Star Trek is directed by J.J. Abrams, and is written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. I knew the film was going to be action packed already, because you have J.J. Abrams, the man who directed Mission Impossible 3, and Roberto Orci who wrote Transformers, Mission Impossible 3, and Fringe and Alias episodes. The film stars Chris Pine as James T. Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and Eric Bana as Captain Nero an evil Romulan out for blood after his home world is destroyed.

To start off, I can say I went in with insanely high expectations, I'll say it, the trailers got to me really bad. The third trailer that was put out for Star Trek in my opinion is a work of art. Something that makes the movie look so incredible. And I think that's something that perhaps disappointed me a little. I highly enjoyed the movie. I think it's the best Star Trek movie I've seen thus far, but I think I set myself up for too much excitement.

The movie is stunningly gorgeous. Nothing looks cheesy or badly CGI'd, everything is clear and crisp, kind of like MI3. The action scenes are incredibly well put together, and keep your eyes glued to the screen. The Romulan drill fight was probably my favorite fight scene. The beginning fight scene between the Romulan ship and the U.S.S. Kelvin was almost breath taking. I'll be honest I didn't want the movie to end. I would've been willing to sit there for another two hours to see the next adventure. The movie obviously wasn't perfect by any means. I thought the training scenario was a little corny and a bit overplayed, it was kind of used to show Kirk's pompous attitude, but there were plenty of scenes that established that already.

Sound design was something that played a huge role in this movie. After Abrams found out that the movie was not going to be released for another six months he said that they went back and worked over a lot of the sound. I can't honestly imagine what the film would have been like if they hadn't. This film makes you feel like you're there. The phaser blasts when they're fighting in the Romulan ship, the Starships firing torpedo's back and forth at each other, hell, the little noises that the starship elevator made, or buttons on the main deck of the Enterprise sounded incredible.

The score was highly enjoyable for Star Trek, there were a couple of moments when they could've toned it down, like they were playing a couple of the scenes too powerful, but I still thought it was a good score. Michael Giacchino is someone who has been with Abrams for a long time from Lost to Fringe to Alias, so at least we have someone who has staying power.

The one thing I will say that I highly enjoyed about the film was the things that have made the series famous were paid lip service without leaving the audience scratching their heads, sure some stuff might have been left out, but when they would make references it was done in an easily explainable manner.

The acting for this came out a lot better than I thought it would have. Zachary Quinto as Spock did not disappoint, but the writer's threw in something for me which was an interesting element I don't remember seeing before (now don't quote me). I did watch most of the original series from Netflix Instant Watch and don't really remember a love element being played in for Spock, so for me I thought that was new and an exciting place to take the story. I thought Simon Pegg did a great job playing Scotty, the accent didn't feel forced, but I could see him playing into it a little, but it didn't bother me. I'm glad that they wrote in the lines that made him famous, but didn't force it. The entire audience cheered when he said, "I'm giving her all she's got Captain!" Eric Bana as the evil Romulan Captain Nero was simply awesome. He was a character who simply just acted on impulse, and it was fun to see him tear it up on screen. Zoe Saldana played Uhura with the attiude I remember from the series.

Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike is the essence of a Federation Captain. He has the look and feel of a starship captain. Especially for the setup in the trailer, his voice is something that could lull me to sleep in a non-creepy way. Anton Yelchin as Chekov was a bit obnoxious at first, but over the course of the movie he settled in quite nicely. Karl Urban as Bones McCoy was a really interesting casting choice, someone I would not have thought of originally. He looked very much the part, a little overacting at times, but it wasn't over the top. John Cho I think made for a fantastic Sulu, although I wished they would've explored his character a little more. I always thought the Sulu from the original series was always compelling and quite strange, in a comedic way.

Chris Pine was the one I was worried about most going into this film, I hadn't seen him in any previous film's and the trailer's didn't give me much to go on in terms of his acting ability. I had seen that on IMDB he did a movie previously with Lindsay Lohan, so that didn't help his credibility with me. Well after having seen Star Trek all doubts about him have been erased. I thought he played it with a great punk style attitude for being so young, and I look forward to seeing him in the next installment of the franchise.

All of the character setup done by the writers was a nice job. I simply just can't wait to see how far they can take it in the next installment. A friend of mine was disappointed a little they didn't delve farther in for the characters, but did agree that it was a great setup for a movie.

The story setup probably could have left out the one scene with Kirk as a child driving the car off a cliff, I realize that it was simply a setup to show that Kirk was a bit cavalier and didn't really care who said what. But I think that could have been handled in a completely different manner.

If you haven't seen the movie yet, spoiler alert *stop reading*

The parallel universe storyline I thought made a great concept, and was easily explained to the audience. So the old Spock (Played by Nimoy) gets captured and is forced by Captain Nero to watch as he destroys his home planet Vulcan with a Romulan drill and some red matter (basically creates black holes), all the while the young Kirk is told by Old Spock not tell Young Spock that he exists, but in reality is simply just joking around. One side note, the red ball of doom is back!! For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about there was a red ball in Alias *created by JJ Abrams* which basically exploded and flooded a building practically drowning Michael Vartan's character. Maybe I'm the only one who thought of that similarity but anyway. I thought ending the film with Nero dying in the blackhole was a great way to end his storyline, because basically that's how he extracted some of his revenge.

I'm glad they ended it with what normally came as the intro for the original series, the famous line, "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enteprise" with Leonard Nimoy as the voiceover, it's a shame they couldn't get Shatner to at least make a cameo that way, but I'm glad they they ended in that fashion.

Overall, even as someone who has seen the original series, I loved what was displayed across the screen. The story could have evolved moreover but I did not walk away disappointed by any means. The sound design was huge for me, you could tell how hard they worked on that to almost make you feel like you were there. Great setup for the characters, and I can't wait to see how deep they go with the character's relationships next time around. The film wasn't perfect by any means, but highly enjoyable even thus. This is a film I highly recommend seeing, and so far my favorite movie of the year. BAM.

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