Trek-tacular Box Office

The new "Star Trek" movie had the best opening weekend of any Star Trek movie to date. It made $76.5 million here in the US and another $35.5 million overseas, for a total of $112 million.

Before this, "Star Trek: First Contact" held the record for making $30.7 million its first weekend.



Reports seem to indicate that this film might be the first one to appeal to non-Star Trek fans as well, which is a good sign. We'll see how it fares over the next couple of weeks as "Angels and Devils" and the new "Terminator: Salvation" open.

Regardless...it's still great news.

Now that many of you have seen the movie, I can comment on a few elements of the movie that I enjoyed.



I really liked Faran Tahir as the captain of the USS Kelvin (the one at the beginning of the movie). I knew he looked familiar, but didn't place him until later as one of the main bad guys from "Ironman" (part of the group who kidnapped Robert Downey Jr.). He has a very strong presence in both films and is also quite enjoyable visually.



I really liked the entire sequence above, on and below the drilling device over Vulcan. It's amazing how realistic everything looked, from they way they filmed them dropping from the shuttle, diving, parachuting and landing on the mechanism. Very exciting to watch and we even got a classic "Red Shirt" moment worked in.



I really enjoyed the Spock-Uhura relationship (would gossip media refer to them as "Spuhura" or "Uhurock"?). I liked the way they casually eased into revealing it and thought that their scene together in the elevator was very emotionally effective.



I also saw an interview with Chris Hemsworth (he plays Kirk's father in the movie) and didn't realize until hearing him that he, like Eric Bana, is also Australian. You'd never know it from this movie, mate.



I also thought that Bruce Greenwood was very good as Captain Pike. He works all the time as an actor and is consistently engaging and fun to watch in everything he does.

Not sure why they threw in that ewokish creature that Scotty was hanging out with, but I'm hopeful that it isn't signed on for any sequels that will be likely coming our way in the future.