Star Trek – 2009

I was never a ‘Trekkie’ and Star Trek on the whole never really appealed to me, maybe it was the fact that all I remember of the series was slightly out of shape actors running around plastic sets with far too tight shirts on.

Then we moved into the 80s and 90s and 00s but even then the movies had no real appeal. Until that is, J.J. Abrams came a long and opened my eyes to the wonders of “where no man had boldly gone before”.

The revisit of arguably one of the greatest sci-fi franchises (possibly outside of Star Wars) was a welcome return for most fans, with the story looking at the early years of Captain James T Kirk and the coming together of the crew of the Starship Enterprise.

Star Trek needed a visionary director to bring it to the screen and who better than Abrams. Best known for his work on Lost and Alias as well as taking the helm for Mission Impossible III he breathed fresh life into and otherwise dusty franchise.

The film is visually stunning with the effects taking centre stage along with the amazing action sequences, Chris Pine was a somewhat outside choice for the young Kirk but he does a great job of portraying the rebellious young cadet whose responsibility for saving earth rests on his ample shoulders.

Zachary Quinto is excellent as the young Spock and had all the calming and non emotional traits of his legendary predecessor Lenard Nimoy who has a surprisingly long cameo appearance in this.

The rest of the cast which includes Simon Pegg as Scotty and John Cho as Sulu complement each other very well, only Eric Bana’s Romulan villain Nero seemed out of place . The plot while good seemed to throw in the villain and the time travelling storyline as an after thought and Bana hardly has a lot of screen time to show off his talents.

That said it’s not a complete disaster and the audience should enjoy this installment, one only hopes that we can live long and prosper once more.

View the trailer

Rating: (4/5)

Visit the IMDb page for Star Trek

DVD Extras:: The 2-DVD set contains a feature commentary, gag reel and documentary on the main disc, and an extras disc with deleted scenes (plus commentary) and four “making of” documentaries on the other.

The documentaries themselves are standard. All of them are composed of behind the scenes interviews and footage which shed varying amounts of light onto the proceedings. There are also some good deleted scenes as well as the gag reel.

Blu Ray Extras: The 3 disc edition contains enough commentaries, featurettes and deleted scenes to keep you going into the next century! This is a must for any Trekkie or sci-fi film fan. There are also insights into the costumes, props and of course the token gag reel!

Please feel free to leave a comment about this film, I would love to know what you think and I will do my best to respond!