This film was a welcome prequel to the original 1960's TV series created by Gene Rodenberry. The new movie was made by the same trio that produces the excellent Fox-TV show Fringe, and is directed this time by J. J. Abrams.

The movie opens several hundred years in our future in the year 2233, with the alien villain being a Romulan named Nero. Nero aims to avenge the destruction of his Romulan home world, and has tried to destroy an Earth Federation ship as bait to attract attention from Earth's defenses. Earth's 'United Federation of Planets' sends several spaceships to investigate, including one with a Captain Kirk. Kirk rams his ship, the USS Kelvin, into the Romulan vessel, crippling it. Kirk dies in the process. Meanwhile, Kirk's wife and son escape alive.

About 25 Years pass, and on Earth we find Kirk's rebellious lady-chasing son, James T. Kirk, who eventually gets convinced to join Starfleet Academy to give him some purpose in life.

Kirk then meets up with younger versions of most of the cast members we know from the pop TV show of the 1960's called Star Trek. We encounter younger versions of communications officer Uhura, medical doctor McCoy, engineer Scotty, science officer Spock, space pilot Sulu and weapons officer Chekov.

All these 25 years, the villain Nero has been rebuilding his powerful spaceship, waiting for a chance to strike a blow at his enemy, the Vulcan, Mr. Spock.

Kirk and other federation starships eventually attack Nemo's ship, but not before Nemo uses his ship's great firepower to destroy the Vulcan home planet and its many souls.

The Romulan ship then attacks planet Earth, and Kirk's Enterprise disables the Romulan weapon, kills Nemo, and saves the day.

Negatives:
The CGI spaceship Enterprise didn't look quite like the ship that appeared in the TV series, especially the engine nacelles. In fact, the Enterprise looked more like the 'refurbished' Enterprise that was seen in Star Trek the Motion Picture -- a 1979 movie sequel to the original TV series. The result when spread over the entire franchise is: futuristic-retro-futuristic, instead of sequentially oldest-old-newest as one might expect. Still the Enterprise spaceship did look cool.

One expects family members to resemble each other, but the actor who played James T. Kirk's father, Chris Hemsworth, resembles too much the actor who plays Kirk (Chris Pine). This is confusing casting, since most viewers had seen previews of the movie on television before its release.

Another casting wobble was casting Eric Bana as Nero. Although his performance was fine, Bana's face resembles Zachary Quinto's face too much (Quinto played Spock). The result is confusing. Are we looking at Nero on the communication screen, or young Spock? Initially, I thought Quinto was playing both roles.

The opening computer animation of Kirk's father's ship was computer-graphics-ey, and the way the sun glinted off it, was not convincing.

It's hard to notice the change in American language over only a few decades, but American english language was different in the 1960's when compared to today's language. We use different expressions nowadays. The new Star Trek has characters saying "yah" and "punch it" and "launch photons." You wouldn't see that on the original Star Trek TV series which was a bit more formal. In keeping with the 1960's style, they said "yes" and "go to warp 5" and "launch photon torpedoes."

Leonard Nimoy reprises his role as the older version of Spock (a.k.a. 'Spock Prime'), while Zachary Quinto plays young Spock. Nimoy-Spock seems injected into this movie just to have Nimoy in there, and the script seemed written around Nimoy. I wonder how this prequel film would have been written without Nimoy in it? With Nemoy-Spock in the film, the time travel thing needs to be done to take him into the time period of young James Kirk. Time travel has been overdone in Star Trek films, in my opinion, despite its popularity among SciFi fans.

Lukewarms:
The music was okay, but not great. It had echoes of the original Star Trek theme near the start, then had its own original score. The original TV series Star Trek theme was played at the final credits.

Positives: The starship Enterprise's engineering deck had realistic plumbing tubes, tags, and water pipes. It looked gritty like George Lucas' Star Wars, and not shiny and new like the 1960's TV Star Trek. This worn-style looks more realistic than the original Star Trek TV series with its pristine machinery, but the industrial look seems to be a discontinuity for the Star Trek franchise, since the rest of the series was clean and polished. Still it's a positive/negative.

The original bridge of the starship Enterprise was primitive when compared to Star Trek the Next Generation TV series. In this new Star Trek, they managed to capture the essence of 1960's Star Trek, and gave it a before-Star Trek look, although the display screens were much more modern than in the original TV series.

The acting was pretty good from all the 'young' actors. The funniest part was engineer Scotty's brogue which caused a few humorous scenes. Mr. Chekov's attempts at saying "Victor" with his thick Russian accent were also amusing.

My favorite part was when Kirk and two other men try to disable the Romulan weapons in the lower planetary atmosphere. They freefall from outer-space in their spacesuits, and whistle into the atmosphere at very high speed, then open their parachutes. The scene was exhilarating. It almost feels as though one is flying along with the three men.

Despite a few SFX glitches during certain scenes, overall, the special effects provided by Industrial Light and Magic were superb.

We are all familiar with lens flare, which gives CGI some realism, but new for this film was the 'dirt and grit' that sometimes shows up on camera lenses only when certain very bright light glints off the lens. We've seen it before on our own home cameras, and it is a unique effect, if it's not overused. Director Abrams used shaky-camera, lens flare, and dirty-gritty lens, and there were many of the modern filmmaking tricks such as quick focus in-then-out.

In the DVD commentary, director Abrams said he intended to make the film for modern young audiences who are accustomed to non-stop walls of action throughout a film. He deliberately avoided the 1960's Star Trek style of filmmaking which was limited in its spaceship special effects, so it used more on-the-set actor motion. Part of me wishes this new Star Trek film was more like the original TV series in that way, instead of like that other great Sci-Fi franchise, Star Wars. It would be nice for the new Star Trek to have the occasional 'rest' scene to break up the constant action-packed scenes and accentuate the fast-paced scenes more. However, if one looks at Star Trek in the same way as Superman or Batman franchises, then in future decades, Star Trek films will eventually be re-invented by different directors each with their own views and styles. So, I can go along with the action-packed style. It was a fun movie and I enjoyed the new Star Trek.