Star Trek

Four years ago I said the big two franchises were damaged so the opportunity was ripe for another to step forth and pluck the crown from the gutter. Well Hollywood didn’t rise to the challenge as expected, it did its usual, predictable, lowest-common-denominator move, they rebooted or “re-imagined” (translation: dumbed down and recycled).

Star Trek is the first adventure of the iconic characters with their origins thrown in. Anything else would give away too much of the movie which I felt to be just Insurrection or Nemesis with a larger budget.

I really wanted to like this movie yet I just can’t. However, I am of two minds about it though.

The Good:

• The acting from key players was great, namely Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy. He definitely had the essence of what DeForest Kelly brought to the character. Same goes for the new Spock, Sulu, Chekov and Scotty. Uhura gets a better role than telephone operator and Kirk’s womanizing is capitalized.
• The newer, modernized bridge is refreshing much like the more realistic one Enterprise had, the latter resembled a contemporary submarine, it was just roomier, not the Genius Bar at an Apple Store.
• It’s a brighter looking future with the uniform colors and white lights. There’s even a nod to the Sixties look through Uhura’s heavier eye makeup; the hairstyles take more effort to notice.
• The crisis is something that could truly destroy the Federation not a dorky cloud looking for its creator or the Romulans holding yet another copy of Data.

The Bad:

• The reboot carries the stench of midochlorians in how much of the past was thrown away to make Star Trek more “accessible” to general audiences, aka the American Idol sheep. I kept waiting for Patrick Duffy to appear in Kirk’s shower.
• It’s pretty obvious the Engineering decks of the ship are a brewery, waterworks or something spacious and full of pipes (the Enterprise must be part TARDIS). Oddly, no overt product placements for Budweiser outside of Uhura ordering it in a bar. (I guess in the 23rd century our descendants still like watered-down near beer.) This element destroys any suspension of disbelief the characters are on a starship moving at fantastic speeds.
• Abrams must think action, explosions and melodrama equal plot advancement as the first 10 minutes demonstrates. It’s also a crutch for the characters suddenly gaining their ranks despite their (young) ages because the “origin story” has become tedious and boring.

I can’t help but see Abrams’ ignorance and disdain for the source material as he concentrated on “sexing up” Star Trek. Interviews with him during the making of this implied it. When Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer got the job to make The Wrath of Khan, they knew little too. However, they researched what was the show’s appeal to make a great marriage between such disparate elements. Thus Bennett and Meyer are Pixar and Abrams is Dreamworks.

A little too attached? Maybe. I do remember it’s just a movie and Star Trek has some of the worst, most inconsistent and frustrating continuity in the world. There’s always hope this reboot is the beginning of an alternate reality for these beloved characters. Seems to work for comic books every decade.

Worth seeing? No. As if my opinion is going to stop anyone. I do hope I’m wrong in the long run but I think this flick will have all the initial success Star Trek the Motion(less) Picture had. Then years later it’ll be forgotten or reviled. It’s how I feel about Tim Burton’s dreadful Batman from 1989 or Pulp Fiction. I think Hollywood underestimates audiences’ retention of Star Trek‘s backstory otherwise The Lord of the Rings would’ve been a dismal failure and the ridicule of George Lucas would be confined to smaller circles.

Here are some fun links related to the movie.

• Star Trek is really a journey through genres, not outer space.
• Dr. Phil Plait reviews the science of this Star Trek, remember, he also knows it’s just a movie but as I had to point out to my nephew, films have a problem of purporting myths amongst the public like Outland did with explosive compression.