Ted's Star Trek Review (no spoilers)

So I checked out the new Star Trek movie last night. I admit I wasn't too jazzed about this when I first heard of the project over a year ago. However, the trailers won me over and made me think this could be something amazing. Then, as early reviews started to come out, I was shocked. Everyone claimed this was the most amazing Star Trek ever. It had 100% on the Tomatometer, which I have never seen. Many said this was accessible to non-Trek fans, and people were calling it this summer's Dark Knight.

With all that aside, I will say this is an exciting movie with great action and a lot of good laughs. That is typical of the Trek spirit. However, as a series reboot, it was forced to do 2 things. It did both well.

First, the characters had to be re-introduced. This was definitely the highlight of the movie for me. It was great to see all the classic characters come to life in a way that I have never seen in any previous movies and especially in the series. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Chekov, Sulu, Scotty and Uhura are each introduced with a big bang (Sulu's intro was definitely my fav)! In this single movie, every one of those characters has more action than in everything else I have ever seen (except Kirk and Spock). In addition, we learn new things about them that are pretty cool.

Second, the movie had to come up with a way to continue this rebooted series without having to redo all the previous series and movie episodes. When you think about it, you can't just redo Star Trek 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. So they had to come up with a plot device that allowed for a new future to explore. Did they ever pick a doozy! I think this plot device is actually pretty interesting, but if you weren't a Trek fan, it would be pretty hard to figure out the full implications of this new movie. Thus, Trek neophites will miss out on a quite a bit. It actually required a bit of thought on my part to fully grasp the implications of what they have done.

So this movie accomplished what it had to. I recommend everyone check it out. Was it the spectacular epic that all the reviews I have read claim? No way. Very entertaining, but not a cinema masterpiece. I think that Abrams needs to come up with an iconic villain to rival Khan, the Borg and villains of other series. That would take the new Trek series over the top!