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"Star Trek"
Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana
Written By: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman
Directed By: JJ Abrams

MOVIE
While other recent franchise reboots like "Batman Begins" and "Casino Royale" have aimed their sights at going darker, the 2009 reinvention of "Star Trek" says "No thanks" and blithely sticks out its tongue for a fun and refreshing romp through the future.

Of course, die-hard Trekkies the Internet over are going to spend the rest of eternity bitching and moaning about things like stardates, ship sizes and viewscreens vs windows, but in the end none of that bullshit really matters. "Star Trek" has never been "about" its ships, its various wonderful technologies or its chintzy styrofoam alien vistas. Instead, "Star Trek", at it's core, is a franchise built around the idea that people can come together to overcome their differences and, thusly, any obstacle put before them. This idea has, for 40 years, been warped and shaped to fit all kinds of new situations and styles from talky drama to comedy to action-adventure.

In 2009, "Star Trek" boldly re-embraces the action-adventure aspects of the franchise, with big, fast-paced action sequences. The film starts out with a vicious attack against the Starship Kelvin by a Romulan named Nero, whose massive ship the Narada appears out of a time-warp from the future. After Nero murders the captain, George Kirk is put in command. He evacuates the ship while his wife gives birth to their son, James, and sacrifices himself to disable Nero's ship to allow the crew to escape.

Fast forward a couple of decades, where Jim Kirk is now a rebellious young man trolling bars for women in Iowa. After getting thoroughly trounced by a couple of Starfleet cadets, Kirk meets Christopher Pike, a Starfleet captain who wrote his dissertation on the incident aboard the Kelvin that killed Jim's father. Pike challenges Kirk to enter Starfleet and make something of himself, instead of wasting his life in Jerkwater, USA. The next day, Kirk joins up with Starfleet.

Meanwhile, half-human, half-Vulcan Spock joins Starfleet as well after rejecting acceptance to the Vulcan Science Academy. At Starfleet, Kirk and Spock run afoul of each other when Kirk cheats on the Kobayashi Maru test that Spock designed. Kirk is determined to win at any cost, even if it means cheating. This sets up a rivalry between Kirk and Spock that the two must overcome in order to become friends and defeat Nero.

Ultimately, "Star Trek" eschews the weighty philosophical issues of past franchise adventures to focus on its characters and action sequences. It's those characters that ground the entire film, and, ultimately, what make it succeed. Kirk and Spock are wonderfully realized here, feeling at the same time fresh, reinvigorated, and yet intensely familiar. Both in the writing and in performances, these two characters and the connection between them is at the core of "Star Trek".

At the same time, the focus on characters and action somewhat sacrifices plot a little bit. Nero isn't much of a character; his motivations are simplistic, and he's given little depth. He exists merely as a force to bring Kirk and Spock together, an obstacle they must overcome in order to form the intense bond that destiny practically requires of them.

The action sequences are huge, the biggest and most impressive in the history of the franchise. "Star Trek" is presented on a scale like never before, and moves at an incredibly snappy pace. Filled to the brim with humor, action, and fully realized characters, "Star Trek" is a full-on successful reinvention of a decades-old franchise that needed a good kick in the pants.

VIDEO
"Star Trek" appears on blu-ray in a gorgeous 1080p transfer featuring bold colors, excellent deep blacks and sharp details. There are occasionally some softness (especially when Spock Prime appears from the future), but for the most part, this is the best looking blu-ray I've seen.

AUDIO
Like the video, "Star Trek" manages to shake the room with a big, booming surround sound presentation. Dialogue always remains clear and centered, while sound effects envelope from every direction. The low-end is fantastic, with plenty of room-shaking bass action from the subwoofer.

EXTRAS
Aside from the audio commentary, all the extras are located on Disc 2. There are featurettes on just about everything, and added all up, there's a couple hours of material to get through. There are featurettes on casting, aliens, ships, production, planets, props, music, sound effects... it feels never-ending, and yet, it's all fun to watch. The interviews are informative, but often quite jokey. The cast, it seems, really like to rag on each other, and as much fun as it looks like they're having on the set, they're still having fun here in these interviews. It's rare when the special features are almost as fun to watch as the film, and "Star Trek" succeeds here.

Probably the only annoying thing is that several of the featurettes have "pods" - This is where, as the video is playing, an icon will appear and you must press enter in order to be taken to an extra video segment, and then returned to the main feature. Now, sometimes this material wouldn't work within the main feature like time-lapse videos of sets being constructed (the Enterprise bridge and the Narada interiors) but a lot of times, I don't understand why this material wasn't simply edited right into the doc. It's kind of annoying to have to press the button to see a few extra seconds or even minutes of good making-of material that should've just been there without me having to press buttons.

But for the most part, this is an excellent set of features. Also included are a gag reel showing just how much fun everyone had making this movie, four theatrical trailers, and about ten minutes of deleted scenes.

The deleted scenes range from fun to somewhat worthless. The scene of Spock's birth, for example, doesn't seem to have much going for it. While it's interesting to see Sarek suggesting the name Spock to Amanda, it's really not all that important. Probably the biggest inclusion is two scenes explaining what Nero and his crew were up to for 25 years - they were captured by the Klingons and imprisoned on Rura Penthe. The only problem then becomes - why didn't the Klingons strip every bit of technology out of the Narada and Spock's ship from the future? So while these scenes are interesting and well made ("Alias" star Victor Garber appears as a Klingon interrogating Nero), ultimately they're not necessary. In fact, it probably makes more sense to just say that Nero and his crew waited around, avoiding contact with anyone, until Spock arrived. This gives his singular mind for revenge and impressive scope.

But I'm sure someone is creating a fan-cut right now with these scenes put back in. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

Included on the third disc is a digital copy for your computer or iPod.

OVERALL
An incredibly fun reinvention of the franchise, top-notch audio and video and a fun, in-depth batch of special features make this blu-ray one of the best I've seen so far. Highly recommended.

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