I just don’t understand. Where are the seat belts? People getting thrown all over the main bridge of the ship every time a space torpedo hits. You’d think someone would come up with a space restraint that protects without chafing… The USS Enterprise doesn’t have any space restraints, but director J.J. Abrams does an incredible job of protecting the series without chafing fans by paying homage to Gene Roddenberry’s original vision even as he blows up your father’s Star Trek.

If you loved the original Star Trek, you’re going to love the relaunch of your favorite characters in a fresh perspective. If you’ve never seen any Star Trek before, you’re going to love a summer blockbuster that delivers across the board.

This movie is a two hour, jam packed, epic that doesn’t waste a minute with anything frivolous. When you’ve got the birth of Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) with the childhood of Spock (Zachary Quinto -Heroes) and the back-story of Dr. ‘Bones’ McCoy’s (Karl Urban) sour attitude, on top of a time-traveling space baddy Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana), mixed in with new perspective on the size of the Enterprise, spaceship fighting and black holes – well, you better buckle up! I came out of the theater overstimulated. Between the IMAX screen and the amount of story told so masterfully, you won’t need coffee to keep you awake long into the night talking about your favorite scene.

The majority of the movie focuses in on the destruction of a planet and the attempts by the USS Enterprise to keep the same thing from happening to Earth. Unfortunately, there’s a gigantic Romulan mining ship that’s been retrofitted with enough firepower to take out as much of the fleet as the Federation is willing to throw at them. Nero’s been nursing a grudge against Spock since before this Spock was born and wants his revenge. But James Kirk and company are fresh from the Federation Academy and looking to test the capabilities of their Constitution-class ship. Getting there is going to require friendship to overcome the disdain and antagonism between Spock and Kirk.

This is a giant prequel that gets everything right. The supporting characters are fantastic. From some great action with a not-so-subdued Sulu (John Cho) to a smart and sexy Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and her love interests, engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg) says it all, in his deep Scottish accent, with the line “this ship is excitin!” But – his accent is second fiddle to navigator Chekov’s (Anton Yelchin) hilarious accent woes. Seriously, it gets me laughing every time I think about that scene.

The other character that needs to be mentioned is the future/original Spock played by the erstwhile Leonard Nimoy. This is some great writing that pulls everything together. When you hear his line to the new Spock, “Put aside logic, and do what feels right,” you almost wonder if it’s more of a blessing on this new adaptation than merely wise words to a young protege’.

If there’s anything to pick on at all, for me it was the scenes on Hoth, er, I mean, Delta Vega. That was the only time I felt the movie veered from ‘everything essential’ to ‘we need to add a monster chase scene for the kids.’ It’s not bad. And it sets up the encounter that ties it all together. But, my 13 year old son, who’s never seen Star Trek, looked at me and said, ‘Oh, it’s the old big monster gets eaten by a bigger monster chase scene.’

Despite that hiccup, I think this movie is going to be hard to top this summer. If it does, I guess it will be just another example of one big monster of a movie getting eaten by a bigger monster of a movie. And really, if that happens…we all win.

Rating: ★★★★½ 

My buddy Vic over at Screen Rant has caught a great break with new details on the newest Star Trek film from JJ Abrams. Below are a few goodies from his article. Swing by the above ink to grab the whole thing.

- The script was written with Leonard Nimoy in mind. Nimoy read the script and liked it. It seems he’s so pivotal to the story that they would have had a big problem if he hadn’t liked it.

- He also went on to say that he didn’t like the death of Kirk in Star Trek: Generations. He resented it. He then went on to say that it would have been damaging to the story to put Shatner in the film.

- Yes, the USS Enterprise will be assembled in space, although parts of it will be assembled on Earth.

- The intent was to re-invent the Star Trek franchise, and that is why they went all the way back to start at the beginning.

More here.