SPACE! The Final Frontier.  These are the words every fan of Star Trek remembers and never has a movie before captured the original imagination and spirit of the Star Trek flair.  For those looking for a simple space adventure then this New Star Trek should be right up your alley. In the spirit of Star Trek  films this movie hosts a whole cast of strange aliens, fights, and corny one liners.  This movie definitely holds up to the original Star Trek name and is very much a throwback to the original series which started it all.

The plot revolves around the Starship Enterprise which is set on a long journey through space to catalogue and discover all the mysteries of the universe.  On one such expedition the ship is attacked by a strange unknown enemy  and must crash land on a strange alien planet.  A large portion of the ship’s crew are either captured or killed during the attack.  The only free survivors are a small group of the ship’s best who are able to find each other and discover the location of the kidnapped crew members.  The ship’s captain, Kirk, has to find a way to rescue his crew and get back an ancient weapon/artifact stolen by his attackers before they use it against a massive city space station in the planet’s orbit.

The film was directed by Justin Lin and  stars Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), Zachary Quinto(Commander Spock), Karl Urban(Doctor McCoy), Zoe Saldana(Lieutenant Uhura), and Simon Pegg(Scotty).   The all-star cast really shines compared to the price of the making the film which comes down to a whopping $185 million since its opening on July 22nd.  The film definitely made its money back in spades since it was able to rake in $231 million at the box office. The making of the film obviously took alotta of work and it really shows.  Hands down the most impressive aspect of the film is its special effects.  The special effects were key for this movie and just about every trick was used to bring this space epic to life.  Also the movie itself definitely feels like a throwback to the original television series from all those years ago.  It can be extremely corny, campy, and simple but besides that overall it is a nice wink to the original series of the show which shared the same characteristics.   One notable difference from the production of this movie however is the absence of J J Abrams who was replaced by the “Fast and Furious” director, Justin Lin.  There is many times in this film where you see a lot of Justin Lin’s style which consist mainly of explosions and motorcycles.  Overall the film took an impressive amount of time to make especially when you see the finished product.  The film itself is based off of Star Trek (hence the name) which is a sci-fi space adventure series that began originally as a tv show in the 60s.  The show started and stopped multiple times throughout its history and eventually delved into the realm of film around the late 70s and continued until 2002.  After those however the show became quiet for years until in 2009 J J Abrams Star Trek reboot hit theaters and reenergized the series.

But it comes down to one question, what do I think about the film?  Well first off this is definitely my second favorite of the Star Trek modern trilogy.  It is much more simpler than its direct predecessor “Into Darkness” which is why I liked it less but that’s not a bad thing.  Firstly each character had great chemistry with one another which is something I enjoyed seeing especially since it seemed like in the earlier versions each character was almost trapped in his/her own personality. Speaking of characters, each one also had their own unique personality, traits, and objectives.  There was one or two throw -away characters who were pretty much there only to advance the plot but besides them the rest shined.  Even the villain who at first seemed extremely cliche turned out to have a twist back story which surprised even myself.  Another positive note was the fact that I rarely ever felt bored or wished the movie to end at any point thanks to what seemed like the non-stop action.  It is pretty evident that the Fast and Furious side of Lin’s career bleeds through numerous times during the film.  Sometimes it felt like I was watching a fast and furious movie especially the scenes where you have Kirk riding around on a motorcycle.  However the film definitely had a more serious tone since the humor definitely was more muted which i felt was a bad change from the previous films.  It still had a hand full of jokes which gave me a chuckle here and there but for the most part it was like watching a real life conflict.  Despite all that however it definitely feels like a J J Abrams Trek even if he is absent from this production.  This is the sequel I half expected to the first of the trilogy since they both share a simple a plot but this movie definitely improves upon it in many ways.   If you enjoyed the first two, especially the first, then this is the movie for you and I definitely recommend.  é