Watch Star Trek 2009, Story, Stars, Reviews & All You Want To Know About A Great Movie
Star Trek 2009
The brash James T. Kirk tries to live up to his father’s legacy with Mr. Spock keeping him in check as a vengeful Romulan from the future creates black holes to destroy the Federation one planet at a time.
Star Trek is a 2009 American science fiction action film directed by J. J. Abrams and written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. It is the 11th film in the Star Trek franchise, and is also a reboot that features the main characters of the original Star Trek television series portrayed by a new cast, as the first in the rebooted film series.
The film follows James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) aboard the USS Enterprise as they combat Nero (Eric Bana), a Romulan from their future who threatens the United Federation of Planets. The story takes place in an alternate reality that features both an alternate birth location for James T. Kirk and further alterations in history stemming from the time travel of both Nero and the original series Spock (Leonard Nimoy).
The alternate reality was created in an attempt to free the film and the franchise from established continuity constraints while simultaneously preserving original story elements.
The idea for a prequel film which would follow the Star Trek characters during their time in Starfleet Academy was discussed by series creator Gene Roddenberry in 1968. The concept resurfaced in the late 1980s, when it was postulated by Harve Bennett as a possible plotline for what would become Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but it was rejected in favor of other projects by Roddenberry.
Following the critical and commercial failure of Star Trek: Nemesis and the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, the franchise’s executive producer Rick Berman and screenwriter Erik Jendresen wrote an unproduced film titled Star Trek: The Beginning, which would take place after Enterprise.
After the separation of Viacom and CBS Corporation in 2005, former Paramount Pictures president Gail Berman convinced CBS to allow Paramount to produce a new film in the franchise. Orci and Kurtzman were soon approached to write the film, and Abrams was approached to direct it.
Kurtzman and Orci used inspiration from novels and graduate school dissertations, as well as the series itself. Principal photography commenced on November 7, 2007, and ended on March 27, 2008. The film was shot in locations around California and Utah. Abrams wanted to avoid using bluescreen and greenscreen, opting to use sets and locations instead.
Heavy secrecy surrounded the film’s production and was under the fake working title Corporate Headquarters. Industrial Light & Magic used digital ships for the film, as opposed to miniatures used in most of the previous films in the franchise. Production for the film concluded by the end of 2008.
Star Trek was heavily promoted in the months preceding its release; pre-release screenings for the film premiered in select cities around the world, including Austin, Texas, Sydney, Australia, and Calgary, Alberta. It was released in the United States and Canada on May 8, 2009, to critical acclaim.
The film was a box office success, grossing over $385.7 million worldwide against its $150 million production budget. It was nominated for several awards, including four Academy Awards at the 82nd Academy Awards, ultimately winning Best Makeup, making it the first Star Trek film to win an Academy Award. It was followed by the sequels Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond in 2013 and 2016, respectively.
Star Trek 2009 Trailer
Star Trek 2009 Reviews
It’s encouraging to learn that not even explosions and fires can quickly damage a starship. Also that lifeboats can save the crew, despite the vast distance from home base.
That would be because of warp speed, which for present purposes consists of looking through an unnecessary window at bright lights zapping past. This method of transportation prevents any sense of wonder at the immensity of outer space and is a convenience not only for the starship but also for the screenwriters, who can push a button and zap to the next scene.
The concept of using warp speed to escape the clutches of a black hole seems like a recycling of the ancient dilemma of the rock and the hard place.
Battles consist primarily of jump-suited crew members running down corridors in advance of smoke, sparks and flames. Lots of verbal commands seem implausibly slow. Consider, at light warp speeds, how imprecise it would be to say “At my command … 3 … 2 … 1 …” Between “2” and “1,” you could jump a million galaxies.
I thought about these things during “Star Trek” because I could not help myself. I understand the Star Trek science has never been intended as plausible. I understand this is not science fiction but an Ark movie using a starship. I understand that the character types are as familiar as your favorite slippers. But the franchise has become much of a muchness.
The new movie essentially intends to reboot the franchise with younger characters and carry on as before. The movie deals with narrative housekeeping. Perhaps the next one will engage these characters in a more challenging and devious story, one more about testing their personalities than re-establishing them. In the meantime, you want space opera, you got it.
- Roger Ebert – Roger Ebert
- Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
Star Trek 2009 Credits
Star Trek 2009
127 minutes
Cast
Anton Yelchin as Chekov
Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk
Eric Bana as Capt. Nero
John Cho as Sulu
Ben Cross as Sarek
Chris Pine as James Tiberius Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime
Jennifer Morrison as Winona Kirk
Bruce Greenwood as Capt. Christopher Pike
Winona Ryder as Amanda Grayson
Zachary Quinto as Spock
Zoe Saldana as Uhura
Directed by
- J. J. Abrams
Screenplay by
- Roberto Orci
- Alex Kurtzman
Star Trek 2009 Plot
In 2233, the Federation starship USS Kelvin is investigating a “lightning storm” in space. A Romulan ship, Narada, emerges from the storm and attacks the Kelvin. Narada‘s first officer, Ayel, demands that Kelvin‘s Captain Robau come aboard to negotiate a truce. Robau is questioned about the current stardate and an “Ambassador Spock”, whom he does not recognize.
Narada‘s commander, Nero, kills him, and resumes attacking the Kelvin. George Kirk, Kelvin‘s first officer, orders the ship’s personnel, including his pregnant wife Winona, to abandon ship while he pilots the Kelvin on a collision course with Narada. Kirk sacrifices his life to ensure Winona’s survival as she gives birth to James Tiberius Kirk.
Seventeen years later on the planet Vulcan, a young Spock is accepted to join the Vulcan Science Academy. Realizing that the Academy views his human mother, Amanda, as a “disadvantage”, he joins Starfleet instead. On Earth, Kirk becomes a reckless but intelligent young adult.
Following a bar fight with Starfleet cadets accompanying Nyota Uhura, Kirk meets Captain Christopher Pike, who encourages him to enlist in Starfleet Academy, where Kirk meets and befriends doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy. Three years later, Commander Spock accuses Kirk of cheating during the Kobayashi Maru simulation.
Kirk argues that cheating was acceptable because the simulation was designed to be unbeatable. The disciplinary hearing is interrupted by a distress signal from Vulcan. With the primary fleet out of range, the cadets are mobilized, with McCoy and Kirk boarding Pike’s ship, the Enterprise.
Realizing that the “lightning storm” observed near Vulcan is similar to the one that occurred when he was born, Kirk breaks protocol to convince Pike that the distress signal is a trap. When the Enterprise arrives, they find the fleet destroyed and Narada drilling into Vulcan’s core. Narada attacks Enterprise and Pike surrenders, delegating command of the ship to Spock and promoting Kirk to first officer.
Kirk, Hikaru Sulu, and Chief Engineer Olson perform a space jump[5][6] onto the drilling platform. While Olson is killed mid-jump, Kirk and Sulu successfully reach and disable the drill, but are unable to stop Nero launching “red matter” into Vulcan’s core, forming an artificial black hole that destroys Vulcan.
The Enterprise manages to rescue Spock’s father, Sarek, and the high council before the planet’s destruction, but not his mother Amanda, who falls to her death before the transporter can properly lock onto her. As Narada moves toward Earth, Nero tortures Pike to gain access to Earth’s defense codes.
While in pursuit, Spock maroons Kirk on Delta Vega after he attempts mutiny. On the planet, Kirk encounters an older Spock (from the original timeline), who explains that he and Nero are from 2387. In the future, Romulus was threatened by a supernova, which Spock attempted to stop with an artificial black hole made of “red matter”.
However, his plan failed, resulting in Nero’s family perishing along with Romulus, while both the Narada and Spock’s vessel were caught in the black hole and sent back in time. Spock quickly found they were sent back 25 years apart, during which time Nero attacked the Kelvin, thus changing history and creating a parallel universe.
After Spock’s arrival, Nero stranded him on Delta Vega to watch Vulcan’s destruction as revenge. Reaching a Starfleet outpost on Delta Vega, Kirk and the elder Spock meet Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, who helps them by devising a trans-warp beam system, allowing both him and Kirk to beam onto Enterprise while it is travelling at warp speed.
Following the elder Spock’s advice, Kirk provokes younger Spock into attacking him, forcing Spock to recognize himself as emotionally compromised and relinquish command to Kirk. After talking with Sarek, Spock decides to help Kirk. While Enterprise hides itself within the gas clouds of Titan, Kirk and Spock beam aboard Narada.
Kirk fights with Nero and Ayel, killing the latter and rescuing Pike, while Spock uses the elder Spock’s ship to destroy the drill. Spock leads Narada away from Earth and sets his ship to collide with Nero’s ship. Enterprise beams Kirk, Pike, and Spock aboard.
The older Spock’s ship and Narada collide, igniting the “red matter”. Kirk offers Nero help to escape, but Nero refuses, prompting Kirk to give the order to fire, dooming Narada to be consumed in a black hole that Enterprise is only barely able to escape.
Kirk is promoted to captain and given command of Enterprise, while Pike is promoted to rear admiral. Spock encounters his older self, who persuades his younger self to continue serving in Starfleet, encouraging him to do, for once, what feels right instead of what is logical. Spock remains in Starfleet, becoming first officer under Kirk’s command. Enterprise goes to warp as the elder Spock speaks the “where no one has gone before” monologue.
Star Trek 2009 Box office
Official screenings in the United States started at 7 pm on May 7, 2009, grossing $4 million on its opening day. By the end of the weekend, Star Trek had opened with $79,204,300, as well as $35,500,000 from other countries.
Adjusted and unadjusted for inflation, it beat Star Trek: First Contact for the largest American opening for a Star Trek film. The film made US$8.5 million from its IMAX screenings, breaking The Dark Knight‘s $6.3 million IMAX opening record. The film is the highest-grossing in the United States and Canada from the entire Star Trek film franchise, eclipsing The Voyage Home and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Its opening weekend numbers alone outgross the entire individual runs of The Undiscovered Country, The Final Frontier, Insurrection and Nemesis. Star Trek ended its United States theatrical run on October 1, 2009, with a box office total of $257,730,019, which places it as the seventh highest-grossing film for 2009 behind The Hangover. The film grossed $127,764,536 in international markets for a total worldwide gross of $385,494,555.
While foreign grosses represent only 31% of the total box office receipts, executives of Paramount were happy with the international sales, as Star Trek historically was a movie franchise that never has been a big draw overseas.
Star Trek 2009 Critical response
Star Trek was acclaimed by film critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it received 94% approval rating with an average rating of 8.14/10 (the highest scored Star Trek film), based on 352 reviews, with the consensus: “Star Trek reignites a classic franchise with action, humor, a strong story, and brilliant visuals, and will please traditional Trekkies and new fans alike.”
Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, gave the film an 82 out of 100 based on 46 reviews from critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.[158][159] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “A” on an A+ to F scale.
The editing, cinematography, and special effects work are state-of-the-art, as you’d expect – extra praise goes to an astonishingly detailed sound mix – but so are the same aspects of Wolverine, and that film’s a joyless bore by comparison.
What lifts the Abrams film into the ether is the rightness of its casting and playing, from Saldana’s Uhura, finally a major character after all these years, to Urban’s loyal, dyspeptic McCoy, to Simon Pegg’s grandly comic Scotty, the movie’s most radical reimagining of a Star Trek regular.
—Ty Burr of the Boston Globe
Ty Burr of the Boston Globe gave the film a perfect four star rating, describing it as “ridiculously satisfying”, and the “best prequel ever”.[161] Burr praised the character development in the film, opining that “emotionally, Star Trek hits every one of its marks, functioning as a family reunion that extends across decades, entertainment mediums, even blurring the line between audience and show.”
He continued: “Trading on affections sustained over 40 years of popular culture, Star Trek does what a franchise reboot rarely does. It reminds us why we loved these characters in the first place.” Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly gave the film an ‘A−’ grade, commenting that director Abrams “crafts an origin story that avoids any hint of the origin doldrums”.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Rolling Stone journalist Peter Travers, who gave the film a 3.5 out of 4 stars. He felt that the acting from the cast was the highlight of the filming, asserting that the performance of Pine radiated star quality.[163] Likewise, Travers called Quinto’s performance “sharp” and “intuitive”, and felt that Quinto “gave the film a soul”.
Manohla Dargis of the New York Times wrote, “Star Trek […] isn’t just a pleasurable rethink of your geek uncle’s favorite science-fiction series. It’s also a testament to television’s power as mythmaker, as a source for some of the fundamental stories we tell about ourselves, who we are and where we came from.
Slate‘s Dana Stevens felt that the film was “a gift to those of us who loved the original series, that brainy, wonky, idealistic body of work that aired to almost no commercial success between 1966–69 and has since become a science fiction archetype and object of cult adoration”.[165] Time Out London‘s Tom Huddleston praised the aesthetic qualities of the film, such as the design of Enterprise, and praised the performances of the cast.
He wrote, “The cast are equally strong: Quinto brings wry charm to an otherwise calculating character, while Pine powers through his performance in bullish, if not quite Shatner-esque, fashion.”
The chemistry between Pine and Quinto was well received by critics. Gleiberman felt that as the film progressed to the conclusion, Pine and Quinto emulated the same connection as Kirk and Spock.
Tim Robey of The Telegraph echoed similar attitudes; “The movie charts their relationship […] in a nicely oblique way.” Robey resumed: “It’s the main event, dramatically speaking, but there’s always something more thumpingly urgent to command their attention, whether it’s a Vulcan distress signal or the continuing rampages of those pesky Romulans.”
Burr opined that Abrams had an accurate understanding of the relationship between Kirk and Spock, and wrote, “Pine makes a fine, brash boy Kirk, but Quinto’s Spock is something special – an eerily calm figure freighted with a heavier sadness than Roddenberry’s original. The two ground each other and point toward all the stories yet to come.”
Similarly, The Guardian writer Peter Bradshaw expressed: “The story of Kirk and Spock is brought thrillingly back to life by a new first generation: Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, who give inspired, utterly unselfconscious and lovable performances, with power, passion and some cracking comic timing.”
Some film critics were polarized on Star Trek. Keith Phipps of The A.V. Club gave the film a ‘B+’ grade, and asserted that it was “a reconsideration of what constitutes Star Trek, one that deemphasizes heady concepts and plainly stated humanist virtues in favor of breathless action punctuated by bursts of emotion. It might not even be immediately recognizable to veteran fans.”
In concurrence, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated that “the Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action.” Ebert ultimately gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars.
Similarly, Marc Bain of Newsweek opined: “The latest film version of Star Trek […] is more brawn than brain, and it largely jettisons complicated ethical conundrums in favor of action sequences and special effects.”
Slate journalist Juliet Lapidos argued that the new film, with its “standard Hollywood torture scene”, failed to live up to the intellectual standard set by the 1992 Next Generation episode “Chain of Command”, whose treatment of the issue she found both more sophisticated and pertinent to the ongoing debate over the United States’ use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
A 2018 article by Io9/Gizmodo ranked all 11 versions of the USS Enterprise seen in the Star Trek franchise up to that point. The version seen in the film placed in the second lowest position.
Star Trek 2009 Accolades
The film garnered numerous accolades after its release. In 2010, it was nominated for four Academy Awards at the 82nd Academy Awards, for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Makeup. Star Trek won in the category for Best Makeup, making it the first Star Trek film to receive an Academy Award.
The film was nominated for three Empire Awards, to which it won for Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy. In October 2009, Star Trek won the Hollywood Award for Best Movie, and attained six Scream Awards at the 2009 Scream Awards Ceremony.
The film attained a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture at the 16th Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Star Trek received several nominations. The film was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media, but was beaten out by Up, also composed by Michael Giacchino.
At the 36th People’s Choice Awards, the film received four nominations: the film was a contender for Favorite Movie, Zoe Saldana was nominated for Favorite Breakout Movie Actress, and both Pine and Quinto were nominated for Favorite Breakout Movie Actor.
On June 15, 2009, the film was nominated for five Teen Choice Awards. In addition, Star Trek was nominated for five Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards and was named one of the top-ten films of 2009 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.
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