Space, the revamped frontier. These are the voyages of the massively hyped Star Trek movie franchise. It’s mission? To blow your mind with tremendous special effects, surprise you with its strong character development and dazzle you with ridiculous levels of lens flare…

I’m not as big a Trekker as the vast majority of folks that will go to see this movie probably are. My only real Trek credentials are that I have a fairly solid knowledge of The Next Generation and can sing The Firm’s Star Trekkin’ from start to finish without pausing for breath.

My Sundays a few years back were dominated by old school Trek repeats, with Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and company doing what they did best in the 60s – really bad sci-fi with really, really bad action sequences.

JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, however, is a whole different beast. The man behind Alias (yay!) and Lost (meh) has brought the franchise screaming into the 21st century with one of the most action-packed films of the summer. Abrams begins with a sensational and dramatic opening sequence focusing on Kirk’s birth and the incident which cost his father his life.

The film then turns its attention to 20-something versions of James Tiberius Kirk and Spock as they enter Starfleet Academy and find themselves drawn into the maiden voyage of the Starship Enterprise.

There are plenty of things about this film which could allow you to heap praise up on Abrams. While powering through at a frenetic pace with heaps of flash-bang action sequences, the story (by frequent collaborators Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) is well constructed and still manages a perfect amount of character development throughout the course of the film.

This, in turn, is fortunate as Abrams has brought together a cast which manages to pay homage to the characters as we knew them, but provide new twists to each of them. Karl Urban’s performance as ‘Bones’ McCoy and Zachary Quinto’s Spock are two of the best, while even Simon Pegg managed to pacify concerns that he wasn’t up to the job as Scotty.

If there is a weak link, I would argue that it is Chris Pine. His version of Kirk is very unlike Bill Shatner’s, which goes against the continuity offered by the other actors.

Another minor complaint would be the presentation of the Enterprise. Whoever designed the thing clearly spends too much time around crisp white Apple products. And what is with all the lens flare? The levels of glare were incredibly distracting.

They are small complaints though. As revamps go, JJ Abrams’ Star Trek is a brave and impressive step in a new direction. Rumours are that the team are pushing to get a sequel out in the next 18 months and from what we’ve seen there are solid foundations for such a move.

Hope someone can explain what the heck Uhura was doing with Spock though…

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