After quite some time of resolving personal family matters, I finally had the chance to start seeing some movies. In a way, it served as a refreshing for me and especially my wife who had to endure a very challenging past few weeks. We decided ourselves to just go and have some wild movie marathon day with not only our usual 2 movies in 1 day but 3 movies in roughly 8 hours span. Our first movie of the day was this one that started at 2 PM.
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the scene of Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) unsuccessfully trying to make peace between 2 alien races by providing an artifact as offering. He returned back to starship USS Enterprise where the artifact was kept in a storage place. All the previous crew were still around such as Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto), Leonard McCoy/Bones (Karl Urban), Lt. Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho), and Chekov (late Anton Yelchin).
It was highlighted that Kirk was feeling a bit confused of his future particularly when his birthday is nearing where he would be a year older than his late father (captain George Kirk/Chris Hemsworth) and perhaps bored with the life in the space as he had been out for 3 years of his dedicated 5 years assignment. He applied for a position as vice admiral in the space city Yorktown. However, when Enterprise was making a short stop in Yorktown, the Federation received a distress call from a small ship with Kalara (Lydia Wilson), the only survivor of her crew stranded in a planet inside Nebula galaxy. Enterprise being the only capable ship to make such trip to the unchartered location in that galaxy, was assigned with Kirk hoping to do 1 final assignment before settling down at Yorktown.
Ultimately Enterprise went to Nebula but when they reached the location near a planet, Enterprise was ambushed by a swarm of spaceships and it literally fell apart. Kirk had no choice but to ask all his crew to abandon ship. Unfortunately the enemies have been ready and they captured all the pods with the crews. Only very few were able to escaped.
Kirk managed to leave Enterprise with Chekov and Kalara. While Spock and Bones escaped using 1 of the enemy's space shuttle. Uhura, Sulu and the rest of the crews were captured by enemy who were led by Krall (Idris Elba - Thor, Pacific Rim, The Jungle Book etc) with his right hand man Manas (Indonesian Joe Taslim - The Raid, Fast & Furious 6). Meanwhile Scotty also barely escaped by himself and lucky for him, he was saved by a survivor on the planet, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella - Kingsman: The Secret Service). Knowing Scotty was an engineer, she asked Scotty's help to repair her house, which turned out to be the starship USS Franklin from more than 100 years before.
When Kirk and Chekov were trying to find out the reason for the attack, Spock and Bones were trying to find the rest of the survivors. Uhura and Sulu were also plotting to make escape plan.
So can all of the crew who were separated found each other? Can everyone be saved? What was the plan of Krall all along? Find them all in this interesting 2 hours space adventure.
End of Brief Story Line
I had quite enjoyable time watching this movie. My wife actually did enjoy it also but at some points, I noticed that she was quite bored, mostly during the conversations time. I understand that some of the action seeker would be hoping for more action scenes like in the previous 2 Star Trek installments. However, for me who was a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series (not the original as I was not even born then), felt that the movie was more similar to the TV series (which was not full action, but more towards a mission to explore the new worlds, in a peaceful manner).
There were still some tense action scenes which was trademark of the director Justin Lin(Fast and Furious 3 -6), especially during the attack on USS Enterprise, and the escaping scenes, plus the finale scene. There were also few funny moments, usually involving Spock's very stiff style as the logical Vulcan, Bones and also with Scotty. We could also see the info on the demise of Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) which I believe was a tribute to him as the original Spock from original Star Trek TV series and movies. It also gave tribute to Anton Yelchin who just passed away few months before the premier of this movie. The special effects were also good.
My most memorable scene would be the attack on USS Enterprise which made it totally torn apart.
For those who are fans of Star Trek, I think this one is pretty good. While those who purely enjoy action, this may not be to your liking. There was no vulgar or sadistic scenes in this movie, so should be safe to be watched by younger generation, but it will definitely be too heavy for children.
If you want to watch a more loyal version of Star Trek in cinema, I hope you can enjoy this one. And I understand this will not be the final Star Trek movie as there will be a fourth one.
"Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5 year-mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before" : Captain Kirk.
Mike's Movie Moments Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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