The New Star Trek Film

The new Star trek Film I took my two eldest kids to see the new Star Trek film directed by J.J. Abrams. It’s simply called “Star Trek”. As it was certified 13+ I didn’t take my 12 year old with even though he is a great Star Trek fan.

As I understand from my kids, Star Trek is not very well known amongst the current generation is Israel. Consequently when we sat down in the theatre hall we were three amongst an audience of about 9 persons, all of them English Speakers, all of them religious except one couple. This made for a rather cosy and cleeky atmosphere.

Now the reason the film received a 13+ cert rating is because of one short scene where the young Kirk is in bed with a green skinned girl in a bikini. Her flatmate walks in and undresses to her underwear. Kirk is discovered and thrown out the flat. This whole seen adds absolutely nothing to the plot or character development. It is there simply to titillate and is completely unnecessary. How foolish of the directors to include this scene and thereby exclude a whole new generation of young Trekkie fans. That aside, we found the film very entertaining and enjoyable.

There were lots of in jokes such as Doctor McCoy’s, “Jim, I’m a doctor not a…” and Chekov’s Russian accent. We get to find out why Kirk calls McCoy “Bones” and how the transition is made from the uniforms of Star Trek Enterprise to those worn in Star Trek “The Original Series”. The story was not the greatest as far as depth is concerned but its non stop action, great script and fantastic special effects made it one of the best Star Trek movies ever made.

I enjoyed the fact that Leonard Nimoy appears in the film but how the young Kirk gets to meet him simply stretches plausibility beyond breaking point. A slight fault in the script I thought. I thought that with the exception of James T. Kirk, the cast of Star Trek characters was very well chosen. Spock, Sulu and McCoy were spot on. The young Uhura didn’t look anything like the original actress but she played the character role very well nonetheless.

In my opinion, the only let down was the actor chosen to play Kirk. For me he just wasn’t it. The actor had not caught the personality or the body language of Kirk, even bearing in mind that he was supposed to be a young man in his twenties. It made it all the more obvious due to the fact that the other characters were so well cast. Perhaps the problem was that William Shatner looks so Jewish whereas Chris Pine who playes the young Kirk is without doubt lacking any Semitic features at all. Kirk’s “to boldly go where no man has gone before” and his sense of moral outrage at things came from his Jewishness I believe. This new Kirk looked and behaved like James Dean in the film “Rebel Without a Cause”. No, that’s not Kirk, even a young Kirk

The new cast sat at their stations on the bridge of the Enterprise and there was a “rightness” about them, all except Kirk who never looked convincing, sitting there in the captain’s chair. I’d give the film 8/10. It loses 1 point for the underwear scene and another for the new Kirk. Go see it.