Andy Gapin

I’m not a Star Trek fan. Never was. I tried watching it as a kid, but never really got into it. Yet, the previews for this iteration sold the hell out of it for me. I got really excited for it. And all of the positive reviews for it didn’t hurt either.

So I saw this last night…

Blown. The. Fuck. Away.

Literally everything about this film was absolutely stellar. I can’t speak for Star Trek fans, but it felt like there was something for everyone here. J.J. Abrams did a great job of making the franchise really accessible to the rest of us. I guess this was helped by the fact that he was never a Trekkie himself. In fact, apparently, he hadn’t even seen the previous Star Trek movies? This works in our favor.

There was action all over the place and things moved very fast with plenty of comic relief. A lot of ground was covered really quickly without skipping out on the important things or getting confusing. There was no real prior knowledge of the series necessary. And the few parts that got a little confusing were explained and cleared up literally seconds later. I think it’s rare that a movie can pull off messing around with time travel and black holes without getting too confusing or convoluted, but there was no issue here. This alone is impressive.

It’s not often that I say this about movies that are over two hours long, but when the credits started to roll, I sat there and thought to myself how easily I could sit there and watch two more hours. I think this may have to do with how fast things moved, but it didn’t feel like two hours at all. I wanted more.

The casting was absolutely great. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Syler–sorry, Zachary Quinto–was amazing as Spock. And while it seems like he’s really only good playing a serious role, it’s nice to see that he can do something different than Syler very well. Chris Pine as Kirk pulled off the badassness and arrogance flawlessly. Very impressive. I would have liked to have seen more Simon Pegg, since I love everything he does, but I think any more of him may have actually been overkill.

For someone that isn’t a Star Trek fan, it was awesome to have all stereotypical Star Trek catch phrases covered. They did feel slightly forced, but I’m kind of glad they were there.

I don’t even know what else to say. Go see it.

Rating: A+