Star Trek

Mel and I finally made it to see Star Trek today. We dropped Emma off at my cousin's house where she played with my cousin's two-year-old son for the few hours we were gone. Before I go on, I do want to warn you that while I will try to avoid spoilers in this blog entry, I can not guarantee that I will be entirely successful in that attempt.

From everything I had heard about Star Trek, I was expecting it to be a good movie, and I was definitely not disappointed. From the moment the movie began I was completely engaged in what was going on, no pun intended. The intensity of the movie barely let up for a moment, and those scenes that lacked some of the intensity of the rest of the film still held my interest completely.

Before the movie began, I was worried about how they would explain, if they even would, any differences between what happened in this movie and the already established Star Trek canon. Oh I knew it would have something to do with time travel, after all it was widely known that Leonard Nimoy would be reprising his role of Spock in this film, but the time travel aspect of the movie did not entail what I thought it would. It was really quite well done.

While I feel that Star Trek was written such that even those with absolutely no background knowledge of the franchise would really enjoy the film, it also included plenty of details that a true Star Trek fan would catch and in which he or she would take delight. While the backgrounds of the main characters differed somewhat from what had previously been established, their introductions were quite good.

The casting was terrific! When Dr. McCoy was introduced toward the beginning of the film, I of course immediately knew that it was him based on the fact that he initially introduced himself as a doctor. However his mannerisms and what he said reminded me so much of the Leonard McCoy made famous by DeForrest Kelley. The role of the rest of the crew was also perfectly cast. Chekov and Sulu reminded me so much of how they were portrayed in the original Star Trek TV series. Simon Pegg also played a fantastic Mr. Scott, adding just enough humor to the role without going overboard. And finally, the actors who played Spock and Kirk, Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine were awesome! The character of Spock was different from what I was used to, showing a bit more emotion than in the past, but it was a great portrayal. And Kirk was indeed the Captain Kirk I grew up watching.

I am very much looking forward to a sequel, which I hear may have already been in the works before this film was even released. And if the box office numbers for Star Trek are any inidication, the prospects of a sequel look to be quite promissing.

Anyway, after the movie we went to my cousin's house to get Emma. When we got there, my sister was also there, so the whole group of us went out to dinner at Red Robbin. We had a very pleasant dinner before returning home. We didn't leave the restaurant until after 8:00, and as it was about half an hour from our house, by the time we got home and gave Emma a bath, it was pretty late. Fortunately Emma didn't struggle with going to bed. In fact, she told us that she was ready to go to bed. Once she got in bed, I read her a few books and then left her to go to sleep. With her going to sleep so much later than ususal, I really hope she sleeps late tomorrow morning. It would be especially nice if she would sleep later than the 6:00 time at which she woke up this morning, altough that was an improvement over waking up at 5:30 as she did Saturday morning.