If you’ve ever seen the original Star Trek films you’ll know that a good many of them are kinda boring. While rare entries like Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country were a lot of fun – mainly because of kick ass villians Khan (Ricardo Montalban) and Chang (Christopher Plummer) they are rare examples of the film franchise living up to the rough and tumble TV roots.
So when Mr lens flare J.J. Abrams was brought in to reboot the series, people didn’t know what to expect. On the one hand, you have Star Trek, renowned for its high concept sci-fi and on the other you have J.J. renowned for his high-action TV shows and film projects, with fans left in the middle not knowing what to expect.
What they got didn’t please the purists (let’s face it though, maybe nothing would’ve) but it sure as hell blew the pants off a lot of the franchise’s detractors. Taking us back to the early days of the classic crew, the new universe brings enough over from the originals to call it Star Trek, but that’s about it, with the new films owning much more to classic action and Hollywood sci-fi than creator Gene Roddenberry’s scholarly vision of the future, breathing fresh air into a tiring franchise (let’s not even mention Star Trek: Nemesis).
With the latest installment in the franchise, Star Trek: Beyond due for release Thursday 21st July we thought we should countdown 5 Times The New Star Trek Film Exceeded Our Expectations.
Killing Kirk’s Father Off In The Opening Scene
Let’s face it, the whole dead father thing is a classic action film trope, but to kill off the father of a character as iconic as Captain James T. Kirk in the first scene of a franchise reboot is pretty damn ballsy. You know what’s even more extreme, though, killing off his father right after he’s born. Yep, that’s what J.J. did, though, having Kirk’s father, George Kirk sacrifice himself to ram his ship the USS Kelvin into the film’s time traveling big bad Nero’s ship as the not even born yet and future Captain Kirk and his mother flee in an escape pod.
Not only was this a bad ass opening to the film it also set the tone for the reboot, making Kirk angry at the world and letting us know that as far as series canon goes, nothing and no one is sacred.
Killing Captain Pike In Into Darkness
Seriously J.J. gives Kirk absolutely no quarter in these new films, as after turning him into an orphan in the first film, he then killed off his substitute father figure Captain Pike in the next film. As if Kirk needed any more reason to be a reckless phaser-toting space cowboy, losing Pike sends him into alien hunting overdrive as he takes off after the culprit, and again turning the once somber and scholarly universe into the wild west in space.
That Time They Imploded Planet Vulcan
How do you top killing Kirk’s father in the opening scene? How about killing Spock’s entire planet about an hour later? Yep that’ll do it. By doing so J.J. proved that not only are no characters safe from being killed off by his pen, but entire planets are also on the chopping block. Also, with Romulan mining maniac and villain of the film Nero dropping a singularity into the core of the planet we got a bad-ass planet implosion that makes any of the numerous times the original series blew up the Enterprise look like child’s play.
Bringing Original Spock Back From The Future
Now thanks to the way the media works these days (so sorry) the fact that the original Spock from the prime timeline – aka Leonard Nimoy – would be appearing alongside the new Spock Zachary Quinto in the reboot was a surprise to no one. Hell, they had the actors do press conferences together before they’d even finished casting the film.
What was a surprise though was that the cameo was more like a critical world saving role, with Spock prime (Nimoy) using his knowledge of the future to help Captain Kirk guide new Spock to save the day (via a steamy mind meld), plus have him explain the, up until that point rather confusing, plot. But hey, when you base a whole plot on intersecting timelines things are bound to get a little convoluted.
Picking Justin Lin To Direct And Simon Pegg To Write Star Trek Beyond
Well this isn’t exactly the movie exceeding expectations as the studio doing so, but after J.J. exited the franchise to take on Star Wars (seriously screw this guy for living out all our re-make dreams) the studio then reached out to Fast & Furious director/revitalizer Justin Lin to direct it and then got Scotty himself and massive Trek fan Simon Pegg to write it. While this has pissed off some of the purists even further (Fast & Furious is about as far from the original series in content and tone as you can get after all) for those of us looking forward to a balls-out intergalactic action fest, the news was very exciting.
I mean check out the trailer, I don’t know where they got a motorbike in space but who the hell cares, I just can’t wait to see Kirk jump that mo-fo in low gravity.
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Star Trek: Beyond is out in Australian cinemas Thursday, July 12st, and in the meantime check out all the already released Star Trek films here.
