportunity to convey much in the way of personality or relationship with the other characters. I'm glad the movie is a bit more generous with the rest of the cast, because that serves to demonstrate one of the greatest assets of Star Trek in any form, the interaction of a broad range of characters thrust together, forced to co-operate, and ultimately coming to appreciate one another. The fact that the film succeeds as well as it does is due—more than its story, script, special effects, or anything else—to its characters, and so the fact that, for the most part, it does very well in that department is what makes Star Trek a real pleasure to watch. If they keep making Star Trek movies like this one—and I don't see why they wouldn't, based on the return they seem likely to get on their investment—this once-tired franchise should have a new lease on life.
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