Live Long and Prosper!

Last weekend kicked off the all important (at least to me) summer blockbuster movie season with the release of "X-Men Origins: Wolverine and I couldn't be happier. All the movies I have seen leading up to X-Men have been romantic/chick flick movies and while I love them, nothing...and I do mean nothing...beats a total thrill ride of an action movie. This summer's movie line up is pretty impressive. I think I have movies every weekend, except next weekend, and some two to a weekend, between now and September, when the action movies peter out and the sweet romantic movies come back into place.

This week was "Star Trek". I am not a Trekkie. I am a Star Wars geek, never got into the Trekkie universe. I know the simple things: "Live long and prosper", "Damnit, Jim", tribbles, Vulcans, "Beam me up, Scotty". I know who the characters are...I think you would be hard pressed to find someone that doesn't know who Spock and Captain James T. Kirk are. I just wasn't interested in that whole universe. I loved the force, not the Vulcans. I love the Millennium Falcon over the USS Enterprise. But there was something about the trailer for this incarnation of Star Trek that had me intrigued.

So off to the movies I went this morning, a little leery that it would be full of Trekkie talk that I wouldn't get. The theater was packed, the row in front of me was full of Trekkie's decked out in Starfleet gear. They were talking all things Star Trek before the movie started. I was growing a little more worried at this point.

The movie started and I was blown away from start to finish. I know a few have complained it didn't follow canon of the original series, but you know what? It worked perfectly to pull in new fans to this series. I do wish that they had taken a little more time to develop the bad guy, Nero. And there are just so many characters that are integral to the story that they couldn't take time to really develop them all, which I wanted to see more of them. But it was a fabulous start to a series, which you can be sure J.J. Abrams (genius behind "Lost" & "Alias") will have sequels in the works.

Star Trek pulled in a highly impressive $76.5 million for opening weekend. I have a feeling it will probably be blown out of the water in a couple of weeks, when Memorial Day weekend has the "Terminator Salvation" opening...along with the "Night at the Museum" opening, which I can't wait to see.