I would warn you that this review probably contains some spoilers, but really, the new Star Trek movie was spoiled long before I started writing this review.
It was widely known that J.J. Abrams was brought in on the new Star Trek movie to breathe new life into the venerable franchise, which had sagged in recent years and went into hibernation after the forgettable spin-off series “Enterprise” failed to bring in many new fans while turning away a lot of the existing fan base.
Abrams certainly gave the franchise a fresh canvas from which to proceed, but in the process, the movie he created basically disavowed everything the franchise, with its ten movies and five TV shows, had created. In fact, the movie does more than disavow them; it basically says none of those things ever existed, so we are now free to do whatever we want.
If part of the filmmakers’ goal was to please Trek fans, as they’ve claimed, then they’ve failed miserably on that account. Anyone who has even just casually followed the Star Trek franchise would recognize this movie as running completely counter to many of core themes of Star Trek. As for the other (and primary) goal — attracting new fans to Star Trek, I doubt this movie did that. If you are someone who has not seen a second of Star Trek in your life, this movie would come off as just another run-of-the-mill sci-fi action flick filled with gorgeous CG effects, lots of explosions, and cliché dialogs. Not bad, but certainly nothing that won’t get overshadowed the minute the next summer blockbuster sci-fi film comes along with more and bigger explosions.
I can’t talk about my biggest complaint about the movie without giving away much of the ending. So click to read at your own discretion.
The characters
One of the reasons I had strong reservations about the movie was that the cast looked like “Star Trek: 90210″, but I can deal with a younger, sexier crew if they portrayed their characters faithfully. And yes, I realize that this is a prequel, so they won’t act 100 percent like their characters on the TV series or in the previous movies. However, all the main characters in this movie come off as so far removed from their old counterparts that it’s virtually impossible to see this crew of the Enterprise maturing into the people portrayed on the Original Series.
Chris Pine certainly displays the brashness one would expect in a young James T. Kirk, but the problem is that the brashness is basically the only thing his Kirk shows. Pine’s Kirk goes through the entire movie acting like an arrogant, pompous James Dean-wannabe, going out of his way to thump his nose at any hint of authority or the chain of command. It is hard to see this Kirk becoming the Kirk on the Original Series, who, while he would defy orders on occasions when he feels it’s necessary, still at his heart believes in the chain of command. And the movie gives you no hint that the young Kirk would start behaving more like the old Kirk. In fact, he’s rewarded for breaking every rule in the Starfleet book, which one can only assume would encourage him to keep doing so. The young Kirk takes his rebel-without-a-cause act so far that instead of pulling for him, you spend the whole movie wishing he would get shot by a Romulan phaser rifle, be eaten by the mutant Jurassic Park escapees he’s fleeing from, or just have his neck broken by Spock.
The other main characters also suffer from similar problems. In general, they all come off as smart-ass, loose-cannon college kids whose attitude would have no place in Starfleet Academy:
- Zachary Quinto’s young Spock spends most of the movie with an arrogant half-smile on his face and seems a lot more human than Vulcan, which is the exact opposite of what the Spock character is supposed to be. Yes, he’s younger and hasn’t acquired the discipline the older Spock displays, I get that. But really, can you see Spock, even in his younger days, making out with Uhura (yes, Uhura) in front of an audience in the transporter room? Or pounding Kirk’s face on the bridge because of a few insults?
- Speaking of Uhura (Zoe Saldana), her role in the movie seems to consist of acting like jailbait and engaging in that forced, where-did-that-come-from romance with Spock. Moreover, she comes off as the snobby brat who would bug her professors constantly to try to argue her way into a couple extra points on an assignment.
- Karl Urban actually does the best job of all the main cast in portraying his character — Leonard McCoy — in a way that makes it seem plausible that he would develop into the person Star Trek fans have come to know. Yet, even he suffers from a case of rebelliousness for no apparent reason other than that he’s younger.
- Chekov (Anton Yelchin) looks nothing like his older self and is basically a bundle of hyper-stimulated nerves with a mouth that tries to cram in as many words starting with V as possible. Hey, “nuclear wessels” was funny when you do it once or twice, but when you take that one shtick and make it all that the character is, it just becomes annoying.
- John Cho as Sulu comes close to his older counterpart on the Original Series in one unfortunate way: He got about two lines and a sword-fight scene, and the rest of the time he was just pushing buttons and counting out loud.
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As a sign of how bad the characterization is in this movie, they even made Scotty (Simon Pegg) annoying. Seriously, how the heck do you make Scotty annoying? And what the hell is the deal with that little weird, completely out-of-place alien sidekick of his (pictured)? Did you stumble onto the wrong set, Jar Jar?
Also, I didn’t like how conveniently every one of these characters gets placed in a post of power aboard the Enterprise when most of them start off being cadets. Most preposterous of all, of course, is the way Kirk goes from suspended cadet and stoleaway to captain in a day, in much the same way that Homer Simpson becomes a submarine captain in the episode where he joins the navy reserves, except with less humorous results.
Squeezing in homages and missing the point
The filmmakers seemed to think that preserving the essence of Star Trek meant running down a checklist of trademark lines and shticks. Mind meld, check. Have Bones say, “Dammit, I’m a doctor, not a …”, check. Have Chekov say a word starting with V, check, check, and check. Throw in some photon torpedos and transporter sequences. OK, now the old fans are happy, right?
WRONG! What Abrams and company didn’t seem to get is that a good Star Trek production doesn’t need a single Vulcan nerve pinch, a single “nuclear wessel”, or even a single photon torpedo. It’s all about the story, stupid, and this particular story betrays everything that is Star Trek. Star Trek has never been about those things, or big explosions and effects. Remember, this was a show that won a loyal following despite having fights between Kirk and a guy in a giant lizard costume and some of the cheesiest special effects you’ll find on TV in any era. To think that fans of the franchise would be appeased simply by seeing a few old trademark lines forced into a decidedly un-Trek-like production is patronizing.
Look, I’m not asking for the movie to mimic the Original Series in terms of the campiness, the hamminess, or the laughably bad effects and fight scenes. In fact, the Star Trek franchise hasn’t been about that ever since the 60s. What it has always been about is the vision of a Utopian future, where people have evolved a better nature. This movie doesn’t give any trace of those improved sensibilities. As one example, Spock doesn’t like Kirk challenging his authority, so he gives him a neck pinch and orders him thrown into an escape pod and marooned on a dangerous ice planet. Where the heck does that fit in with Starfleet’s enlightened principles? In fact, the characters in this movie are more like what humanity is now than what they are supposed to have become in the future of the Star Trek universe.
I know it’s not easy to concoct a good story that fits within the frame that the Star Trek franchise has laid down, as so much has already been done. However, in this case, it was as if the filmmakers didn’t even try. It seemed like they just said, “Oh, it’s hard to comply with the parameters of the Star Trek universe, so we are just going to obliterate that universe and do our own thing.” Hey, if it’s hard to set a story within the existing frame, then don’t do a prequel. Set it in the future. In fact, this story could have been set in a time following all the previous Star Trek shows and movies and would have worked better. As it is, it turned its back on everything that came before it and in essence delivered a big middle finger to all that Star Trek was and the fans who loved it.
You said it, Shatner.
In the end, this movie didn’t rejuvenate the Star Trek franchise. It merely created a new entity that co-opted the Star Trek name, and judging from the quality of this movie, these new voyages would have nowhere near the staying power of their predecessors. Before, I was hoping this movie might spawn a new TV series. Now, I’m just wishing we could create an alternate reality where this movie never existed.
My rating: A steamin’ pile of poop