Star Trek

J.J. Abrams excellent new Star Trek movie is a glaring reminder of what was wrong with all the other Star Trek movies that came before it, the good (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn) and the bad (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier). In those films all the characters – and all of the actors playing them – were just too old to be anything but past their prime reminders of characters they created when they were much younger actors. Wipe the nostalgia out of your eyes and you will realize that it's hard to believe in the guy up there trying to save the world from destruction when you can see it's a middle aged actor wearing a toupee and a corset. Not all of the things we see may correspond perfectly with past Star Trek lore, but thanks to the old 'alternate universe' plot twist none of it really matters. Its as if Abrams knew the only way to reboot the franchise was to wipe the slate clean, so he boldly goes where nobody else was willing to go before and gets the job done with enough verve and panache to make everybody – even the uninitiated – ecstatically happy with the end results.