Film: Star Trek by J J Abrams

I went to see the new Star Trek yesterday, having heard it was another rebirth of a franchise. Overall it was not a bad film, and worth seeing for the special effects alone. They are impressive but not so overdone that they take over the film.

But overall I felt a little disappointed, I am by no means a hard core Trekkie. The good points:

• It is a wind back of the clock to what made the original series popular, action and lots of it. None of the endless diplomacy of the next generation
• The characters of the old series are pretty well done, Spock, McCoy, Kirk, and Scotty in that order (Scotty is somewhat of a placeholder and put in to deliver a few jokes).
• There are some good respectful references to the old series (not least the use of Nimoy as his future self).
• Franchise wise it does make up for those who were disappointed with the really poor Star Wars films.
  

The bad points:

• At times it did feel a bit Independence Day hyped, which made it difficult to see as a Star Trek film.
• Kirk is overplayed as a chancer who gets his breaks because of some innate talent that we can never quite put our finger on. Had he joined Starfleet in the way he had done I would hope he would be cleaning toilets for the first few years!
• The use of the Nimoy adds a time dimension to the plot which is a little tenuous.
• Absurd initial sequence where the father of Kirk gets to name his newborn while ploughing to his death in a spaceship.
  

Overall worth seeing for the visuals and the characters if not the slightly weak plot, 6/10