GameGirl

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek has been blowing up at the box office after it's debut this past weekend. Long time Star Trek fans and those who are completely new to the Star Trek world are loving the movie equally. No one seems to have a bad thing to say about it.

Is it a "geek" movie, or is this movie something that will bring the geeks and non-geeks together? Keep reading to see what Jess, Raychul and Heather of GameGirl.com have to say about their thoughts and experiences on J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.

I'm one of those people who can sit around for hours and watch trailers for upcoming movies. Needless to say the Star Trek trailer is one of the best trailers I had seen in a while, so my expectations for the movie were really, really high. I mean how many times do you go to see a movie, and come out feeling like the trailer was better then the movie? Surprisingly with Star Trek that wasn't the case, as I was thoroughly blown away.

Story: Well, for those of you who know Star Trek, this is not the story you were raised to know, they decided to take a twist with this. Since it starts back before Kirk is even born, the stage for a whole new world is there. I won't spoil anything for those of you who haven't seen it yet, but believe me, they found a way to make Star Trek a brand new story. Our favorite classic characters are still there, but the course of events is quite different. When you see the movie, you will know what I mean.

Sound effects/ Music: The sound effects for the movie were not unlike the original Star Trek series, especially the bridge. However, the sounds in space were... confusing. Sometimes there was sound in space, other times, there wasn't (or it was limited). For those of you who aren't so into physics, there isn't sound in space because it has no medium to travel through, so whenever I see movies like Star Wars, I feel slightly cheated.  Now, from an editors point-of-view: without sound in space, epic battle scenes would be extremely boring. As far as music is concerned, I really enjoyed the soundtrack. I think the music was appropriate and well chosen. I have a deep-rooted dislike for Beastie Boys, but even the scene with the song "Sabotage" was done pretty well.

Special effects/ Editing: This is my favorite section to review with all movies, as this is pretty much my field. The special effects in this were incredible to say the least. Since this was the first high-budget Star Trek film, all the effects were re-vamped. It really paid off. Jumping to warp speed makes my heart jump every time, and the beaming looks fantastic. I would have liked to been on the crew of special effects for this movie. The scenes of the ships in space were spectacular, even the ending credits blew me away. I think I want to get those shots for a screen saver haha. Editing was really good as well, very clean and well chosen cuts. There wasn't a time where I felt the cut was held too long or cut awkwardly.

Acting/ Characters: A lot of the characters looked really close to there predecessors, especially Scotty. On the other hand this Sulu wasn't even Japanese! Um, hello? The acting was pretty good, but I think no matter what movie Zachary Quinto (Spock) is in, I will always see him as Sylar. He's a little creepy if you ask me. He did an excellent job, regardless. Now Chris Pine (Kirk)? Fantastic. But then again I have a major star-crush on him. As soon as Scotty got on screen he stole the spotlight. Definitely one of the my favorite characters in the movie. Besides Pine, of course.

Overall: As you can probably tell already, I loved it. I've already seen it twice, once in IMAX. It's a fast paced action movie that literally held me there the entire time. That is a rare thing for me. There isn't much downtime in this movie-- something is always happening. It was great the first time, and better the second. My parents are the true Trekkies, and thanks to their upbringing I know a lot about the show. This new generation of movies definitely has my support, and I can already feel myself turning into a Trekkie at last. My parents will be so proud. This movie already has my vote for the best movie of 2009. Academy, did you get that?

I don't consider myself a "Trekkie" although I did thoroughly enjoy the original Star Trek series and the Next Generation series and I also have seen all of the past Star Trek movies. I went into the new Star Trek film familiar with the characters, their personalities and knowing a lot of their background yet as I watched the movie I still felt like I was getting to know each character all over again. I loved the character development and I think the casting for each part was perfect. Even though I am familiar with Star Trek and I knew the overall outcome of the film, I was still on the edge of my seat for the whole film. I think J.J. Abrams' Star Trek is pretty close to a perfect film, it had just the right amount of action, comedy, drama and suspense to captivate any type of movie goer. J.J. Abrams' Star Trek also kept true to the nature and the characters of the original show for the fans yet introduced new ideas and traits to also win over the newcomers.

The graphics were amazing and special effects were definitely on point. My only complains were the shaky camera during some of the fight scenes and the over-use of the lens flare effect. I don't think shaking the camera like crazy makes a fight scene more intense at all, in fact I think it cheapens a lot of the action. I also feel like someone went too crazy on the lens flare effect and instead of adding it to key moments to add realness, they just slopped it on whenever they could. Other than that, those are really the only two complains I could think of.

The story was solid and maintained a lot from the original backgrounds we have seen overtime in the past Star Trek movies, yet added enough new plot twist to make it it's own film. I loved the cameo of Leonard Nimoy, I am usually not a fan of useless cameo's of original actors when it has nothing to do with the story, but Nimoy's cameo was executed so well and actually played a major part in the story.

The casting was excellent and each actor was perfect for the part. From the main guys like Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) to the supporting characters like Scotty (Simon Pegg) and Chekov (Alton Yelchin); each was done flawlessly and each stood out in the overall film.

Overall, this film is a must-see for any type of movie fan - not just the geeks or nerds out there. Go see it, and go see it in IMAX. This film will make a Trekkie out of anybody.

10 out of 10

Since I first glimpsed the trailer for Star Trek, I knew I had to see it. I have never been much of a fan but I definitely watched my fair share of The Next Generation with Levar Buton, as a child. Who didn't though? I wasn't really sure what I was expecting when I went into the theater, but I was completely blown away. I know there are plenty of Star Trek fans that were not impressed by J.J. Abrams' take, but he definitely reached out to a much larger audience.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek really did a great job of establishing a connection with the original characters. This is something that always got in the way for me, because I just couldn't ever get into it. After seeing this film though, I felt as if I had to know everything about the series. I loved the direction he took the film and characters. It was completely new and fresh.

As for the plot, I went into the movie having read the prequel graphic novel so I knew exactly what was going on and why. The story was easy to follow otherwise, but there were definitely a few holes for those who hadn't read up on the plot. Once again, I thought the plot was brilliant and fresh.

Overall, this movie was beautifully done. Visually it was simply stunning. J.J. Abrams' did a great job of capturing Star Trek but bringing it to a whole new audience. It is one of the best movies I have seen this year for sure. This is a must see summer movie!

I've been a Star Trek fan for several years now. I mainly watched TOS and TNG so when I learned that Paramount was making a Star Trek movie I got very excited. When I finally went to go see it I was both eager and skeptical, I don't know if it was  anticipation or the fact that I had a prior history with Star Trek that made me this way. Either way, I was certainly not an impartial movie goer.

The movie starts out with Tyler Perry. I was thrown off by that, I admit it. The first scene is fast paced, dramatic and emotional. The perfect set-up for any movie. Right of the bat I was both excited for the action enriched spaces battles, ones I was so desperately in need of in light of BSG ending, and emotionally saddened by Kirk's father's sacrifice. Ten minutes into it, I was all but sold.

If there's one thing J.J. Abrams knows, it's lens flares. But if there are two things J.J. knows then it's lens flares and time travel. The concept of altering the future, humans as variables, is a concept that many Abrams fans may be familiar with from Lost. In this film the conflict was a Romulan rebel named Niero was threatening us with altering time to seek revenge, thus threatening the existence of all series of Star Trek we've all watched and loved. If he succeeded then TOS, TNG, Enterprise, etc would never have occurred. And with that as a Trekkie, I was instantly emotionally invested.

Star Trek series were hardly something that was known for it's amazing acting, so going in I didn't expect to be blown away. But I was. Chris Pine, who aside from being immensely fun to look at, he did a perfect rendition of Captain Kirk. He managed to take mannerisms from Shatner's Kirk while in no way imitating him. Zachary Quinto played Spock and his performance was also exceptional. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to see him as Spock since to me he is Syler. Overall the acting was really great and I felt like everyone was type casted really well. The kid who played Chekov's accent was pretty thick and to me erred on the side of Polish, but hey let's not split hairs.

Action wise, this movie had plenty of explosions, lasers, gun fights and all around good clean space fun. There was just enough action that my mom next to me was squeezing my sister's arm the whole movie. I did feel like the suspense was sort of anti-climataic. I basically accepted that there was no way Abrams was going to kill off any of the main characters. The movie offered up plenty of humor as well. Throw backs to the TOS were much appreciated, even by those who didn't know the context. Lines like when Scotty says, "I'm giving it everything it's got!" occurred, the whole audience laughed, not all of them knew it was a line from TOS.

I did however feel that some parts were down right lazy. Having Kirk banished to a planet where he stumbles upon old Spock and then they walk a mile and find Scotty just seemed like poor writing. I can ignore it tho. I ignored the Nokia plug in the first 5 minutes. I was already set up for denial.

Prior to seeing this movie I saw on The Onion a piece about how Trekkies weren't happy with a movie that was so good. As a Trekkie I somewhat felt that this movie wasn't so much a Star Trek movie as much as it was this separate movie about time travel that took place in the Star Trek universe. Something about it was off, different from the typical Star Trek movies I was used too. but then again maybe it was just good. Maybe to me a Star Trek movie comes with a certain amount of "bad" that I was somewhat hoping for.

Oh and Leonard Nimoy was amazing. He acted great, looked great, and was easily my favorite addition to the movie Go see it. It's entertaining, not too long, go see it. End Transmission.