Why you have to see Star Trek

Dad heads to certain death as his baby boy is born. "What will we name him?" is his last question to his wife before he is blown to smithereens. Cut to movie title: Star Trek. Director J.J. Abrams has clearly been watching Hindi movies.

I know I've seen this sequence several times over in Bollywood but movie encyclopedia, friend and Lounge contributor Jerry Pinto reminded me of a particularly funny one. "Mard. The titles run on the baby's chest, where Dara Singh has carved the word mard in Hindi with his knife, and the child has not wept." Too good.

The brilliant/almost cheesy dialogues in the vein of can't-wait-to-kick-some-Romulan-arse are also bound to be the envy of any Bollywood scriptwriter. Some samples:

Scottie to can't-say-who-for-plot-spoiler-reasons: "Are you from the future? Do they still have sandwiches there?"

Pike to Kirk: "Your father was captain of a ship for 12 minutes. He saved 800 lives. I dare you to do better." I could almost hear the tan tan tan in the soundtrack...

McCoy to Kirk about why he's going to space when he's so paranoid about it: "Got nowhere else to go. The ex wife took the entire planet in the divorce."

I haven't yet made up my mind about whether I liked that big creature on Delta Vega (I think I might just prefer Spielberg's interpretations of creatures from other worlds), but what a movie--and what a Romulan spaceship.

Everyone I know who has seen the film wants to watch it again. Imagine being the creator of Lost and the director of this movie--JJ Abrams is truly a dude.

Of course the PVR where I saw the movie had only a handful of people (quite clearly, Delhiites are not into Star Trek). Halfway through, the dialogue soundtrack became muffled and nobody in the audience even seemed bothered by it. It was only after we created a huge fuss that they switched off the movie, fixed the speakers, got the soundtrack going again.

Watching the film it hits you how amazing it was that Gene Roddenberry came up with the concept of a global crew as far back as 1966. And those of you who thought Chekov's accent was OTT (Kurk for Kirk etc) should try using the voice option on any Western-accent oriented cellphone. When I say "Call Priya", for example, the phone inexplicably dials Shaheen or some other totally unrelated person.

But most of all, what joy to finally be part of the maiden voyage of Starfleet's newest spaceship, the USS Enterprise. To see how Kirk met Spock and how Kirk became captain. That and red matter. Must see boss.

http://blogs.livemint.com/blogs/first_cut/archive/2009/06/08/why-you-have-to-see-star-trek.aspx