Threedonia reviewed Star Trek’s return to the big screen early in the summer. Here’s that review in honor of this week’s DVD release. Was it The Dark Knight? No, but it certainly wasn’t crap.
William Shatner’s opening bombardment in his infamous Saturday Night Live skit was a proper summation of the utter geekery that is the Star Trek universe.
“You took something I did as a lark on television for a few years, and turned it into a colossal waste of time.”
J.J. Abrams felt that is time worth wasted. In this generation of re-boots, remakes, sequels galore and no franchise left undead,”Star Trek” was bound to come out of the scrapheap. No More Picard or Data, or Chick Commanders or space stations – any of that crap – it’s out with the old and in with the old. “Star Trek” tells the tale of an alternative universe, one that Kirk had no Dad, some key characters change (some more severely than others) and other major events take shape.
So for the peanut gallery this is how it goes.
“Superman Returns”: Treat “Superman” and “Superman II” as canon and wipe out all that Richard Pryor, Atomic Man nonsense, while simultaneously hint it’s a restart. Not confusing in the least.
“Star Wars”: Just talk about the shit that happened beforehand.
“Batman Begins”: Lets forget all the shit that happened beforehand – and pretend Batman is actually real.
“Star Trek” takes a new turn – re-cast the old cast as younger, faster and re-write history, all with Spock on hand to give credence to all the events.
What it produces is a mixed bag. An entertaining-enough blockbuster, but one that doesn’t stick as you leave, one that washes away like that last chunk of salt from the popcorn. Fitting – in a way. “Star Trek” had conquered all multimedia, from books, to TV too many times, to movies, but never before was it an innumerable tent-pole summer event film. Now the franchise has the chance to rake in those Uber-Dollars it missed all those years, and put that in a different pile from the billions of other dollars it has collected. Nothing like second chances.
What results is a return of familiar and beloved characters. While the “Star Wars” prequels, under George Lucas’ watchful eye, did its characters no favors, Abrams affection for the original Trek cast knows no bounds. It permeates the film, but he can’t help being caught up in his own modern movie sludge. Not that it’s all bad – somehow, “Star Trek” became more cool, action packed and sexy than “Star Wars.”
This is a re-imagining for the “Obama” generation, so Kirk has daddy issues (actually lack of daddy issues). Not enough for him to become a simple Navy man in space, he’s turned into a pissed-off kid who hijacks his Stepdad’s prized mid-60s Corvette (apparently cap and trade, CAFE standards and eco nonsense is dead in the future. It is a better time.). “It’s an antique!” Stepdaddy screams over the Nextel wireless/bluetooth/media device in the car (Yes, someone figured out how to have product placement in a Trek movie). But Tiberius is too busy cranking “Beastie Boys” and outrunning the robot cops. For a minute, I thought I was in “Michael Bay’s Star Trek,” except Romulans weren’t strafing the Vette in Japanese Zeroes with Sidewinder missiles blazing, all before Megan Fox stops the Vette for a wax job in a bikini. That Bay cheese factor does resonate throughout, and I do love me some cheese.
The cast is the key, which is part of the mixed bag, as is the focus on Kirk and Spock. “Star Trek V” virtually set the cast into castes, with Bones, Kirk and Spock as their own triumvirate. Here Bones is given short doses on screen in favor of Spock/Kirk and Uhura, who is now a love interest. Karl Urban plays Bones over the top, but is effective and can’t help but bring back memories of the curmudgeonly moralistic doctor. Zach Quinto shines as Spock, though his softer voice doesn’t have the command Nimoy’s did – but neither does Nimoy, who sounds feeble with age. Simon Pegg channels Scotty, but is turned into more a humorous sidekick and is aping Jerry Lewis more than James Doohan.
Bruce Greenwood is the only actor who brought gravitas to the film (besides Nimoy). He fills in well for Captain Pike, which is no small task given the shoes left by the great Jeffery Hunter.
Chris Pine is fine as Kirk. He has the smirk down pat, but there is only one William Shatner. Pine can relish the film’s success, but unless it leads to other high-profile material or a brighter box office future, he may regret taking on such baggage. Biggest problem – stare at him all you want, other than the part in the hair, that isn’t Kirk. Quinto has the benefit of makeup and wig.
Eric Bana was supposed to add star power as a villain, but remains as dimensional as plywood. He’s there for the others to react to, nothing more, despite a tragic back story that the movie spends an entire 30-seconds telling.
The movie functions well as a blockbuster, but suffers from the “shock and awe” storytelling that permeates too many movies and television series. Well known planets are blown to dust, all for what? Coincidences become laughable at one point. Abrams makes use of too many crutches.
While fun to watch those characters brought back to life for the first time in nearly 20 years, “Star Trek” fails to go where other movies haven’t gone before. The space battles are cluttered, video gamey and spastic. It’s supposed to feel epic, but doesn’t keep you on the edge of your seat as well as “Wrath of Khan” and dueling star ships in the cloud with 30-year-old bargain basement budget technology. You can hand pick various moments from the film and place them in memory from older blockbusters of the past. But originality doesn’t pay anymore, not in this burg.
“Star Trek” – a colossal waste of time? Not in this instance, especially with hot green chicks in lingerie. And with time travel, who knows who might show up in the inevitable sequel.
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I was ready to dislike but left a happy camper…job done.
I, too, wish to ‘honor’ the DVD with my review, also from this summer (not that I’m bitter…):
I have always felt (and have seen it expressed on various other sites) that if you have to break the toys someone else created to tell your story, then it’s best you don’t play with them. So many of the current geek crowd fail to grasp this simple concept. They think that (insert favorite character/story) would be so much cooler if only it were like this (insert personality/motivation/power/plot never hinted at and often diametrically opposed to who they are or what the history is) instead of building upon the firm foundation already there. Why must we laud those who cannot seem to be able to create stories using these legends without totally deconstructing them? And rest assured, this movie does exactly that.
The TOS characters are iconic – when I look at the new cast, I get a whiff of the ironic. To re-invent Kirk as a rebellious teen needing the discipline of Starfleet to make him into the ‘man’ that that is presented here is so fundamentally wrong to who we KNOW the character is as to move beyond cliche into full-on bulls***. To have Spock and Uhura have any sort of ‘relationship’ removes any sense of ‘alienness’ from his character, not to mention killing off his mother, who gave strength to his ‘human’ side – come to think of it, I guess explains the former ‘plot’ point. Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s blow up Vulcan! These are but three examples of the pathetic attempt to ‘reinvigorate’ the characters and legend we have grown up with.
As for the story itself, it is little more than generic paint-by-numbers sci-fi plot devices and current stylistic elements: generic villain – check; generic revenge motivation – check; generic super-weapon – check; flashy CGI to provide eye-candy to the geeks – check; rapid cut editing to hide the fact that your story is actually boring – check; nauseating shaky-cam to cover the fact you have no concept of cinematography – check. The way that coincidence upon coincidence is used to get the crew together would be bad enough without having to further suffer the incredibly stupefying way that Kirk ends up with the conn! And the fact that everything isn’t returned to status quo ante at the end does this film no favors. You are still left with the fact that if you changed the names and took away just the specific dialog that ‘ties’ these new portrayals to the originals, the story would lose nothing at all and be revealed for what it is; generic.
This movie is nothing more than an admission by everyone involved, from the studio on down, that they are not equal to the task of using what has gone before to create something fresh and exciting without destroying that self-same source. You can try and justify it by throwing out lingo like ‘reboot’, but then don’t pretend that this story has any real connection to the original creation other than sharing names (Nimoy’s cameo notwithstanding.) Attempting to justify it as an ‘alternate universe’ is also a poor story device to hang a franchise on; what happens when the hoi pollloi decide they’re done with Trek again? “Well, guess it’s time for another ‘reboot’! So sorry that you were invested in these characters and stories!” This ‘reboot’ also means that the only thing that *may* remain canon in the ‘new universe’ is from the wretched ‘Enterprise’. How special.
My original assessment of this flick and the target demographic still stands: This week on Star Trek: 90210 – Kirk wrecks the Galileo 7 while taking it for a joyride with Uhura; Spock teaches McCoy the Vulcan Death Grip; Scotty gets drunk again; and Sulu wrestles with his feelings for Chekov. Guest starring Zach Braff, Hayden Panettiere, and Abe Vigoda.
Fail.
R.I.P. Star Trek.
*Original Geek Card
The Editing Room did the funniest take on this movie that I’ve read: http://www.the-editing-room.com/star-trek.html
Meh. Trek is dead, outdated, and passe. Is there any need for it in a world that has both Stargate shows and a revived Dr. Who? I think not. And Stargate does everything Trek used to do (Back in its original iteration, when it was a fun, thought-provoking swashbuckler) so much better, so much faster, and so much more complexly. The problem, I think, is that Trek is first and foremost a cash cow for paramount, so they’re not willing to take any real chances on it (This is, after all, an “Elseworlds” story, it wouldn’t have really counted if it’d been a bomb), it’s grown culty and staid, and their constant attempts to fit complex issues into a dogmatic framework that was already a bit at odds with reality in 1967 has gone from being merely tedious in to a complete waste of time.
If they wanna’ crank out one of these “Brand New Nostalgia” movies every three years, fine, good luck to you, but it doesn’t change the fact that the bloom was long ago off the rose.
PS – I should mention that in the ORIGINAL Trek, Kirk lost his father when he was 10 or 12 years old. His dad was killed by Kodos the Executioner, as everyone knows. The Kirks (His mom, older brother George, and Jim) moved back to earth, and he lived in Iowa from then until he joined the Academy at age 16.
(Where was George in this movie?)
Young Kirk was reputed to be very bookish and quiet in his original iteration.
Then write J.J. Abrams, because I remember clearly Spock telling the young Kirk in the latest Trek that his dad lived to see him graduate the academy.
My point – and I didn’t articulate it well enough, my fault – is that they clearly didn’t feel like worrying about the details in this one. In fact, I remember Abrams kind of raving in manic fashion about that, that people don’t care. Logically, history should progress the same *until* the moment that the timeline is changed, and then it goes of in a Back to the Future II styled tangent. In this case, though, history is clearly already different PIROR to the temporal distrubance, which makes no logical sense, subjectively or objectively.
It boils down to bad writing, and clearly the folks making this didn’t give a damn.
I’m not one to whine about this, my divorce from Trek is long ago and irreconcilable, and anything that pisses off the obsessive mouthbreathers is a good thing in my book, I’m just putting it out there as an observation.