What JJ Abrams is doing with ‘Star Trek’

Director JJ Abrams has been traveling the globe screening footage from his upcoming Star Trek movie (view the trailer here, via YouTube), said Ryan McLelland in IESB.net, and having had the chance to see it, here’s my verdict: “You have never—NEVER—seen Star Trek like this before.” To say it’s “phenomenal” doesn’t do it justice—“this movie will be the stuff of legend,” it “will redefine the sci-fi genre.”

I don’t think so, said Christopher Campbell in Spout online. The movie “looks cluttered” with too much CGI—“kind of like the first Star Wars prequel,” which I’m reminded of thanks to Abrams’ “lame, child version of James ‘Siberius’ Kirk.” And “worst of all, it doesn’t at all pique the interest of a non-Trekkie like myself.”

“I’m still not entirely clear on the plot, “ said Katey Rich in Cinema Blend, and I haven't “warmed up to the character of Spock”—he “seems a little too sci-fi to the Trek averse among us.” But taken “scene by scene, there's a whole lot to get excited about” here: Abrams “seems to have made a genuine populist adventure movie, a little concerned with satisfying the fans but mostly hell-bent on entertaining as many people as possible.

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