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Movie Review: Star Trek XI (2009)
History: I'm a huge fucking Trek fan, maties. I've been a fan since I was 5, and I've watched the episodes and movies, good and bad since then. I've been collecting information on the new movie (I don't care if it's just called "Star Trek", I'm fucking calling it STSXI), and earlier today, I finally got to watch this thing. Here is what I found:
The Beginning: The film starts off with the U.S.S Kelvin, a mono-naceller, getting attacked by a strange alien vessel, with the captain, a middle-eastern fellow named Robau, coming aboard via shuttle and killed. George Kirk (James T. Kirk's Dad, from a few novels) takes over from the captain while the remaining crew and passengers, among them JT's mother, Winona. The Kelvin is rammed into the alien ship, killing George.
Next: We see the young Kirk, Spock, etc gradually reaching their familiar positions on the Enterprise, eventually facing the alien vessel that killed Kirk's dad. Bruce Greenwood plays Christopher Pike, and we see Leonard Nimoy play an older, time-traveling Spock.
The Story: It was okay, some pretty good stuff here and there., but nothing special. The film brings the characters together, has a few of the lesser characters do stuff, like Uhura and Sulu, and it does fairly well, but it felt like there wasn't a lot of depth to the movie.
Graphics: Karl Urban (The new Mccoy) once said that this film was going to be like the original series in HD. Well, he's only part right about that: Some things, like the uniforms and console sounds, are like TOS in HD, the rest aren't. The new Enterprise looks like a weird, trendy, curvy cartoony thing, rather than a "Hi-Def" version of the original, with the only real good thing being the saucer. There are shitloads of vessels in the film, including the Kelvin, the Kobayashi Maru, Klingon Battlecruisers that look pretty close to the old Matt Jefferies D-7, and several widely varying vessels that appear in Earth's orbit, most of which are pretty good.
Sounds: ...Pretty good. The old 60s theme by Alexander Courage is used at the end, and sounds gorgeous when played in high quality at a dark theater, so thumbs up from me. The sound effects sound mostly like they did in TOS, and for some of the space scenes, there is no sound, except the breathing in an environmental suit, as if we were out there, unable to hear anything inside the vacuum.
What I noticed in particular: Pike. I'm a big Christopher Pike fan, and I was interested in watching Bruce Greenwood's performance. He did pretty well, and looks and sounds a lot like an older Jeffery Hunter (who was Pike in the original pilot, The Cage). He gets tortured and ends up in a wheelchair at the end (a regular one), and he gets a promotion to Admiral, dressed in a strange uniform that looks somewhat like what Kirk wore in ST:TMP.
Leonard Nimoy's Spock was also pretty good, and Nimoy did pretty damn well in explaining things and helping the new Kirk.
... There was a reference to a Cardassian drink in the bar scene.
...There was a reference to Admiral Archer's beagle, Porthos getting lost in a transporter experiment, and I'm pretty sure that in this universe, Archer's the most famous fucking being around. Despite being written by two shitheads who can't write as well as I could when I was sixteen.
...There were references to a few Constitution class ships from TOS (The Farragut and the Hood), as well as the U.S.S Centaurus, and one or two other vessels.
...There was a tribble, unsurprisingly.
Final Word: Trek XI did somewhat well, as a remake, as a prequel, showing how the characters begin, and as something older fans, such as myself, could watch. It's not terribly fantastic, and it's not the Eta universe, the one I watch, rely on for continuity, and constantly do new new characters, sotires and ships for, but It's worth a watch or two.
Final Score: 75%
More reviews will come up here soon.