Movie Review - Star Trek

So what made the movie so good?  Well, it's a combination of things.  First, the casting; every character from Chekov to Kirk was believable and recognizable to the original characters.  Second, the story provided a good combination of plot and action and gives the franchise an entire new open-ended history to write from here.  Third, the inclusion of comic relief moments along with the references to the original TV series provided memorable moments for long time fans of the series.  I mean come on, you knew the red guy was going to die, didn't you?

The film is not without its shortcomings.  The science is way off.  The most glaring one to me was when the villain, Nero, sends the "red matter" into the core of Vulcan to create a singularity.  You hear the people on the Enterprise in orbit say they need to move farther away as the gravity is increasing.  It shouldn't.  If the mass of Vulcan didn't change and its center of mass is the same, only its size changed, the gravity stays the same.  In other words, it doesn't matter how big the object is, just how massive it is and regardless of whether the mass is concentrated in a point or spread out over thousands of miles, the gravitational effect will be the same.

The other scene that irked me was when Kirk as a kid drives the car off the cliff only to jump out at the last second in a Bugs Bunny like move of jumping up to break his fall when the falling elevator car he's in is about to hit the ground.  I'm sure there are some inertial laws that were clearly being broken.

I can live with this though.  I've never expected hard science from Star Trek (or for that matter from any science fiction film).  That's not what the show is about at its core.  It's about the relationships between the characters and the society they are trying to represent.

Normally, I would give this film 4 stars, but for J J Abrams willingness to take on this aging franchise and to so whole-heartedly breath new life into it, it gets a bonus star.  I can't wait to see where they take it next.

Best Line:  "What is necessary is never unwise."