And in another of these film reviews in quick succession, well quick enough considering all things, we find ourselves at another remake, another franchise, rather than left to history as it stood, Hollywood having ran out of ideas some many years ago, have been raping and pillaging like good little Vikings anything that may make some quick cash. And this is not the first time this type of thing has been remarked on within this digital writing ice fortress of doom, lest we forget the likes of Batman: The slightly off colour knight and Get Smart (by watching something else).

So now as we come galloping along to the big summer blockbuster film season filled with big actors with equally big salaries for doing the same thing 20 times as directed by other people (not that I’m bitter about such things), it’s time to remark upon the the cult hit:

Star Trek

Oh dear, we’re in for a bumpy ride. The film has received so much praise with the smallest amount of lament, so in essence the smartest thing to do right now is to say the film is the best thing since Klingon Blood Pie and wander off for some experiments involving the transporter system and some livestock.

But seeing as I have severe mental problems, I prefer to question a few things before we even get to Star Trek, something which perhaps I should have addressed with the last review.

I suppose I begin by returning to the opening paragraph and expanding upon it; We know the main reason for bringing back the dead franchise; Money talks, and right now it’s positively shouting at the makers of Hollywood to come up with major hits year after year after year, and we’ve seen some pretty bad films reach the screen, such as the recent Crank 2, which basically had shown Jason Stately do the exact same crap as per the previous film which let’s be fair, was actually quite funny and should have ended there.

And of course, XXX-Men staring Wolverhampton who needs a better agent right now, and we possibly have more shining examples to come with Terminator: Salisbury, Transformers 2 with the wimpy Optimist Primark and Maggie Fox using her breasts to try and keep the audience from lapsing into a coma. And please, don’t get me started with Angels and Demons, it would be less dull to be forced to read a copy of the Angling Times for 100 years.

For those film purists right now, I know we’ve had Slumdog with extra mustard, The Curious Tale of Banjo Button and Watchmen (though even some of that was a big silly) actually dragging back up the average with myself even enjoying Taken showing Liam Neeson he can kick arse in France and make sure Holly Valance’s body remained sexy after a poop concert (no, the extra o is meant to be there) but mainly it hasn’t been fantastic for a fair while now.

So when it comes to looking at Star Trek, the JJB fella’s version of events with new people playing those roles we came to love and then despise, you can almost be forgiven for thinking “Please for the love of god, can someone just make all this stop?” After all it was the network along with questionable first and second seasons of Enterprise which basically called a day on the whole thing in 2005, after all why bloody prequels? Shouldn’t we be seeing further into the future with new stuff rather than go back and replay the same again?

But, and this is a big but when it comes to this Star Trek film, it’s a prequel that pretty much looks at the established storyline for the whole lot, says “f**k it!”, and goes off on one by itself without adult supervision. Well sort of, remember there are Star Trek purists to please and they have as much money as the normal-non-skin-coloured-in-to-look-like-a-slave girl-public so at some point we’re going to have to address that little issue aren’t we?

So to the spoiler-refic plot part of the ramblings. It’s the year something-or-other, and some Romanians people have come from the future and decided to be jolly rotten to a nearby starship, and it appears after a breif conversation the Romanians are after Ambassador Spock for some reason. Oh no, they’re going to kill everyone unless one brave chap flies into the naughty vessel firing at them allowing people to escape. Isn’t it convenient that old James T Kirk was being born at the time of all this and it was his daddy that saved the day.

Cut to further along, and our James is a little rascal, starting fights, going after ladies, then he joins Starfleet, meets the gang (not from Scooby Doo) and tries to stop the naughty Romanians from succeeding in doing huge amounts of naughty, which was surprising they could still do so after getting banged up a fair bit years before. Old James and his stalwart fellows sort of fail to do this half way through with shit hitting the fan quite a bit for one planet being destroyed, and another is on the cards later on to fall the same fate. But it’s only when all the crew are together again that the day can possibly be saved with catchy lines, lots of shots being fired and lots of noises in the background.

Let’s be fair, it doesn’t take much working out that the day is saved and they will have ensured more films can be made with the intrepid crew, hopefully with yet more things to be made to make money like those funky uniforms. But it is just a load of old balls which will clap out after 3 seconds, or is it in fact something which activates the warp drive over 60mph?

Well, I have to say, this is Star Trek for the masses, you really don’t have to know who the guys are before and there are tons of action going on, with enough funny bits to tide you over till tea and biscuits. But there is even things here for those who actually paid attention to all the crap that came before from the millions of episodes before, and an appearance from one of the original cast too, which let’s be fair, wasn’t a massive secret given the fact it was given away in the trailers. But it’s not known how much he is actually key to the plot until later which was a little bit welcome, but you got the feeling it was a bit of a cop-out to tie things up nicely.

The actors they have on hand are a fair bunch to tell the truth, with the stand out performances coming from Karl Urban, who played Dr. Mccoy very well but wasn’t on the screen enough and strangely despite the bad accent and being introduced quite late, Simon Pegg who was chosen to play the wee Scotty man, now with accompanying furry thing who I have no idea what it’s meant to be. The best was Spock, played by the bloke from Heroes, and at least for once he was playing a good guy while looking annoyed. And he got himself a woman too. Clearly he be the man.

James T Kirk, Chekov, Sulu, they were all played rather well, which again caught me by surprise but then there were even more good performances from Spock’s dad, Captain Pikey and well Winoda Ryderhard was there too. Still never mind about that last bit eh? All in all it had enough pace to keep going with plenty of change throughout, but the only parts you could be moaning about was Eric “was crap in Hulk” Bana not doing, well, anything really, he just got angry a lot and roared. That was about all he was allowed to do which was a bit pants, but at least he looked the part with the funky art all over his face.

Sometimes I do wonder if this film would work without Star Trek being put as the title, as you could have what happened in any story going with any characters, it’s just we had names and things like the Enterprise to fit into everything so we had a frame of reference. What was the bleeding deal of things just going along as they did, at times it really does look like “Oh this has just happened, that was handy and allows us to nicely bodge bits together without anyone asking questions.” And another, and so on. Almost too easy….hmm…

And another problem of course is every time we get things updated, they end up looking far far better than the original thing it was all based on, now we have an Enterprise that’s got so many tellys on and background noises, you wonder if those poor people are going to end going insane with sensory overload and scream “MAKE THE NOISES STOP!?!?!?”

Oh yes, the Enterprise, it kind of looks the same, except the warp bits at the back look like they’ve gone on an eating binge at an all you can eat buffet and have just let out their trousers to breathe. Other than that, it looks swanky, as does the special effects doing more than a good job to make us pay attention for more than 3 seconds.

So basically what we have here is actually a good film that could have actually launched the entire lot in the first place if Star Trek had never been made in the first place, and it has done something no-one thought possible; made Star Trek cool for the first time ever, and it’s a remake that was actually worth making. Time travel bit to get around all the past and future stuff aside, this really could have legs if they continue the way they are going. Just a wee bit more thought on not making everything go conveniently the way you need to shoehorn in something else, and like I said, get the Scottish accent worked on, and more Bones god damn it!