Next: WALL-E
After so many wasted films and squandered hours of television, here was the Trek experience that revived my excitement for the franchise – exploding into theaters with a thrilling, terrifying and heartbreaking prologue that has to be one of the top five moments of the 43-year Star Trek journey.(Best of the Decade: See our complete coverage, from video games to fantasy books to comic books, and more)
Not only reinventing the franchise and recreating its characters, director J.J. Abrams managed to reconfigure the mission for a whole new generation of fans far more interested in photon torpedos than prime directives. His centerpiece: A space-dive sequence, in which three young Starfleet officers plummet from orbit towards the surface of Vulcan, committed to disabling the giant blow torch that will inevitably destroy the planet. Filmed by Abrams in a verite style, this has to be the most exciting away mission in Trek history.
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