What Did They Do to Star Trek Review?

Rented the Blu-Ray last night. Technically, the film was a visual Thanksgiving feast and the Dolby Tru-HD really made you feel part of the action.

Possible Spoilers

Now, on to the movie. What did they do to Star Trek? I'm watching half the movie with this isn't right, this isn't right, this isn't right. Kirk's father did not die as Kirk was born, Kirk was born on earth in Iowa. He did not serve on the Enterprise with Captain Pike, Chekov came aboard later, and I could go on and on. When he got stranded on Delta Vega, there was only a lithium cracking station there . . .

And then Leonard Nimoy shows up as Mr. Spock and injects that Nero corrupted the timelines and this is what emerged.

Oh, I get it. JJ Abrams is rebooting, reinventing Star Trek to appeal to todays Gen Xers and Gen Millenials, but to keep us Boomers happy, he had to had Nimoy's blessings on the new direction. So, things are the same, but they are different now in the Star Trek universe.

To give Abrams the benefit of the doubt, I think they had to try a new strategy. Just recasting the parts with new people probably would not work. To me, the only real James Bond is Sean Connery.

The three laws of movie making today are: Nudity, rebellion against authority, and explosions. Back in the day, the two laws of movie making were interesting story and interesting characters. Here is where the movie let down. The new cast is not as talented as the former cast. The former cast were real actors and you got into the characters, forgot the cheesy effects and sets, and really believed these people were in outer space.

Having said all that, it was an exciting amusement park ride, never dull, holds your attention the whole time, and is over before you know it. I mean, JJ Abrams does know how to do action adventure. He needs to study up on good science fiction, though.

Okay, enough rant. I give the movie ***1/2. If the actors could act, I would have given this four stars.

Afterthought

Messing with time lines is always very tricky. Just out of curiosity, I went to the Star Trek episodes at Hulu and, sure enough, The Menagerie episode is gone. Erased.