The Voyage Begins.

The new Star Trek trailer, above, is finally out…and it’s kinda bananas.

Directed by J.J. Abrams (Alias, Mission: Impossible III, Fringe), the film completely reboots the Star Trek mythos, a la Batman Begins. There’s a totally fresh U.S.S. Enterprise, above, and a young, new cast…very young. Like, I’m looking, and there’s a bunch of 22-year-olds running a multi-quintillion-dollar piece of 23rd century hardware. They look less like the actual men and women of TOS (The Original Series, non-Trekkers) than they do the pouty inhabitants of Heroes. (That’s something the participation of actor Zachary Quinto—Heroes‘s Sylar—as Mr. Spock has nothing to do with, I’m sure.)

Upon seeing the trailer, though, what you most come away with is:

a) The stupendous level of velocity at play in Abrams’ vision of the Star Trek universe. My sense is that, to him, speed is part of the narrative description of Star Trek—a character, itself—much the way that, say, hyperbolic gunplay forms the symbolic texture of John Woo’s cosmos.

b) The visual effects, performed—that’s the only appropriate word—by the more-astounding-with-each-film Industrial Light & Magic, are gargantuan, dense, and complex. Whoa.

c) The studio’s confidence: The first trailer, revealing of the construction of the Enterprise, ended with the promise of a Christmas 2008 release. Now a May 2009 debut is in place, instead, indicating that the powers think they have a legitimate summer smash on their hands. They may be right. Anyway, I hate winter. Believe me: Spring can’t get here soon enough.