It took a lot of guts for the filmmakers to call this movie simply “Star Trek,” after 10 movies had gone before, but the gamble seems to have worked. The filmmakers apparently did not grow up as Star Trek fans, but they seemed to have grasped what made the original series so fascinating. They even use the original music (a particular bugaboo of mine about the earlier movies). Their creative reimagining of the series will likely revitalize the franchise.
Action fans won’t be disappointed, but there’s a pretty good story line too. There are plenty of visual jokes that fans of the series will enjoy — e.g., all the StarFleet cadets wear red shirts. But the inside baseball never interferes with the story line, so the movie can be enjoyed by old fans and new ones alike.
The young actors playing Spock and McCoy are spookily good at recalling the mannerisms of the original actors without caricaturing them. Zach Quinto in particular looks and acts more like the original Spock than Leonard Nimoy, who also appears in the movie as the time-travelling Spock Prime. The other actors re-create the original roles without reference to the original actors, which gives them the opportunity to make Sulu, Uhura, Chekov and Scotty more than cartoonish ciphers. Chris Pine does the seemingly impossible — he gives us the rule-breaking, hell-raising, but fundamentally brilliant James T. Kirk character without any of Shatner’s histrionic silliness. But this is really Spock’s movie, as in retrospect the original show maybe was too.
Star Trek was never about the gadgets, or even the “logic vs. emotion” banter between the principals. It presented an optimistic view of a multicultural, non-ideological, peaceful and prosperous future — which is why, of course, Star Fleet is based in San Francisco. It’s a vision that was certainly needed in the 1960s, but seemed naive and dated in the greed-celebrating decades that followed. Perhaps in this time of turmoil, Star Trek will find its audience once again.