Disclaimer
– If you haven’t seen Star Trek, read at your own risk. There are spoilers in
the lines below!
On
Sunday, I decided to hit the 9:00AM showing of Star Trek. I was going to go on
opening night but really wasn’t in the mood to battle the plethora of fans that
I knew were going to be making that pilgrimage. A few years ago, I would have
been in their midst but the franchise has left me a bit disheartened so I
decided to forego the opening night festivities.
Needless
to say, I went into the theater with less-than-high hopes of a really good Trek
movie.
Fast
forward 2 hours and I come stumbling out of the cinema “shocked and awed”. I
was stunned at what I witnessed. At risk of sounding “cheesy”, there was a time
during the movie that I almost wept. It was so good to see Trek back and come
back, they did. It was enough to rouse real emotion in a fan. You see, to a
true “Trekker”, Star Trek isn’t just Sci-Fi, it’s a way of life. A dream of
what utopia would be like. After The Next Generation, the franchise attempted
to hang on by throwing out different ideas that would culminate into a show.
Some good (Voyager) some bad (everything else). An important slice of my life
was dying a slow death.
I
mourned.
Enter
Star Trek 2009. Like I said, I was skeptical. I didn’t want to be let down yet
again. During those two hours that I sat in my theater seat, J.J Abrams took me
on one of the most exhilarating rollercoaster rides that I had ever taken!
Action, adventure, suspense, sex, violence… It was all there! All wrapped up in
character building Star Trek goodness. Trek had been rebooted and new life was
pumping through her veins!
Now,
I’m not a perfectionist and there was no doubt, minor issues with this movie
such as a 3rd year cadet earning the captain’s chair of the flagship
of the fleet, the destruction of Vulcan (which after some later thought, I
fully support), and the Spock romance which almost made me fall out of my seat!
But again, after some thought, I came to realize that the Vulcan race are not
without emotion, they just choose to suppress it. So all is still good in the
Star Trek Universe!
All
in all, I honestly believe that Roddenberry would have been proud this weekend
and I imagined that somewhere out there in the great beyond, Gene was smiling.
So what are your thoughts on this latest incarnation in the Trek Universe? What did you love? What could you have done without?
SjN
