STAR TREK STAFF REVIEW

WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS FULL OF SPOILERS!

Do you ever wonder what the MOVEMENT crew does in our offices all day? We e-mail each other our scathing or rapturous opinions and debate about the latest and greatest dorkiest things. So to solidify our righteous place in the hall of greekdom I decided to publish, with his permission, the e-mail back and forth between MOVEMENT senior staff writer Craig Harvey and my self, publisher Max Michaels about the new STAR TREK film.

CRAIG: "The really sad thing was I wanted soooo much to like this film. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The script was WEAK. I am really tired of time travel in movies. It messes up the continuity with stuff like this. The villain was LAME. Ok, here I am some guy named Nero with tribal tattoo's and an eerie starship that looks like something out of Babylon 5 (the Shadows) and when he came through the BH and did battle with the Kelvin, apparently had to wait 20 years for Spock to come through due to some strange relativistic time effect. So what did they do for 20 years ?!? Play chess and get to know each other better? You can't tell me that no one else tried looking for this immense giant ship lurking around the galaxy, unless they went into hibernation or some crap. I mean the Kelvin reported it and nobody came and looked for it? There was also some really dumb science fiction like Spock creates a black hole that pulls Nero's ship and his through into the past... Hello! Black holes destroy things. (See what it did to Vulcan) How would they survive it? Because at the end of the film, Nero's ship gets destroyed being pulled in. WTF? Dumb. If it had been a wormhole that would have been more logical. Also, if the Enterprise couldn't escape the black hole's gravity at the end, then exploding the warp core would have done nothing either, the energy released would have been sucked into the black hole with the Enterprise in tow. Oh, and transporting someone across light-years of space into a Star Ship at warp speed?? Come on. That pushes even my sense of disbelief. However, I did like Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Those characters were really dead on. The effects were great. Some of the back story was very cool."

MAX: "The plot def leaves a lot to be desired. A LOT ... ok .... it leaves everything to be desired ... like a another plot all together. Its really nothing new for STAR TREK. It reminded me of NEMESIS and FIRST CONTACT combined. Really predictable and typical for the franchise. But the characters were SO well done. Simon Pegg stole the show as Scotty. And Bones was the best! Spocks back history ... that was the real point of the movie and I think JJ did a great job where it most need to be done. And compared side by side to every Star Trek before, its the best of the bunch behind WRATH."

CRAIG: "Yes, Bones was definitely great. However, stuff like dropping Kirk off on an ice planet, where Spock just happens to be marooned and Scotty just happens to be there on a starbase. Give me a break! Yes, I know they needed Kirk running from the giant CGI monsters and be saved by future Spock, which is really dumb as the likelihood of him being there was a gazillion to one, but young Spock would have confined Kirk to the brig, not dropped out of warp and eject him off the ship in an escape pod. I did like the first half of the film, but the second really was disappointing. I wish they had tried to re-create the old look of the Enterprise (the bridge looked like the inside of an Apple store, all white, bright and shiny. Ugh!) and just done a classic film with the new actors and a better story."

MAX: "OK, more likely Scotty would have been on that planet then Spock, but since there is time travel involved, perhaps future Spock knew the planet that Kirk would have fallen on because his past self had already done it ... and .... yeah ... um ... of course its totally preposterous! Everything about STAR TREK is impossible or improbable, but its still damn cool. Ever since Flash Gordon rocketed through space, propelled by what appears to be a 4th of July Sparkler, space adventures have depended on us to suspend our cynicism and get lost in the enjoyment of a band of dashing heroes, cool space battles, and sexy aliens. I need to go to the movies sometimes just for the mindless escape and with this film I think we can agree it delivers just that."

And Craig gets the last word...

CRAIG: "True, the Scotty thing is very logical. But, Spock couldn't have known, because it never really happened in the original timeline. By going back, things changed. I hate time travel crap. Just give me a good hard sci-fi film, with ships, battles,  a good plot and cool characters then it would have been great. Time travel screws everything up. Star Trek originally came up with plausible and theoretical science ideas that have inspired real scientists to work on the idea of future possibilities. Ie: Warp Drive, etc.... But now some idiot throws out stupid ideas cause they sound neat. They even had Nasa advisors on planetary science and imagery, but they missed all this other stuff??? Oh, and that ship Spock came in sounded and looked like something out of the latest Star Wars trilogy. Like some sort of flying bug. WTF? So yes, I know this is science fiction (but it's not Star Wars where anything goes) and most people will overlook these issues for a fun, escapist ride but I expected more from JJ Abrams."

STAR TREK in Theaters May 8th 2009