Rann:  First off, I must begin this review by issuing a preemptive apology to John Cho.

John seems to be quite a talented young actor with a great ability for understated emoting and comedic timing and presentation, as well as nuance of more serious and complex emotional presentation. I think he has a bright future in the industry and will go far, both with the role of Hikaru Sulu and the ever-expanding possibilities available to Asians in US cinema, and he deserves more than to constantly be pigeonholed and identified by one of his earliest and silliest roles.

That said, I’m going to be merciless with the Harold and Kumar jokes if it is within my power.

Second, this review will contain spoilers and indeed, at several points is likely to segue into mini-synopsis territory.

Third, dammit movie stop having Spock involved in makeout sessions. This isn’t a nerd thing where my childhood heroes need to remain pure and chaste and above petty temptations of the flesh, because my childhood Trek was actually Next Gen… it’s just a characterization thing. Leonard Nimoy was exceptionally proud of the job he did in creating the Spock character, and many of the difficulties he had with both Roddenberry and other studio figures were in keeping the integrity of the character. Spock making out isn’t beyond the realm of characterization plausibility, but having him do it in public in front of strangers just because he’s going on a dangerous mission is BS, even if he’s young.

Anyway, that out of the way, let’s move on into the actual movie.

The movie starts off with one of the more improbably-designed ships in Trek to date coming through a wormhole or something, and yes, I’m aware that that’s saying a lot as pertains to Star Trek’s ship design. But anyway, it starts blasting the hell out of a ship that is soon handed over to a Commander Kirk, whose name is eventually revealed to be George. George has to do the heroic piloting-the-ship-on-a-collision-course thing, made somewhat more poignant by talking to his wife and naming his newborn son in the seconds before he dies, and made disappointingly less heroic by the fact that we have to see his body get flung forward and that his sacrifice basically does jack shit all to the bad guys other than buy the escape pods time to, um, escape. I know the escape pods were like the entire point, but still.

We move forward in bits and pieces, the movie deciding to eschew giving us years or even startdates to help distinguish between flash-forwards. It’s only a minor nitpick, as it’s not absolutely necessary… it’s easy enough to get a general idea of how much time has passed, however the characters’ ages being left a little nebulous does detract slightly from this being where we’re supposed to get to know them. It does, however, prove that no matter what iteration you’re writing, what version, when it’s original series based, Star Trek is about Kirk and Spock. We’re shown Kirk and Spock’s childhoods, insight into them growing up and joining Starfleet… everyone else is introduced in cute little segments surrounding them by turns, basically serving to provide support and to a great extent humor to these two’s story. It’s Kirk and Spock’s show and everyone else is just background flavor. It’s a much more nuanced and strong flavor than it used to be, though, and some would likely contend that yes, it IS Kirk and Spock’s world and everyone else is just livin’ in it, so that’s only appropriate. Plus, showing us the childhood of every single eventual command crew member would take forever.

But as mentioned, Kirk grows up never knowing his father, and constantly acting out and getting in trouble with the law. It’s sort of an odd transition… Kirk, the mischievous corn-fed Iowa boy with a twinkle in his eye is reimagined into basically being implied trailer trash (as much as such a thing can exist in the Star Trek future), with a stepfather or mom’s boyfriend who clearly resents being saddled with the extra baggage of a child because he wants the kid’s mother, getting in trouble with the cops and having little to do with his life or little ambition other than hanging out at the local dives and obsessing over whatever hot girl he comes across. While it certainly adds more depth to the character, again it’s up to you to decide if it’s depth you actually wanted. I’m a little torn on the subject personally. While it makes him more realistic and more sympathetic, it certainly does reduce the idea of him as just being some utterly heroic figure because that’s just plain who he is, and it definitely leans the character interpretation of Kirk much more heavily towards the “swaggering man-child in a uniform” interpretation than the “grinning ne’er-do-well out to right wrongs and boldly go” one. Of course, much of my preferences for Kirk are tied heavily into William Shatner’s portrayal in the movies, not the series, so it may as well just be a different character to me, and oh well, that’s how he is.

Eventually as things start gearing up, we see more of the villains too. The villains are… well, again I’m torn on them. They’re decent in design and the way they act and all, but they’re supposed to be Romulans and there’s very little about them that’s Romulan. At all. I guess the excuse is that these are miners (… IN SPACE!), and are to be seen as more salt-of-the-earth than regular Romulans, but it just doesn’t fit. The reasons for them being identified as Romulans seem to be purely for kind of shallow story reasons… the dynamic of Romulans vs. Vulcans, and because they’re an “old school” Trek race instead of a new one. It’s like the writer or director wanted to create an entirely new tattooed goth angsty villain race for the movie, but then someone stepped in and said “Let’s make them Romulans”… and so they were made Romulans, basically by just doing a search-and-replace on their race name and giving them pointy ears.

Nero is also possibly the least well-imagined and fleshed-out Trek villain ever. He’s pissed off because his pregnant wife died? Seriously, Trek, how often are you going to beat that dead horse? Whenever you’re making a villain in Trek, there are two things you need to ask yourself. “Did Voyager already do this one?” and, if the answer is yes, “Can I do it better than they did?” Considering that this was the motivation of one of the few really good villains in Voyager (who, by the way, ALSO traveled in time), it’s like they asked these questions, then just shrugged and kept him as he was while really half-assing him. The wife and child are given no development other than their existence, and Nero himself grunts and growls and sulks and half-heartedly rants his way through the movie. It’s like no one involved with the character really cared. I suppose in a way it speaks to the rest of the movie’s strengths that, while Trek episodes and movies can often be defined and made or broken by the quality of their villains, this one is actually good in spite of a villain that could very well have been replaced by any random Klingon spitting out hackneyed villain cliches, since that’s basically what Nero is without the bumpy forehead.

And Vulcan gets destroyed. Nero commits genocide because of his tantrum over his plot device, I mean, dead family. That’s a pretty big “whoa”, right there. It also makes me wonder what some people were thinking when they gushed over how bright and optimistic this movie is compared to the Trek movies made within the last eight years, but not really, because I know exactly what they were thinking and it’s a subject we don’t bring up here. This Trek movie is playing for keeps. Kirk’s dad dies, a bunch of ships get blown up, Spock’s mother falls to her death right in front of his eyes, an entire planet is destroyed and the Vulcans reduced to an endangered species of about 10,000. And absolutely none of this is magically-temporally fixed before the last five minutes of the movie for a super-happy-ending and a return to the status quo. If anything it wouldn’t be that hard to see this as the sort of universe that could turn into Admiral Tiberius of the Human Empire, though obviously it’s not. It’s serious and it’s tough and it’s not fucking around.

Actually, I think I can sum up the movie’s high and low points in a single sentence. Excellent character writing, sub-par story writing. The characters, with a few exceptions (the aforementioned Nero) are well-fleshed-out and realistic, and come across very well. They display traits of nuanced character writing that are encouraging and make you interested in them and eager to see more of them. The story, on the other hand, has a heavy tendency to lean on “coincidence”, telling rather than showing, random plot points dropped and a bit of a seeming rush job in some areas. The character interaction and the strength of the characters is enough to pull the story up and make it not only watchable but fun and enjoyable, but the story itself is pretty weak.

The characters make the movie, though. Harold, having eaten too much White Castle and being propelled through the fabric of space-time by an epic case of Hawaiian roll and pot-induced diarrhea, has assumed the name of Hikaru Sulu and enrolled in Starfleet. Unfortunately, a hippie future and access to the food synthesizers has done nothing to curb his ganja habit, and he’s slightly stoned when putting the ship in warp and forgets to take off the parking brake for one of the movie’s many deus ex coincidences. Yes, seriously. Luckily, at some point in his trip through space-time, he stopped by the future of the Matrix, and they stuck a plug in his head and uploaded “fencing”, which actually seems to be a rather badass mix of European swordfighting, kendo, and kickboxing. This did, however, result in Sulu Prime furrowing his brow and intoning in his deep, lovely voice, “He seems to be using ka-ra-te. Have I ever said or done anything to lead you to believe that I might practice ka-ra-te?”

Uhura is finally given something to do other than sit there with a stupid dongle in her ear and alert Kirk to incoming transmissions, and it luckily stopped short of turning her into the sort of bad-ass Mary Sue that some attempt to make her into in a misguided attempt at women’s lib, good at everything and just slightly more intelligent than Spock. She’s got exceptional hearing and a skill for languages, and knows three dialects of Romulan, which is a fairly far cry from the Uhura that needed everyone else’s help and a bunch of hardcopy books to try and speak Klingon. But it’s nicely within her range and speciality, and fits for her, so it comes off as her just being awesome, rather than her being THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER!!!! as it could have been. (IE, they didn’t feel the need to have her step in and flawlessly beat the crap out of somebody with random martial arts just to prove how tuff she is, that sort of thing.)

Chekov seems to be channeling a tiny bit of Zack from Bones, just without the apprenticeship to a murdering cannibal. I thought the stressing of his accent was a little overblown, down to having him struggle with his passcode because it had “Victor Victor” in it, to be a tad juvenile and in slightly bad taste, but it wasn’t a huge big deal or anything. It did immediately make me think of Walter Koenig rolling his eyes and muttering “Nuclear wessels” at Fry’s hassling him in the episode of Futurama, tho.

Bones (the Starfleet medical doctor, not the forensic anthropologist) is almost creepy, and I’m sure that somewhere, DeForest Kelley is looking down on Carl Urban and grinning. The only strange thing about him is that he seems to ride up and down the scale of being obviously older than Jim and playing the almost uncle figure to him, to being about the same age and being his boyish partner in crime. I think part of that may just be the cadet uniforms, putting both of them in those brought them down to the same age, I’d almost have said it was a better idea to have him in a separate “Starfleet Medical” uniform that looked more like scrubs or something. But his role is dead-on, coming off as an exacting portrayal of the same character, rather than either a wholly different character or just a really good impression, as some of the other characters come close to. It’s probably the best casting job out of a lot of good casting, and the best acting job out of a lot of good acting.

Scotty is probably the most flat-out fun of the character reimaginings. He’s basically Peregrine Took on risers and stuffed into a Starfleet uniform, and it is awesome. Seriously, I don’t know how else to really describe him, save with that same boundless enthusiasm and endearing goofiness.

I think Zachary Quinto’s only real problem with portraying Spock (aside from possibly having more makeout sessions pushed on him by the studio trying for sex appeal and not yet having the clout to tell them to go stuff it) is that, unlike Leonard Nimoy, he didn’t have the time to work himself into this character. While he has the benefit of watching all of Nimoy’s acting previously, and most likely the benefit of Nimoy himself’s advice, there’s just a certain amount of manner and delivery that you have to be able to accustom yourself to. Nimoy got to do that over developing Spock during the first season. He went from occasional outbursts such as “THE WOMEN!” to the understated, solemn nuance we all came to know so well. Quinto hasn’t had time to find that balance yet, since it’s his first rodeo wearing the ears, but I think given time he’ll either find that groove or his own version of it.

The action scenes are well-done and well-choreographed, with lots of imaginative geography and creative use of three dimensions. The on-foot firefights definitely hold to a greater scale of realism and speed than any Trek battles before, and are shot and acted almost like any movie you could cite about a modern war; Kirk and Spock could just as easily be dodging bullets in Iraq as phaser blasts in a Romulan mining ship. It definitely adds a lot to the tension and gripping feel of it, as a lot of Trek on-foot battles before, even the pretty decent ones, are fairly sedate, involving a lot of sitting behind cover and talking things out before trying something wacky and/or heroic and ending things in five seconds.

The movie’s definitely not the mythical “perfect” Trek movie, it’s probably not even going to be the best movie of the summer season, but it is extremely good. Barring being completely and unexpectedly blown away by Wolverine, I’d say save the time you’d use rolling your eyes at Barakapool and see Star Trek twice.