WARNING: SPOILERS INCLUDED!!

It’s been a really long time since I watched a movie in a cinema and I can’t even really remember what was the last one. So I was quite happy when xinyun invited me to join her, chillycraps and a few other friends to watch Star Trek at Cathay on Saturday.

I had originally thought that this movie would be just an ‘origins’ kinda story, i.e. how the crew of the USS Enterprise came together and become the experienced and cohesive unit we see in the TV series.

To my shocking surprise, it was more than that. J.J. Abrams has done to Star Trek what Christopher Nolan had done to the Batman story. In some ways, this is necessary because it is my opinion the last 2 films, Insurrection and Nemesis, has been as bad as, if not worse than the Batman movies starring Val Kilmer and George Clooney.

Unfortunately for J.J. Abrams, and the script writers of this movie, it is not as easy to write a script to give Star Trek a new beginning. This particular movie has done way more than just giving the movie a fresh start, it has also destroyed a large part of what some Trekkers considered canon. To put it in the words of a Trekker friend, the destruction of Vulcan is akin to the killing of Anakin Skywalker when he is a boy, and creating a brand new Star Wars universe. If you do not understand the Star Wars analogy, my friend is simply saying this is sort of like taking a time machine back and wipe LKY from the history books, and whatever happens after that will then be unknown.

My feelings aside, I would say that the movie’s pretty well done. The graphics are definitely a marked improvement over the old ones, and the script writer has managed to keep up the suspense in the story throughout. There are many lighter parts as well, like Kirk being caught in the room during a rendezvous by his partner’s room mate, Sulu forgetting to disengage the ‘inertia dampers’ (simply, the brakes) before engaging warp speed, and Chekov’s funny accent all add on to the enjoyment of the movie without breaking the suspense. However, it might not please the Trekkers as this may have made the movie more like a comedy than a sci-fi.

Whatever the case is, I enjoyed the movie thoroughly, though I must personally say I am not sure whether the direction the story is taking is positive or negative. But just as people pass on and a new generation replaces the old, perhaps Star Trek is also undergoing a remake to keep up with the times and cater to a new generation of movie goers.

I felt a little sad however, since it sort of mark the passing of an era… and it once again reminds me of my mortality.