Fancy two hours of high action fun?

**WARNING - THIS BLOG CONTAINS BIG SPOILERS OF THE NEW STAR TREK FILM**

I really enjoyed the new Star Trek film. What I really liked about how they rebooted the franchise is the decision to set it in an alternative reality. James Kirk's father dying at the start of the movie set it aside from all of the Star Trek TV shows and films that we had previously seen, and what with Vulcan - Spock's home planet - being destroyed it gave the writers, director and actors to shape the characters the way they wanted to shape them. As Kirk grew up without a father he is much more of a rebel than William Shatner's Kirk. Zachary Quinto was an excellent choice to portray Spock who is struggling to keep his emotions (or lack thereof) in check.

The film really simplified the Star Trek universe. It takes the approach that all recent film franchise reboots (I'm thinking Spiderman and Batman here) have taken, which is to assume that at least half the people in the cinema will not know anything about Star Trek. The film makers showing the origins of their versions of the characters is a good way to go about this, but not having epic speeches about Starfleet Protocol and not having loads of what I believe is referred to as 'techno-babble' not only make the film more watchable but it leaves space for what we all wanted from this film; action sequences.

They were second to none in this film. They wreaked of science fiction yet they were all very believable. The scene involving the big parachute jump onto the big planet-drill-thing was really good. Kirk being chased by those monsters on the ice planet (anyone else expecting Han Solo to show up on a Tauntaun?) was really cool with the larger of the two monsters being genuinely scary. I felt the last big action sequence was slightly anti-climactic, but this was made up for by Simon Pegg looking for appreciation on the task he had just performed. Incidentally, Simon Pegg was brilliant as well. I bet he's regretting his line from Spaced where he said "I mean, it's a fact, sure as day follows night, sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit." The very start of the film, showing the birth of Kirk and the demise of his father, was really full on with the woman getting pulled out into space being plain good fun.

There were enough in-jokes to keep the die-hard fans happy. For example finding out Uhura's first name, Scotty making reference to the dylithium crystals, Kirk seducing a green woman, the quickly named Ensign who was killed within about two minutes of leaving the ship and of course the appearance of Leonard Nimoy. It was really cool to see Sulu off the bridge and kicking some sizable arse as well.

To sum this up I would really recommend this film. It's brilliant from the off and I sincerely hope that there's at least one more like that to come. I just hope Star Trek isn't strangled until it's dead this time.