Star Trek

Corkscrew­ing past space debris, pho­ton fire and blaz­ing star­ships, we are sent hurtling head­first into JJ Abrams’ reboot­ed Star Trek uni­verse – just min­utes before baby James Tiberius Kirk is too. Blast­ed out of the womb, blast­ed out of an escape pod, Kirk will nev­er meet his father, who sin­gle-hand­ed­ly crash-cours­es the dec­i­mat­ed USS Kelvin into its Romu­lan attack­ers to save his new­born son.

But, briefly and cru­cial­ly, we do meet Kirk Snr. And it’s sure­ly no acci­dent that Abrams sends a Starfleet cap­tain to an explo­sive hero-death in the open­ing scene. It’s more like a sym­bol­ic pass­ing. More like a mis­sion state­ment. More than Bond or Bat­man, Abrams’ Star Trek is a rad­i­cal fran­chise rebirth – as bald as its title. Hand­some but lived-in, Pine looks less like a card­board jock from The Hills than a hot­shot who’s grown up hit­ting the bot­tle, the books and the guy next to him.

Speed and style is what Abrams pumps into the heart of Gene Roddenberry’s sci-fi saga. He bare­ly lets the cred­it sequence cool off before we warp for­ward a decade to find that Kirk still has bat­tle in his blood. To the sound­track yaw­ps of the Beast­ie Boys’ ​‘Sab­o­tage’, tween wild-child Kirk joyrides a sports car across the Iowa desert with a police hov­er­bike in hot pursuit.

We warp again, past Kirk’s teen years. Because we see them all in Chris Pine’s face. Hand­some but lived-in, Pine looks less like a card­board jock from The Hills than a hot­shot who’s grown up hit­ting the bot­tle, the books and the guy next to him. He’s been slapped by a lot of women and screwed a lot more. Cocky, impul­sive and embar­rass­ing­ly like­able, Pine’s Kirk is all Good Will Hunt­ing – genius dropout, lost boy, rebel with­out a cause. Des­tiny waits for him at Starfleet. His inter­view involves being dragged drunk and blood­ied out of anoth­er bar brawl after a fum­bled pass at Uhu­ra (Zoe Saldana).

Again, Abrams just hits the fast-for­ward but­ton to assem­ble the Enter­prise crew at Starfleet Acad­e­my: Karl Urban’s grum­bling ​‘Bones’ McCoy, Anton Yelchin’s quizzi­cal Chekov, and John Cho’s sword-sling­ing Sulu all shine in zip­py, colour­ful intros.

But it’s mav­er­ick Kirk’s mir­ror-twin rival­ry with Zachary Quinto’s ice-man Spock that gives Star Trek its gris­tle. Both are bruised fruit from bro­ken roots, both are played to per­fec­tion by Pine and Quin­to. Kirk lives in the shad­ow of a father who was a cap­tain for 12 min­utes and saved 800 lives – but was nev­er a part of his son’s life. Spock’s human moth­er is his only weak­ness – but maybe his great­est strength. Dead­locked in a silent strug­gle between his emotional/​logical DNA, Quinto’s Spock is anoth­er prodi­gy. He aces the Vul­can Acad­e­my, and then snubs them for refer­ring to his human moth­er as a ​‘dis­ad­van­tage’.

“Who was that pointy-eared bas­tard?” asks Kirk when they first butt skulls at the Acad­e­my. We almost for­got to men­tion: Star Trek is fun­ny. Very fun­ny. Com­e­dy is Abrams’ big ace card, with Pine’s com­ic tim­ing bang-on even when the humour is broad as a plan­et. Bones caus­es Kirk’s hands to swell to Gondry-esque pro­por­tions. Chekov realis­es he can’t say ​‘Wul­can’. Simon Pegg’s Scot­ty – wonky accent, bril­liant line deliv­ery – is acci­den­tal­ly beamed into a grid of Willy Won­ka-style water tubes. Even Quin­to bran­dish­es a few zingers. ​“Out of the chair,” he says briskly, as Kirk slump casu­al­ly in the captain’s seat.

It’s mav­er­ick Kirk’s mir­ror-twin rival­ry with Zachary Quinto’s ice-man Spock that gives Star Trek its gris­tle. Both are bruised fruit from bro­ken roots. That would be the oth­er thing we for­got to men­tion: in Abrams’ Trek, Spock is cap­tain of the Enter­prise. Writ­ers Rober­to Orci and Alex Kurtz­man shake up the fran­chise with some fear­less redux rev­e­la­tions that will have hard­core Trekkers grat­ing their teeth, while still keep­ing its grand her­itage safe­ly at touch­ing distance.

Don’t wor­ry: the guy in the red suit still gets it bad. Bones and Scot­ty splut­ter mantras like ​“Dammit man! I’m a doc­tor not a physi­cist!” Or, ​“I’m giv­ing it all she’s got, cap­tain!” Vul­can nerve grips, short skirts, spi­ral­ly tele­porters… The in-jokes and nods are all there. But Uhu­ra isn’t Kirk’s babe this time. Clev­er­ly, in just the kind of con­ceit that was beamed casu­al­ly into the Trek TV shows on a week­ly basis, Orci and Kurtz­man work their alter­na­tive real­i­ty in as a plau­si­ble plot point. What they don’t do is come up with much of a sto­ry to go with it. Sketch­ing togeth­er a flim­sy through-line about plan­et-eat­ing black holes and some MacGuf­fin ​‘red mat­ter’, their script gives Eric Bana’s rogue Romu­lan thug lit­tle to do except sneer and snarl.

Shame, because a great vil­lain would have added depth and dra­ma to the dynamism of Trek’s vibrant young cast. More balls than brains, the film los­es its head­ing on a cou­ple of occa­sions, chiefly when Kirk is dumped on an ice plan­et (was that a cough or a ​‘Hoth’?) to be chased by B‑movie mon­sters and dis­cov­ered by a much-talked-about guest from anoth­er real­i­ty. It’s the one moment where Abrams dares you to call bull­shit on his movie. Then, bril­liant­ly, Kirk does it him­self. But most­ly, there’s no time to notice the space-rifts, no space to argue the time-rifts. Because as much as this is a Star Trek movie, it’s a JJ Abrams movie. Which means it moves. The unbe­liev­able truth is that few moviemak­ers in Hol­ly­wood can direct action scenes. Abrams made his big-screen direc­to­r­i­al debut by turn­ing M:I:III into the longest, most lung-bust­ing action scene in mod­ern cinema.

He stacks action sequences, fit­ting them togeth­er like Lego bricks into one giant super­struc­ture glued togeth­er with adren­a­line. Think Cruise’s Ethan Hunt crash­ing out of a sky­scraper win­dow, strug­gling with his para­chute, smash­ing through a win­dow sev­er­al storeys down, com­ing to rest on a board­room table in front of a quizzi­cal jan­i­tor, being dragged back out by a gust of wind, crash-land­ing in a busy high­way, chas­ing a stolen cap­sule as it rolls between speed­ing traffic.

Amid the space skir­mish­es and phas­er fights, Star Trek’s clas­sic Abrams action-stack arrives as anoth­er daz­zling base-jump: Kirk and Sulu freefall from out­er space, bul­let through Vulcan’s orbit, nar­row­ly avoid incin­er­a­tion, go hand-to-hand with Romu­lan brutes on a drill-plat­form in the sky, then sur­vive anoth­er freefall to the plan­et sur­face – this time with­out ​’chutes. Kirk grits his teeth as he falls in a blur towards the ground. Chekov scrab­bles at the tele­porter con­trols back on the Enter­prise. Spock races to save his home plan­et from oblit­er­a­tion. Star Trek used to be smarter. But it was nev­er this fast, fresh and exciting.