Walking into the Alamo, it’s not hard to know what you’re in for. Clips from the old TV show and William Shatner talk-singing “It Was a Very Good Year” get audible approval and loud musings from the audience. When the lights go down, you can cut the tension with a knife. The words “Star Trek” get applause from some. It’s on, everyone’s thinking, and they can’t wait.
You are alone in a room full of nerds.
Not that you aren’t a nerd—you can talk G.I. Jeo and Avengers with the best of them. You just never got caught up in the Star Trek franchise. The TV show was long gone before you were old enough to appreciate it, no one ever took you to see the movies, you never asked for or got an action figure or lunchbox, and most everything you know about this whole damn franchise is from SNL parodies and other random pop culture references.
You are, for all practical purposes, Star Trek illiterate. But you’re still a movie lover. So what will you think of this movie assuming you don’t get all the references? The new film is a reinvention and possible jump-start to a dying franchise, but first and foremost, it’s a summer blockbuster, which means it goes down easy. A quick summary herewith:
Kirk, a rebellious country farm boy with no father figure joins Star Fleet to work for the Federation (which is a good thing in the Star Trek world), meets a seriously repressed Spock (played by Sylar form Heroes), then through some truly madcap circumstances, ends up with the swine flu aboard the Starship Enterprise, the fleet’s shiniest newest spaceship.
Kirk and Spock don’t get along so well at first, and they can’t decide what to do about the immediate threat they face—an angry Bruce Banner with an out of control Mike Tyson face tattoo. Kirk ends up on the ice planet of Hoth, chased by the monster from Cloverfield, but works his way back to the Enterprise with the help of a wise old man and a hilarious Shawn of the Dead and his Jawa-type friend.
So the cast is in place and it's a colorful one; colorful in the sense that no one wears the same color uniform (well, at least in space—on earth, everyone wears red for some reason), but also in that there’s a Russian, a Kumar-less Harold, the black pirate girl from Pirates of the Caribbean, and even a green girl in there somewhere. This is in keeping, your trekkies will tell you, with past themes of tolerance -- Star Trek has always looked forward to a world where color, race, even species doesn't matter anymore. (It's not hard to imagine the controversy a Russian good guy character generated in the 60's). Gotta love a break from the generically white beautiful people that seem to populate so many other blockbusters.
There’s plenty of action, happening so fast you sort of have to count on someone to tell you what’s happening (which the trekkie companion that dragged you there will gladly do). There are plenty of space battles and dramatic heroics from just about everyone in the cast. Lasers make those great "pew pew" noises, and people (mostly Kirk) seem to always be hanging off of cliffs.Action-y! Exciting!
It’s safe to say that director J.J. Abrams has done his homework. There are all the requisite lines that even non-Trekkies have come to expect. “’I'm a doctor, not a coal miner.” “I’m givin’ it all she’s got, cap’n!” “Fascinating.” “Live long and prosper.” There are also wormholes, black holes, exploding planets, stars, and time travel shenanigans. The theater was filled with plenty of laughter and applause at seemingly random moments, so there must be plenty more in-jokes for the hardcore fans, which they certainly deserve, but you may not catch. It is their franchise, the rest of us are just borrowing it for a bit.
The bottom line is that this movie has something for everyone [ed. note - which actually seems to be a complaint amongst "real" Star Trek fans—that the film "raises it's yo-yo finger to the science while embracing the fiction."]. While Trekkies will undoubtedly understand a lot more of what's going on than Joe Six-Pack (can we say that now, or is it still politically tainted? Is “Joe Average” better?), it’s still an outstanding popcorn movie guaranteed to keep you entertained. But like every summer blockbuster, don’t expect it to haunt thoughts the next day…or even the next hour. It is, after all, just a fun distraction to get you out of the summer heat.
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