Fanboys stars Sam Huntington, Chris Marquette, Dan Fogler and Jay Baruchel as four friends and Star Wars fans who set out on a cross-country trip to break into Skywalker ranch and steal an early copy of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace from the cold grip of George Lucas himself. Along the way, though, they encounter dangerous Trekkies, pimps and Native Americans that look a lot like Mexicans.

Read the rest of the Fanboys movie review.

The Wrath of Khan, as many people would agree, is the best Star Trek movie made (and yes, that includes 2009’s film). In it, an exiled Khan uses his strength and intellect to overwhelm a Star Fleet ship, but his one weakness – the need for vengeance – is what Kirk and a crippled Enterprise takes advantage of. I’ve never been a fan of The Search for Spock, as it all seems like an endeavor just to bring the title character back from the dead with uninteresting villains, led by Christopher Lloyd of all people. Lastly, The Voyage Home, though featuring a story I would generally find cheesy, is a funny and entertaining way to round things out.

If this truly were a trilogy, The Voyage Home would have a bit more bang and a little less time travel, but if Paramount wants to call it a trilogy, then so be it. Released a little under a month ago to coincide with J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek (I was supposed to write and publish this article way back then), the DVD set – valued at Amazon.com at $19.99 – contains a few new special features, including:

• Audio commentaries for all three movies
• James Horner: Composing Genesis – I had never thought about the music all that much, but after watching this featurette, I have new-found respect for Horner, who really did enhance Khan with some spectacular scoring.
• Collecting Star Trek’s Movie Relics – a featurette for the fan boys, this one looks at some costumes and props that a guy has collected over the years. Mildly entertaining.
• A Tribute to Ricardo Montalban – who just died in the last year
• Three “Starfleet Academy” training sessions – which are all stupid and a complete waste of time.
• Industrial Light & Magic: The Visual Effects – given how Star Trek has evolved over the years and usually functioned on a small budget, this featurette is pretty interesting.
• Spock: The Early Years – if you want to see a child actor all grown up and reminiscing about his one brush with fame, this is unintentionally quite funny.
• Star Trek/Sci-Fi Hall of Fame Museum – given that I live in Seattle just five minutes from the EMP, where the Sci-Fi Museum is housed, I found this one pretty interesting. The featurette really isn’t about the museum at all but actually is an interview with the writer of The Wrath of Khan, who goes on to say he doesn’t like sci-fi, thought the first movie was boring and so forth. Definitely worth watching.
• Pavel Chekov’s Screen Moments – title says it all
• The Three-Picture Saga – as I write this, I’m thinking I missed this featurette. Might be worth going back and checking it out.
• Star Trek for a Cause – looks at the environmental messages the filmmakers were trying to get across.

All in all, there are some surprisingly decent special features to be found here, but for the ordinary Trek fan, who probably owns all these movies anyway, the value-add is minimal. The DVD set does boast digitally remastered picture and sound, but I don’t know how much of a difference that really makes.

Given just how bad The Da Vinci Code was, and how much more brand recognition that Dan Brown book has versus this one, $48 million can’t really be considered a disappointment; in fact, it’s a little higher than what some analysts were predicting. Still, for a middle-of-May “blockbuster,” $48 million isn’t all that much, and given its rather dismal reviews, strong legs may not be in its future. Expect this one to fade quickly, at least domestically (internationally, the movie has already made over $100 million, so no one can truly consider it a box office disappointment).

Star Trek dropped only 43% in its second weekend, a sign of strong legs. This movie is soon going to surpass X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which made $14.8 million this weekend after a 44% drop, despite starting out with a lower opening weekend a week later.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past continues to show that there is room for counterprogramming, as it dropped 33% to bring its total up to $40 million.

Visit the FilmJabber homepage for the full box office top ten. I get my numbers from Box Office Prophets, who do a great weekend recap each week.

Without further ado, here’s my Star Trek video movie review:

Go here to read my more elaborate Star Trek movie review in good ol’ text format.

Star Trek

The final weekend tally, including the Thursday evening numbers, was $79 million.

An even better sign for Paramount was the amount the movie earned on Monday, May 11. Its box office revenue was $7.5 million, much better than Wolverine’s Monday take last week, which was $5.4 million. As a better example, Iron Man last year dropped from its $100 million take to $6.9 on Monday, a much larger percentage drop.

Even though Angels & Demons is going to be big, it’s not going be as disruptive of a competitor as Star Trek was to Wolverine, for instance. In other words, Paramount must be seeing gold.

Paramount must be seeing gold.

This new Star Trek sailed through that number sometime on Saturday, and will finish out the box office weekend with an estimated $76.5 in box office receipts. Saturday’s numbers were higher than Friday’s, indicating that the picture isn’t completely frontloaded due to a fan boy rush, either – which isn’t all that surprising given the general appeal this picture has. For the first time ever, my casual moviegoing friends, including all of my female friends, want to go see a Star Trek film, and that says something.

Sure, $76.5 million isn’t as huge of an opening as last week’s blockbuster blunder X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but no one was expecting it to top that one. However, given that Wolverine plummeted 68% to only $27 million in its second weekend, it’s quite likely that Star Trek – with glowing reviews and strong word of mouth – will surpass the film in a long run.

J.J. Abrams has successfully rebooted the Star Trek franchise, and Trekkies who have been upset about the changes made should rethink their position: it’s either this or nothing, and this is pretty damn good.

In other box office weekend news, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past showed good legs given its lack of competition, as it dropped only 30% to $10 million this weekend. Next Day Air, the only other new release and one that no one has even heard of (I haven’t seen a single commercial or preview) debuted with only $4 million, albeit on just over 1,000 screens.

As an introduction, I am a Star Trek fan. I am not, however, a Trekkie. I don’t dress up, I don’t know the science behind warp drive and I can’t speak Klingon. I make fun of Trekkies, but I also have enjoyed all of the television series save for “Enterprise” and most of the movies. I watch both Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at least twice a year, and I am slugging my way through the original series, of which I haven’t seen every episode.

Read the rest of the Star Trek movie review.

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
   The performances, action and emotion in this movie are beyond comparison. That being said, I almost liked…
2. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
   …as much. In fact, it’s pretty bad ass and features several great sequences. I’ve watched this one more than any other Star TrekThe Wrath of Khan movie, including .
3. Star Trek: First Contact
   After the disappointing Generations, this one kicked the TNG cast into high gear with a funny, exciting and Borg-filled action flick where the fate of Earth lies in the balance.
4. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
   Though it would be hard these days to pull off a movie such as this (a futuristic cast jumping back to modern time is, shall we say, cheesy), there’s something just enjoyable and funny about this one.
5. Star Trek: Generations
   Captain Kirk is killed off in a horribly lame way. This was not how Kirk was meant to die. At least we get to see the Enterprise go down in stunning fashion.
6. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
   This Leonard Nimoy-directed film isn’t particularly good, as it suffers from rather shoddy special effects, a weak screenplay and a disappointingly dull story when compared to the previous film. Christopher Lloyd as the main Klingon villain was horrible casting, too. That being said, the movie isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be.
7. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
   The only Star Trek movie that feels truly dated, this one’s slow, methodical and a little too obsessed with how pretty it thinks it is (though compare it to Star Wars, which came out a year earlier, and it is really not that pretty). But, for what it’s worth, it’s still a grandiose film with an interesting ending.
8. Star Trek: Nemesis
   A lot of people give this one a lot of heat, and in reality it’s not that great, but it’s not nearly as bad as some people say. Sure, the villains look like Nosferatus, but it was a step in the right direction… if only they hadn’t released it at the same time as Lord of the Rings, which last time I checked has an overlapping fan base.
9. Star Trek: Insurrection
   This stupid movie had way too much New Age concepts for my taste, and all around came off as a fluffy, uninteresting action flick. But it’s not as bad as…
10. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
    … which is truly bad. William Shatner directed this one, but it didn’t work out. Captain Kirk versus God is really not a battle anyone needs to see.

So, what do you think of the list? Am I right or am I right? And where does the new Star Trek film fall into this list…

If the contract goes through, he will appear in the season finale and will be involved in a story arc in season two.

As background, the creator of the show – J.J. Abrams – is also the director of Star Trek, and Nimoy makes an appearance in that movie. Apparently, the guy played a character named Spock off and on for the last few decades.

Let me cap this off by saying that Fringe is one of those shows that I look forward to every week. I was… er, on the fringe… when the show first started, but it has developed into an entertaining and intriguing sci-fi thriller with some truly weird things. That being said, it also inspired me to start watching The X-Files from the beginning, and two seasons in, all I can say is that, even 15 years later, The X-Files is a much better show than Fringe. But, I don’t have to choose between the two.

Watch the Star Trek movie trailer now: