I loved the hell out of the new Star Trek movie, and I’m hoping to see it again in the theater. Actually, I wish it were a new series instead of a movie franchise (I’m assuming a franchise is imminent if not already in the works). Much of it felt like episodic television with a summer blockbuster budget.
That’s not entirely an insult, either. While the story is too slight and nonsensical to support a two-hour blockbuster, everything else would be perfect as a series pilot. The scope is pretty small and focused on characterization: major, universe-changing events aren’t given as much weight or tension as a small fight sequence.
That video from The Onion that made the rounds last week was eerily and annoyingly accurate (except for the guy complaining that the “story made sense.”) From what I’ve seen, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, but you can look at any discussion of the movie online and find disgruntled types writing long comments bemoaning the fact that their beloved universe has been “dumbed down” and turned into a money-making Hollywood franchise.
Which is, of course, completely predictable based on the outbreaks of nerdrage over every other movie, TV, book, comic book, or videogame series in existence. Especially so with Star Trek, which is the great grandfather of all self-entitled nerdrage, parody, self-parody, and failed attempts at re-invention for going on fifty years now. But that idea of “fan ownership” and entitlement of pop culture is the most interesting thing about the various series and the new movie.
I’ve said it before, but it still surprises me: I’ve never been a particularly big fan of “Star Trek,” and I never really made a concerted effort to watch the series or the movies. Still, I’ve probably seen every episode of all the series up until “Voyager,” and I’ll get 99% of the references. I used to blame it on my being a computer science major — I just picked it up through diffusion — but now I realize it goes much, much wider. There are millions of us relatively high-functioning nerds out there, waiting for our programming to be activated as part of Hollywood’s Master Plan.
And what the self-described fans don’t seem to realize is that the new movie isn’t made for people like them, and it isn’t made for this mythical “dumb middle American who only wants to watch explosions,” either. (The new Transformers movie is made for those people). Instead, it’s made for people like us: those of us who get the basics of time travel and alternate realities and dilithium crystals, and who recognize the phrase “Kobyashi Maru” even if we’d never use it in casual conversation and aren’t quite sure why we recognize it. “Star Trek” in its various forms is such a big part of pop culture that it’s grown way way beyond the ability of a few thousand or even hundred thousand obsessive fans to be able to support it.
The new movie is very much a J.J. Abramization of “Star Trek.” Which means it’s focused on younger, more attractive actors dating and falling in love; sometimes inappropriate pop music choices; a casual but innate understanding of the pop-culture sci-fi detritus of the last 50 years; fight sequences and lots of explosions; and a self-aware sense of humor throughout. None of this is actually all that new to the Star Trek franchise; they’ve been trying variations on it for decades.
Whether it’s Spock giving the Vulcan nerve pinch to a kid with a boom box on a city bus, or Scotty trying to talk into a computer mouse, or an attempt at a reboot involving time-travel and the original cast, or wacky hijinx on the holodeck, the franchise has made frequent attempts at re-invention and self-referential humor. And they’ve all had one thing in common: four corners. The entire property has been owned by squares, man, as rigid and un-hip as a Borg cube. We needed somebody to come take it back and make it cool again. The series should belong to us: we all get this stuff; it’s not that obscure. Everybody in the audience already knows what happens when you send someone dressed in red on an away mission.
I’d had my doubts before seeing the movie, but everybody was perfectly cast. Even the new Kirk, who I was sure I was going to hate. He wisely did a caricature of James Kirk instead of William Shatner, since Shatner’s been a caricature of himself for decades. The movie focuses on the swaggering, lady-killing strategic genius — focuses a little too much, actually — to bring the guy back into his own character. But he comes through right at the end, with a little bit of Shatner’s version of Kirk right as he takes command of the bridge.
My favorite of the cast is Karl Urban doing an absolutely dead-on perfect version of a young Dr. McCoy, another character that could’ve been just an impression and a few catch phrases. The movie is overloaded with references, but it manages to strike a perfect balance between reverence and parody. They truly are respectful re-inventions of the characters.
If you care about “Star Trek” but for some reason haven’t seen the movie yet, I highly recommend you read the “prequel” comic book tie-in first. It’s called Countdown (it’s available on the iPhone if you’re so inclined), and it’s written by the screenwriters of the movie. It’s a pretty good comic mini-series, but more importantly, it’s the only thing that makes the movie’s storyline have any weight at all. As I was watching the movie, I kept wondering if it could make any sense to someone who hadn’t read the comic, or if they’d even care, since the movie does a pretty lousy job of explaining the over-arching plot or assigning any weight to it. The movie isn’t really driven by its plot, but by one idea: “THIS IS A REBOOT OF STAR TREK.”
And somewhat-mild spoilers follow:
- I was very pleasantly surprised to see Captain Pike survive to the end. His whole character was just a pile of references, deftly-handled. Each time he came on screen, I was surprised that he’d made it that far. After he survived his run-in with the Wrath of Khan brain bug, I kept waiting for him to get disfigured while trying to get off the ship. They brought him back without that, but made sure to show him in the wheelchair. Excellent.
- As much as I like the song “Sabotage” (and why wouldn’t I? I’m pre-programmed to be the target audience for J.J. Abrams movies) I still don’t know how I feel about its being in the movie. Even as “vintage.”
- I do know how I feel about the Nokia product placement: I’m against it. It was handled about as well as it possibly could’ve been, though.
- The Spock/Uhura romance would’ve been good if they’d left it at the first scene. But they just kept showing it over and over, without really doing anything with it. It just seemed like they were saying, “Look at this! Look at it! We’re re-imagining! Isn’t it wrong and aren’t we naughty?“
- I realize that when you’re avoiding melodrama and trying to show these characters as real people, it’s hard to get across the impact of the destruction of Vulcan. Still, I wish they’d put more weight and tension around that. It got turned from “destruction of an entire planet” to “Spock’s mom, who had all of 2 lines in the entire movie, fell off a rock.”
- One of the subtlest and cleverest touches was a the end, when Old Spock met New Spock. He acknowledged what everyone was thinking: paradoxes! Or TimeCop-style meltdown when the two versions come in contact! And said, basically, it’s no big deal. There are just two of him now. Screw you, prime directive!
Comments
I never watched any Star Trek-episodes or movies, ever. Not so much because I was scared girls would find out, but because when I did manage to see some scenes, all I could see was dull, Days Of Our Lives-quality acting. In fact the same problme as I had with Star Wars – I like strange worlds with stranger creatures, weird spaceships and expensive explosions, but dear God, why can no one act worth a damn (which, I guess, is more the fault of the directors than the actors). Whatever the reason, I’ve never been a fan. The only things I knew about Star Trek where those things I’ve seen in stuff like the Simpsons or Spaced, like Spocks deathgrip or lasers set to stun. I also didn’t read the comic you mentioned (although I will now), but I still managed to make perfect sense of the story. It’s not a deep or complex story, and I think no one in the audience (I’m not talking about the Trekkies) had problems figuring out what was going on. Sure, in the beginning there where some reveals where the director obviously wanted us to go ‘hell yeah!’, when they revealed names of future members of the Enterprise and stuff like that, but it didn’t really take me out of the experience. It’s a perfect balance between old and new, I guess. The Trekkies where having the time of their lives, and the rest was enjoying the crap out of it too. I know I did. It may not have been deep or life-changing, but I liked it as much as Cloverfield; it was a fun, exciting rollercoaster-ride.
Favorite bit: Simon Pegg and his monkey. Pegg can make the worst movie worth watching.
I really did enjoy it. I hope they plan on making a couple more movies. I am not sure I would want a new series as I doubt they could grab the whole crew for and it, and it just wouldn’t be the same without all the new actors.
Actually, Chuck, the one that got screwed was the “Temporal Prime Directive”, rather than the boring old normal “Prime Directive”…
I’m enough of a Star Trek nerd to know many of the things the movie got wrong (Riverside Spaceport? There are only ten ships total during the Kirk era? Vulcans don’t have starships of their own?), but enough of a movie fan to enjoy the movie for what it was.
It was great. Screw the Temporal Prime Directive.
I watched all the series (except DS9, which was mostly god awful…I just watched that a bit), and toward the end every frickin’ episode was a time travel episode. I’m not kidding…EVERY ONE at the end. Series finale of Voyager…that’s right…TIME TRAVEL. AWFUL.
But this movie did a great job of bypassing the last 5 or 6 awful (or at least unremarkable) Next Gen movies and created a fresh start.
Viva Kirk and Green Orion women!
It warmed my heart to no end to see you write “diffusion.”
I don’t have much to add, except I think it’s kind of funny to see a comment pointing out the distinction between the Prime Directive and the Temporal Prime Directive, immediately followed by an admission of being somewhat a Star Trek nerd. I think that was kind of implicit!
We high-functioning nerds are still nerds.
I liked it a lot too.
A friend pointed out, though, that there’s an odd lack of… something… gravitas? …regarding the fact that billions and billions of people got murdered.
Granted, it’s just a jaunty little summer flick, but it did seem a little cavalier on that point.
Just gotta say, while I enjoyed the movie immensely, the casting of Winona Ryder as the mother of Spock seemed odd to me.
In fact, it ruined the immersion because I couldn’t help but think, “Hey, Spock’s mom is Winona Ryder.”
Other than that, the movie was very enjoyable and despite what others have mentioned, it ranks as one of my favorite Trek films.
Re: “Sabotage”
At this point, I forgot where I read it on the World Wide Web yesterday, but someone theorized that the use of “Sabotage” was a sly reference to William Shatner’s inability to correctly pronounce the word.
Here’s a YouTube clip:
Not sure I buy it, but it’s still kind of funny.
I *loved* the movie. Loved it. Yeah, it’s got plot holes the size of giant starships, but I couldn’t have cared less. I wish it was a TV series only because I WANT MOAR NOW!!