To Boldly Go...

...where Ditch has rarely gone. hehe

Taking my cue from a movie review I read that the best way to watch Star Trek XI was on the biggest screen possible, I went to the IMAX Theater at SM Mall of Asia.

I think this is the third time I have made the trek to MoA. The excitement of seeing the new Star Trek film has produced two miracles on my part: waking up early (8 am! Milagro!) and going to MoA. Alone. But enough about moi, on to the movie review...

This movie was meant to be seen on a very, very large movie screen. J.J. Abrams really, really knows how to make action scenes work. From the third Mission Impossible film, then Cloverfield, and now the reinvigorated (I won't use reimagined or else I might confuse this movie with Battlestar Galactica) Star Trek, Abrams has nailed the formula in making a blockbuster film.

The kind lady at the IMAX ticket booth situated me in the most optimal spot - right smack in the middle - and although the film was in 2D, I felt that I was literally in space: in the middle of the space dogfights, the phaser fire and photon torpedoes. Whew!

The pacing was done well, devoting enough time to introduce the main protagonists and flesh out their characters for the viewers. Though the film most certainly did not capture all the subtleties and intricacies of the iconic crew members, enough time was given for each to shine in their own way.



SPOILER ALERT!

Favorites: The scene where Scotty took a trip through the water vents was unexpected but really fun to watch. Chekov's accent was disconcerting at best but stays true to the TOS character - there was this moment when he was going "The sheep vill pass vy See-turn.." and I was going "Seeturn? Oh...Saturn!" I loved Sulu's "I have combat training" boast (though you have to admit, fencing could be bad-ass - as Sulu proved) and the part where he screwed up the Enterprise's initial warp. And Uhura was give more depth than the original, which one reviewer described as nothing more than a glorified phone operator - in miniskirts, I might add. And the unexpected romance between two main charaters...Star Trek purists I imagine would be up in arms if a lesser director was at the helm, but being not too well versed with (and thus not too emotionally involved - pero if this was TNG magkakamatayan tayo hehe) the OS canon I was forgiving of Abrams' tweaking because, let's face it - it worked.

Thus another franchise was revitalized for the New Generation. I expect that a few more sequels are in the works, and that the world of Star Trek shall continue, as the Vulcan saying goes, to "live long and prosper."