Star Trek: Revew

I freely admit to being a Trekker (by which I mean, I've seen all the movies with Star Trek in the title and all the episodes of "The Next Generation" series, though I've never been to a convention nor dressed up in any sort of costume). This is to say I was excited to see the new Star Trek movie, but more in the way of reading the next book in a series you love, it doesn't matter how unique or special it is, just as long as it provides familiar comfort. However, the new delivers on BOTH fronts of unique and familiar. If you've never seen a single moment of previous Trek video, you'd still be in for a great story with excellent action, terrific acting and wonderful special effects. However, if you're already a fan, there's an even greater level of terrific familiarity, filling in the gaps of previous stories and fully creating characters. It is what Wolverine should have (could have) been. Here's what I think the story was about (time travel usually confuses me, so I've thought about it, but could be wrong). *Spoiler Alert* (though given that it's a prequel you know who survives). James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is at the Star Fleet Academy, where Spock (Zachary Quinto) has been an instructor. A great problem arrives that necessitates the cadets to help on star ships. Basically, far into the future the planet Romulus is destroyed by a super nova. A Romulan, Nero (an unrecognizable Eric Bana) who feels it was Spock's fault manages to come back in time with a super-future awesome ship and manages to destroy Vulcan and is on the path to destroy Earth (given that Spock is half human, he has two home worlds). Star Fleet has to figure out a way to stop him. With the help of the people we'll all recognize as the future Enterprise crew (Uhura, "Bones", Chekov, Sulu, and eventually Scotty - a terrific Simon Pegg). With each character there's a little bit of the original character, but not a parody or exact duplicate, just a recognizably familiar character. Overall, it's a great movie, with really terrific acting and directing from a new set of actors and directors. My one pet peeve was the "red matter" (something that can create a black hole) appears as a large, unexplained red ball remarkably similar to the bad stuff in "Alias" (another J.J. Abrams creation). Great film, will probably see it again in theaters. 4 lambs/stars