Review of Star Trek (2009) by Petros I — 13 Jun 2015

I make no secret that I'm a Trekkie. But this movie was one of the best crafted movies of the last ten years. Even if you don't consider it a masterpiece, you can't say it's not an enjoyable movie. In my eyes, this movie is FAR better than George Lucas' prequels.

Pros:

What can I say that hasn't been said already. The acting is great, the direction is great, the cinematography is great, the effects are inch perfect, the writing is great, it techno-babble is at a minimum the story focuses on the characters. It's sharp fast paced and goes a million miles an hour with the action scenes not just there for gratuitous purposes, they are there to advance the story almost every time (except perhaps the snow monsters though they were incredible cool and scary as shit!). Leonard Nimoy did a great job returning as always, Zachary Quinto did a full-on fantastic job as Spock. Green alien sex is a plus in my books. Chris Pine as James Tiberius Kirk is great, he's not Shatner's Kirk but he doesn't stray far from what made that character great in the first place, he's a hero, he's dashing, he's a womaniser and... he... doesn't... talk... like... THIS! The Enterprise was beautiful and as for the soundtrack? This is by far the BEST SOUNDTRACK I've heard in my lifetime. That's saying something because I'm a big movie soundtrack fan and I listened to this and was in awe, even the old school Star Trek OSTs which were great, don't match up to this. Wrath of Khan is the only musical score that comes close (Horner did win an Oscar for Titanic several years later.) I think Giachinno deserves the Grammy he's been nominated for and give him that damn Oscar too!

Cons:

The villain Nero has a great back story that I've now read it but they just brushed STRAIGHT past it all, which frustrated me. It would have been nice to see Nero and Old Spock , the true nemeses of each other go face to face for a moment. The physics at times is a little dodgy at times too.

Sidenote:

My only problem isn't so much of a con, so I'm not including it as one, but it's that this movie was not as good as The Wrath of Khan (which I think is as good as any movie out there and is in my eyes the ultimate way to use a sci-fi premise), it's themes were epic it's stories were great and the characters did undergo a great development, but at times the characters seemed too archetypal, possibly because the actors did such a good job of being the roles. It was very Hero's Journey in it's story telling, but Khan was Hero's Journey as well as being an intimate character study too. However it was still a fantastic, action packed, emotionally driven , very well told story, let the sequel go above and beyond it.