Star Trek review: boldly going nowhere (spoilers)
Friday, May 8, 2009
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Everything you loved about Star Trek doesn’t exist in this movie. The witty banter, the science, the technology, the thoughtfulness: that’s all been traded in for cool explosions, beautiful people, one-liners, and quick action.
To put things in perspective: I was one of four people who wore Starfleet uniforms to the movie, that’s how much I love Star Trek. What you are about to read comes from the heart. I also have really low standards for movies, in fact, I harbor no expectations: I’ve seen so many bad ones. This movie was a shining chance to give us a look into the early lives of our favorite Starfleet officers from the original series, but instead of doing so they create an alternate timeline where none of the things you watch during the movie mean anything. They’re not actually the characters you like from the show; they’re the non-evil twins. If you were going to essentially just throw everything Gene Roddenberry did to the wind, why not make up your own original series? As a stand-alone movie, it’s not really that bad. But as a Star Trek, it’s probably the worst of them all, and unfit to be thrown in with the first 10. The fact that it’s called “Star Trek”, as I pointed out in last week’s article, as if it were the end-all be-all of Trek movies seems laughable. Sadly, this alternate universe ended on a positive note, and it very well may carry on to sequels.Acting choices seemed okay: Simon Pegg as Scotty was an amazing pick, and one I would’ve made myself. Everyone else was acceptable. Zachary Quinto, who played Spock, looked the part, but had a hell of a time acting it.
Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov are all given more prominent roles (which is very welcome); however, McCoy seems to take a back seat as a useless character who’s just there to have someone wearing a blue uniform on the bridge. Kirk felt believable, but then, in this universe, it’s a different Kirk, who is somehow the same personality-wise. Spock on the other hand does a 180 and is a hyper-emotional guy who gets in fights.
The Enterprise looks like a cross between the CBS re-done Enterprise and the Enterprise from the sixth Star Trek series “Enterprise.” Old school, yet somehow hip and modern. Apparently in this universe, it isn’t the starship Enterprise, it is the warship: the fight scenes that it partakes in look like something out of Star Wars when a Star Destroyer opens fire: zillions of little red lasers fly out of the front of it from any number of pop-up turrets- something the “real” Enterprise never had, and never would have had if Roddenberry were still alive.
The movie panders to the average, low-brow movie-goer, i.e. the non-Trekkie (I’m looking at you, Rick). In an early scene a pre-pubescent Kirk is driving a Chevrolet Corvette while blasting the “Beastie Boys”, and ultimately sends it flying off a cliff just for the sake of being cool. In another early scene he does the opposite of what Kirk in the original series would have done: he doesn’t sleep with the green girl. It’s written so that he can’t, but why would you write it that way? In another strange twist, Uhura and Spock are in love and make out in front of Kirk. In a poorly constructed scene McCoy explains that when his ex-wife left him she took everything but his bones, which is supposed to explain why that’s his nickname. Well, what about the flesh on your bones, son? Or that forceful, overly worked “southern” accent? In an even stranger twist, Uhura is given a first name: something she never had in the original series or the first six movies.
The entire premise of the movie doesn’t feel very well thought-out. The main bad guy is a Romulan who doesn’t look like a Romulan (he looks more like a Reman, but not close enough) back from the future to destroy the Federation. He has very few lines, no combat scenes, and is utterly two-dimensional. Nothing is ever known about him except that at one point he says he was a miner with an honest job, and had a wife who died when his home planet was destroyed. Just sounds weak doesn’t it? It’s even weaker when it goes on for an hour and a half.
Throw in hyper-fast action scenes, almost too fast to see what’s going on (which seem to be trendy these days), and for some reason whenever a starship goes to warp it sounds like a gunshot or a sonic boom. Also, there’s no visual representation of starships going to warp, it’s just instant. They’re in normal space and then they’re in warp after you hear a deafening crack. It’s like magic or something, which, for all I know, may very well BE what drives this ghoulish universe. The entire way Star Trek works is rewritten. Kirk inherits the Enterprise in a totally different manner after going from cadet to captain in an hour. To cap it all off Leonad Nimoy narrates the ending where William Shatner normally said at the BEGINNING: “These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise…” and it felt okay, but at the same time, it just felt awkward, like almost everything else in this movie. It seems like director J. J. Abrams can do no right. The movie was fairly funny, and seemed to capture a lot of the jovial atmosphere of all the series; however, a lot of the true Trek jokes were delivered in an almost punishing way to which no one laughed. A lot of stereotypical lines and things you’ve heard a million times pop up, but they just felt all wrong (and the audience seemed to sense this). I went into this movie giving myself a lobotomy: I tried to like it. However, afterwards, I was so speechless by how bad it was that I didn’t talk for over an hour, until I had to order some shrimp.Why does everything I love have to be taken, “Hollywoodized” to make money, and then pimped out? I guess it just goes to show: you can’t fight Hollywood, though anyone who’s ever talked to me knows I try. So many of my favorite things have been made into awful movies… some part of me just wants to give up, turn my mind off, and become as dumb as the people who are satisfied by this crap so I can get some enjoyment out of it.
If you take the movie for the explosions and the humor, it is enjoyable. If you actually love Star Trek and care about the universe, it is a travesty that I hope to high hell is “retconned.” If you don’t like Star Trek: watch it. If you have ever enjoyed Star Trek: pretend this movie doesn’t exist, you’ll be better off for it.
Just another run of the mill Hollywood action movie with a big title to get your money: one and a half incorrectly portrayed Starships out of five.Comment
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