Set phasers to stun: the new Star Trek enjoyed a chart-topping opening weekend.

J.J. Abrams’ much-hyped Star Trek reboot went where no Trek feature has gone before: a $76.5 million first-weekend gross.  To put that in perspective for a moment, before Abrams’ movie came along, the best opening for a Trek flick was Star Trek: First Contact‘s $30 million debut back in December 1996.  It’s also worth noting that in one weekend, the new Trek surpassed the total domestic gross of the Enterprise’s last adventure, Star Trek: Nemesis, which finished its run with an anemic $67 million.  Good reviews and positive word of mouth should help the Enterprise navigate the choppy waters known as the “second-weekend,” avoiding the fate that befell last week’s champ X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which dropped 68% for a $27 million haul, lifting its total to $129 million.  Two weeks ago, I was convinced that Wolverine would easily cruise its way to the magic $200 million figure.  Now I’m not so sure.

The news was similarly grim for the weekend’s only other new wide release, Next Day Air, which finished in sixth place.  The latest release from Summit Entertainment–the studio responsible for one box-office smash (Twilight) and a lot of duds (Push, Never Back Down)–Air was soundly beaten by the trio of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Obsessed and 17 Again and just squeaked by The Soloist.  The bottom three slots were occupied by family-friendly fare, beginning with Monsters vs. Aliens and ending with Hannah Montana: The Movie with Earth sandwiched in the middle.

The full Top Ten is below courtesy of the-numbers.com.  Next week, Angels & Demons attempts to recapture the success of The Da Vinci Code and Star Trek hopes for another big haul before Terminator Salvation drops and decimates the competition.

The Top Ten: May 8-10
1. Star Trek: $76.5
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine: $27/$129.6
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past: $10.4/$30.2
4. Obsessed: $6.6/$56.2
5. 17 Again: $4.4/$54.1
6. Next Day Air: $4
7. The Soloist: $3.6/$23.5
8. Monsters vs. Aliens: $3.3/$186.8
9. Earth: $2.4/$26
10. Hannah Montana: The Movie: $2.4/$74

Star Trek is back…and it’s damn good.
Star Trek
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoë Saldana
***1/2

Growing up, I was always more into Star Trek as a film franchise than as a TV-series.  While I sporadically watched episodes of the ’60s show, as well as spin-offs like The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I re-visited The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock dozens of times on VHS and saw every Star Trek flick from The Voyage Home on in theaters opening weekend (yes, even The Final Frontier and Insurrection—the two worst entries in the series).  Sure, the movies were essentially just longer episodes, but the best installments—i.e. the even-numbered ones—had a scope and grandeur that captured my imagination far more than the series’ steady stream of technobabble.  Naturally, my favorite films are the ones featuring the original crew, but I still found things to enjoy in some of the Next Generation‘s big-screen adventures, even their last outing, Nemesis, which brought the franchise to a screeching halt when it earned an embarrassing $43 million in its brief theatrical run.

Clearly, the time was right for a fresh take on Star Trek, but what’s funny about J.J. Abrams’ lavishly-produced reboot is how closely it sticks to the spirit—and in some cases, the letter—of the original show.  Transporting viewers back in time to James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock’s first mission aboard the starship Enterprise, the new movie is filled with nods and in-jokes that reference the ’60s Trek, from a scene in which Kirk (now played by Chris Pine) beats the supposedly-impossible Kobayashi Maru test to another that reveals how the ship’s crusty doc Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) acquired his nickname “Bones.”  But don’t worry, you don’t have to be an old-school Trekker to find these moments funny.  That’s the genius of Abrams film—it’s a blockbuster sci-fi adventure that’s been designed to reach the broadest possible audience, yet still looks and feels like Star Trek.

The other thing that distinguishes Star Trek from most big-budget summer vehicles is that the special effects-laden action sequences never overwhelm the story or characters.  That’s not to say that the numerous set-pieces aren’t terrifically executed.  The effects work in Trek stands head and shoulders above the bargain basement CGI on display in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Abrams’ roving, swooping camera lends all the chases, brawls and space battles a breathless urgency.  But unlike, say, the first Transformers movie, you can enjoy the action without losing track of the plot.  The basic storyline follows the Enterprise crew as they face off against a rogue Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana) who is on a revenge mission to destroy both Vulcan and Earth.  But this isn’t the well-oiled starship we know from the original series.  Kirk and Spock (played by Heroes star Zachary Quinto) can barely stand the sight of each other, helmsmen Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John Cho) are still learning the ropes of piloting a Federation ship and Uhura (Zoë Saldana) is carrying on a secret romance that may be getting in the way of her duties.  With all that drama happening on the bridge, it’s remarkable that these Starfleet officers are able to find the time to take on Nero.

To be perfectly honest, Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman seem to regard Nero as an afterthought as well.  Despite a spirited performance by Bana, Nero comes across as a major lightweight, particularly when compared to such classic Trek villains as Khan, the M-113 salt creature and even that humpback whale loving alien probe from The Voyage Home.  To be fair, the filmmakers have a lot of heavy lifting to do establishing the revamped versions of Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew, so it’s easy to cut them some slack for falling short on the bad guy.  (Just try harder next time, okay guys?)  Besides, the new Enterprise gang turns out to be so charismatic and fun, you don’t want to spend too much time away from them anyway.  The cast is strong across the board, with the standouts being Urban’s McCoy, Simon Pegg’s Scotty and, of course, the ship’s top officers, Kirk and Spock.  Pine and Quinto accomplish the seemingly impossible task of making viewers forget about their predecessors—William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy respectively—and accept them as the new faces of these sci-fi icons.  With a cast like this manning the Enterprise, Star Trek‘s future is looking very bright indeed.

Verdict: See It

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Next Day Air
Directed by Benny Boom
Starring Donald Faison, Mike Epps, Mos Def, Wood Harris
*1/2

Not funny enough to be a comedy, not exciting enough to be an action movie and not dramatic enough to be a drama, Next Day Air is a messy and unpleasant genre mashup that needed at least two or three rewrites before shooting started.  Penned by first-time screenwriter Blair Cobbs, the sprawling, overly complicated plot begins with a perpetually stoned courier (Donald Faison) mistakenly delivering a box filled with cocaine to the wrong address.  The package is signed for by a group of small-time hustlers (Mike Epps and Wood Harris), who immediately strike a deal to sell the drugs to a local dealer (Omari Hardwick).  Meanwhile, the box’s intended recipients—a thug and his shrill girlfriend (Cisco Reyes and Yasmin Deliz)—have to explain to the Mexican kingpin (Emilio Rivera) that the 10 kilos of cocaine he mailed overnight express have gone missing.  Oh, and Mos Def turns up in two scenes as one of Faison’s fellow deliverymen, who always pockets the choicest items on his truck.

It would take a stronger filmmaking team than Cobbs and director Benny Boom (a music video helmer making his feature debut here) to keep up with the film’s large cast of characters while also controlling its abrupt tonal shifts.  As it is, virtually every scene is made up of at least three competing elements—such as, say, a broadly comic performance, some gunfire and a clumsy bit of moralizing—that don’t mesh together at all.  It’s as if Tyler Perry were directing Chris Rock in a pre-Reservoir Dogs script by Quentin Tarantino.  The low-budget production values keep getting in the way as well.  Although Next Day Air is supposed to take place in Philadelphia, a city with lots of personality, it was actually shot in a series of bland, nondescript LA locations.  Boom’s camerawork is functional at best; he doesn’t demonstrate much of an eye for shot composition and the washed-out cinematography and jagged editing seems like less of a stylistic choice than a rushed production schedule.  Some critics are suggesting that Next Day Air hearkens back to old-school blaxploitation pictures, but those movies possessed a hard-nosed attitude that offset the occassional filmmaking lapses.  This one is all posturing with no attitude.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also in Theaters

The Garden
Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy
**1/2
The story chronicled in Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s socially conscious documentary is certainly a good one: in the wake of the Rodney King riots, an abandoned lot was transformed into a community garden operated by Mexican immigrants, who grew fresh produce to feed their families.  After more than a decade working this land, these farmers were threatened with eviction when a backroom deal in the city government turned the rights for the land back to the original owner, who promptly declared he wanted the garden gone.  Instead of backing down though, the community took the fight directly to City Hall and managed to win several key battles in seemingly unwinnable war.  There are a number of fascinating issues to explore in this tale, including race, class, urban planning and government corruption.  At a slender 80 minutes though, Kennedy’s film only skims the surface, declining to pursue several fascinating story threads (such as a local activist who may have been on the take and discontent within the garden’s community of farmers) that would have yielded a richer documentary.  Perhaps the director can assemble a longer cut for DVD or even a PBS mini-series—it feels like there’s more to this story than we’re shown here.
Verdict: Rent It

Rudo y Cursi
Directed by Carlos Cuaron
Starring Gael Garcìa Bernal and Diego Luna
***
Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal reunite for the first time since Y Tu Mama También as squabbling half-brothers with dreams of making it big as pro futbol players.  Although it cloaks itself in sports movie clothing, Rudo y Cursi is actually a pointed satire of the blind pursuit of fame and the relentless corruption that permeates all levels of Mexican society. Once again, Bernal and Luna prove themselves a cinematic Dream Team, playing through the film’s occasional heavy-handedness and scoring numerous laughs.
Verdict: See It

Star Trek
Longtime Star Trek fans are still understandably suspicious about what J.J. Abrams has in store for the franchise in his big-budget relaunch, due out in theaters in May.  Based on this trailer though, it’s obvious that the new Trek will be stuffed with summer-movie style action.  Phasers are fired, ships explode and a very young Kirk and Spock come to blows on the deck of the Enterprise.  More please.

GIANT gets a sneak peek of footage from one of next summer’s biggest blockbusters.  Set phasers to sweet!

Paramount Pictures threw open the doors to the retrofitted Enterprise on Monday night when they screened about twenty minutes from their highly anticipated summer blockbuster, Star Trek, for a roomful of NYC journos.  Director J.J. Abrams was in the house for the event and discussed his reasons for agreeing to take on the thankless task of rebooting the stalled franchise for the 21st century.  “I’ve never been a fan of Star Trek,” he said off the top.  Not surprisingly, this remark elicited several boos from the crowd, which was filled with more than a few Trekkers.  But Abrams, who made his feature filmmaking debut with the better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be Mission: Impossible III back in 2006, quickly hastened to add that, though the experience of making this movie, he fell in love with the concept that Gene Roddenberry dreamed up back in 1966.  “My goal was to make it legitimate,” he explained.  “Star Wars is set in a galaxy far, far away, but Star Trek is a version of our future.”

After his introduction, Abrams stuck around to set up each of the four scenes that we were going to see.  The first sequence introduced us to the new James Tiberius Kirk, played by relative newbie actor Chris Pine.  Since Abrams is basically making Star Trek Begins here, Kirk is still a thrill-seeking farm boy who has yet to don the Starfleet uniform.  The Federation has a training camp not too far from his home though and he spends most of his evenings at the local bar where cadets relax in their off-time.  It’s here that he first lays eyes on the lovely Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and gets his ass beat by four other tough-guy students for daring to flirt with her.  His moxy impresses Starfleet veteran Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who convinces the brash young kid to enlist.  The scene ends with Kirk throwing his duffel bag on a transport shuttle to the Academy, vowing to graduate in three years.

Scene #2 picks up with Starfleet facing a major crisis: Vulcan’s under attack and needs backup pronto.  So cadets and officers alike are loaded onto souped-up ships and sent into battle.  All except for Kirk that is, who is in the middle of his umpteenth suspension.  Fortunately, his doctor pal McCoy (Karl Urban) comes up with a way to smuggle him aboard Pike’s ship, the Enterprise.  Just as they’re about to warp to Vulcan, Kirk realizes they’re flying into an ambush and gets to Pike just in time to avoid the ship being blown to smithereens.

In the process, he makes an enemy of the captain’s first officer, Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto), which leads into Scene #3.  After Pike is incapacitated, Spock assumes command of the Enterprise and his first order as captain is to beam Kirk off the ship to a place where he can’t cause any more trouble.  That location turns out to be a deserted factory on a remote planet whose only inhabitant is a cranky Scotsman named–you guessed it!–Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg).  Scotty’s been exiled by Starfleet because he keeps coming up with “crazy” theories, like being able to beam a person aboard a ship travelling at warp speed.  This is also the scene, by the way, where we got our first glimpse of Leonard Nimoy as the elderly Spock, who has travelled back in time to help Kirk avert an unspecified disaster that will alter the course of the furture.  With Spock’s help, Scotty is able to put his theory into action and gets Kirk back aboard the Enterprise.  But not before Nimoy gets a chance to deliver his signature line with his signature split-finger salute: “Live long and prosper.”

The fourth and final scene we saw was also the longest and most action-packed.  It begings with Kirk, Sulu (John Cho) and a redshirt base jumping off a small shuttle ship over Vulcan’s orbit and free-falling through the atmosphere, deploying parachutes at the last possible moment to land on a platform suspended high above the planet’s surface.  (In a development that shouldn’t surprise any Trekker, Kirk and Sulu make it, but the redshirt doesn’t.)  On the platform, the duo battle a few Romulans before falling off themselves.  This time though, their parachute is ripped away, so it’s up to Russian Enterprise officer Chekov (Anton Yelchin) to beam them back on board before they have an up close and personal encounter with one of Vulcan’s rocky mountain ranges.

And with that, our Star Trek experience was over and done.  Overall thoughts?  Well, first off, the scope of this thing is freakin’ enormous.  As Abrams described the plot to us (which I’m not going to reveal in detail here…gotta save some surprises for May, right?), I kept thinking, “All of this is really going to happen in one movie?”  Word is that Paramount has also invested around $150 million in Star Trek and you can definitely see every dollar onscreen.  The action is fast-paced, intense and mostly implausible–base jumping from outer space????—which makes the movie seem closer to classic Bond than classic Star Trek.  Visually, the film is unlike any of the previous Trek features; Abrams’ camera swoops and swirls around the action and the frame constantly jitters during the dialogue exchanges as well.  And while the director has retained the same costumes and basic ship design from the original series, the interiors of the Enterprise are vastly different.  Honestly, it was a little hard to wrap my head around at first.  Growing up on the show’s cardboard sets and cheap props, I had a hard time orienting myself on this Enterprise.

Getting used to the new cast was another hurdle.  Based on these twenty minutes, Urban, Pegg and Yelchin seem the most comfortable in their parts, although Urban needs to give the constant eyebrow-twitching a rest.  I also liked what I saw of Saldana’s Uhura, who basically comes across as a 23rd century version of Sydney Bristow from Abrams’ late, great spy series Alias.  Not registering as strongly are Cho and Greenwood, but perhaps they have better moments elsewhere in the movie.  As for Pine and Quinto…well the jury’s still out.  Fact is, these guys have the biggest shoes to fill and it’ll take more than four scenes to prove they can step in for the dynamic duo of Shatner and Nimoy.  Quinto at least bears an uncanny resemblance to the young Nimoy, but he doesn’t immediately command the same quiet authority.  In Pine’s case, he’s got Shatner’s golden-boy looks, but not the off-kilter sensibility that made the original Kirk much more than a bland action hero.  To Pine’s credit though, he’s not trying to do a lame Shatner impersonation.  He’s playing Kirk his way and I’m more than willing to keep an open mind when I walk into the theater to see the entire movie next May.