Star Trek

I thought they were cheating the ol' act structure paradigm by tacking on that twelve minute prologue (10-minute mark: Kirk is born, an interesting "inciting incident"), and we don't even meet our hero Young James Kirk until minute 17 -- but Orci and Kurtzman bring it around lickety-split, and smooth as butter we're entering Act Two right on time, between minutes 25 and 28. Nice work, fellas! I'm struggling to get a lot less info into my first act, and I am suddenly shamed.

Now, here's where I get geeky:

I've been a fan of Star Trek forever, and now they've gone and done this whole "rebooting" thing. But here's what they've done: they've made a whizbang show-stopping summer-movie door-opener. They've done the miraculous, they've respected a long and convoluted history (even an unnecessary nod to Star Trek: Quantum Leap Enterprise; classy) and at the same time they've thrown open the doors to newcomers. I would argue that the initial Star Trek series wasn't anything until Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Before that, it was just a series and a movie. After, with a trilogy of tightly-connected movies and the launch of The Next Generation on its heels (TNG and Voyage Home both came out the same year), it was a franchise. Likewise, I will argue that right now, the franchise hasn't been rebooted. Right now, it's a franchise and one outlier new movie.

Whatever they do next, it's all riding on Star Trek 2. Only then will the franchise have been rebooted and set in motion fresh and new. There is, in my opinion, way more pressure on 2 than there ever was on this one, and this one had a lot of pressure. Curious to see what happens next.