Review: It seems to be the most popular film in the franchise since Star Trek II – and if box office receipts are anything to go by, it may prove to be even more popular than that. The movie simply titled Star Trek has “rebooted” the Star Trek universe for a new generation of fans, and seems to be winning over a wide audience – an audience that, perhaps, wouldn’t have bothered if this was simply a follow-up to the Next Generation flick Star Trek: Nemesis.
To put it bluntly, Star Trek has needed this for some time. Now, around the time that writers and directors new to the franchise teamed up to give us Nemesis, we were hearing a lot about new blood then too – but all that “new blood” really brought to the table, under the thumb of the executive producer who had been at the wheel since 1991, was a glossy new look for what was essentially a watered-down rehash of Star Trek II. Star Trek takes a bolder stab at reintroducing Trek to a new audience by completely dispensing with what has gone before. (more…)
Young billionaire Bruce Wayne, traumatized by the murder of his parents, wanders the world attempting to find some purpose to his life. After being directed to the mountaintop retreat of Ra’s Al Ghul, Wayne seems to find some peace with his past. But Wayne is unable to join Ra’s Al Ghul in his quest to topple civilization and he, instead, tears down Al Ghul’s retreat and returns to his home in Gotham City to become its protector. He takes on the mantle of Batman and aligns himself with Jim Gordon, one of the few uncorrupted officers on the Gotham Police Force. But just as he begins to do some good, Ra’s Al Ghul comes back into his life, questioning whether he has chosen the right side for which to fight…
At a U.S. military desert base in Qatar, a helicopter reported shot down in Afghanistan mysteriously appears. Ordered to land, the chopper suddenly morphs into a gigantic robot and proceeds to hack into the military network, which is quickly cut off by the soldiers. Enraged, the ‘bot destroys the rest of the base and deploys a giant robotic scorpion to kill a small group of surviving solders, led by Capt. Lennox.
A U.S. Navy nuclear sub, following an unusual sonar echo deep in the Atlantic, suffers an unexplained power loss that leaves it powerless to avoid a collision with the wall of a sub-oceanic trench. The sub plummets into depths it was never meant to descend, takes on water, and the crew is killed. The Navy commandeers a deep-ocean oil exploration rig operated by Benthic Oil, trying to beat a hurricane to the coordinates of the downed sub. Ed “Bud” Brigman, in charge of the Deep Core underwater platform, is less than thrilled when he learns that he and his crew will be taking orders from the Navy for a rescue operation, but he’s even less pleased when his ex-wife Lindsey joins the Navy SEALs who are paying a visit to Deep Core. The cocksure leader of the SEALs, Lt. Coffey, suffers from high-pressure nervousness syndrome as a result of the dive to reach Deep Core, and slowly loses control, growing violent and paranoid. Upon reaching the submarine, Coffey finally reveals that the vessel was carrying hundreds of megatons of nuclear weapons, giving Deep Core’s divers cause for concern – especially when they find that something other than the dead crew inhabits this part of the ocean. Another power loss occurs, and one of Bud’s crew sees something so startling that it renders him comatose. Lindsey also sees something, but she is unable to describe or explain it.