I am a Star Trek fan.

No one is surprised by this, of course. If you know me, you will know that I have been involved with Star Trek ever since I was a little kid. I remember sitting on the floor, watching this bald guy say “Engage!” on the screen and being absolutely thrilled by the series. And then the original series, one that I still hold dear to my heart, where Kirk would give his famous “Risk is our business” speech, and always get the girl (and get the girl killed, usually). Shatner is the MAN!

Shat happens, man!

Shat happens, baby!

Earlier this year, Paramount decided to release a reboot-style movie about Star Trek. I have got to admire Paramount for having the guts to release this after a very unspectacular Star Trek: Nemesis and the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise television show, especially to a fan base such as the ones that follow Star Trek. I was a little skeptical, but I tried to keep an open mind. I mean, some reboots are fairly good critically and financially, and I expected that one of the most well-known franchises in the world would at least break even.

Of course, we all know how the box office numbers went this summer. Star Trek completely destroyed everything in the box office at the time – even the latest in the X-Men movies, and the movie adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel. It is the only movie that I have gone out of my way to see in theaters this year, and I loved it. I loved its quirks, its humor… and most of all, its story. So did a lot of the world.

(On a side note, the three Valley Girl wannabes sitting behind me in the theater really made me want to hang myself. I am just glad I could not hear them when the movie’s good action scenes started. “Like, oh my gosh, that pointy ear guy is cute!” But I digress.)

As can be expected, I was pretty excited when the movie came out on DVD and Blu-Ray – I would be more excited about the latter if my PS3 was working and not a paperweight right now – and as such, I picked up a copy yesterday and eagerly came home to watch it. I picked up just the basic movie, no extras or special cases, and I am sorry to say that I can not tell you about what I thought about the features that came on the discs. I kind of regret that now, but I also can not afford to spend money on special edition DVDs. Hell, I scrimped just for this regular DVD.

Maybe later, when I get a job, there will be a few bucks around that I can purchase it.

Anyway, the basic DVD actually only comes with one DVD. In it, you get the movie, director’s commentary, a behind the scenes featurette and a gag reel. Pretty standard DVD fanfare. I could not find any Easter Eggs, but truth be told, I was not looking that hard. I was kind of disappointed that the deleted scenes didn’t make it to the basic DVD and I got the gag reel. I would have expected the gag reel to go on the two-disc one and the deleted scenes to go on the basic… or have I missed something about DVD packaging?

I'm just really glad I do not make signs

I am just really glad I do not make signs

The movie itself? Well, it is good quality, and it is a fun movie.

  • All the actors seemed like they actually WERE the characters, to me. This is a BIG thing within this movie that is extremely important, and I think neutralized the concerns about the movie in a big way.
  • The Romulan ship. The internals, externals… just how it flowed was so neat. Only thing I really did not get was how it mined things.
  • The uniforms. SO glad they stuck to a close to the original series style as possible.
  • The storyline. Some may call this movie intellectually lacking, but… that is what I think works for this one. The ones that are looking for a moral just really have to look a little closer than normal to find it, because it is more of a subtext than an in-your-face moral dilemma. See my previous post on morals just to be more sure. Making this movie more accessible to the public is a good thing.

There is really just a couple of issues I have with the thing:

  • Lens flares. What the Hell? I do not remember that many in the movie theater. I found myself squinting because of it at times. It seemed to detract from the image of the film, which
  • I still think the bridge of the Enterprise either looks like an Apple store or a manufacturing clean room. It does not seem to be a place where people can expect to work without someone with OCD cleaning every surface every 30 seconds.
  • Female uniforms. I know this was a nitpick, but pick one, JJ: sleeveless or sleeved.
  • This:

Anyway… I would still rate this movie very strongly, despite the above video, considering it does draw parallels in between the two biggest sci-fi franchises. (SHUT UP STARGATE AND BATTLESTAR LALALALALALALALALALALALALA!!!!!!!!!) Sure, I can draw similarities in between anything I want too… except Obama and Bush.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with my DVD player.