Short Review: Anything that can possibility offend Trekkies and get them hyperventilating through their retainers is okay by me.


A production like this isn't new. Yet another Corporation continuing to recycle pop cultural baubles of previous generations, repackage it, and then sell it to quite possibly the dumbest generation to draw breath. This may be the case with this film. It may be a soulless McMovie rehash, but its a well made soulless McMovie rehash.

What is surprising is that it manages to achieve the balance of acknowledging its source material while still striking out on its own and finding its own voice. By the end of the film it is clear a new, individual franchise has been born. This is remarkable given that Star Trek is one of the most identifiable, dearly loved series in history. Producers have been trying to reboot the series for decades. After the surprise cult following in reruns, they began to pump out the popular films - oh but they were seriously awful . Honestly, they travel to San Francisco in the 1980's to save whales and we're expected believe Sulu doesn't go AWOL and stay behind?

As the actors aged, and the egos inflated and the internal conflicts boiled, the natural inclination to replicate the series took its course. Since the late 1980's there has been a continual string of syndicated television series attempting reignite the original series. The first outing, Star Trek: The Next Generation was good but not great. The remainder were stumbling affairs that never quite got over their derivative existences.

When JJ Abrams took over the franchise he smartly choose to break away from the failing model of retooling the Star Trek universe with new characters and instead chose the bigger risk of recasting the original characters. This isn't a small task.

It is easy to dismiss Star Trek given William Shatner's goofiness and the social abominations known as Trekkies, but this is one of the main myths of our civilization. Messing with Kirk and Spock is no different than recasting Darth Vadar, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and trying to make them your own. Thousands of people flock to stupid conventions over this crap. They made up a ridiculous fake Klingon language for Pete's sake. In our pop culture based society, Star Trek is a sacred cow. Abrams took a huge gamble, he could have had a humiliating disaster on his hands. When the original trailer hit, I thought he had taken the simple road. I wasn't the only one.


The film, thankfully, isn't the hollow teen dreamy junk pile that the trailer made it look like.

Abrams delivers a carefully executed origin story for the series that, thanks to a overly convenient time travel plot, explains away the old series and makes way for the new. While fun and light, the film is also technically marvelous. The story is impressively tight and direct. Abrams and company had the challenge of reintroducing us to characters many of us knew inside and out. These characters are a part of our lives even if we've never seen a single episode of the show. Their catch phrases alone litter our culture possibly more than any other series in history.

Given the large cast, these introductions threatened to slow the story down every time someone new appeared on screen. Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman do a masterful job of weaving these introductions seamlessly into the story. On top of these introductions, they also managed to rewrite the characters in a way that enhances our memory of them. This is particularly true of Spock.

Leonard Nimoy's Spock is a cultural landmark. In this production, we are shown the young Spock, first as a promising professor and then as an officer on the Enterprise. Zachary Quinto, who appears to have been born to play the role, tackles the task of portraying this iconic figure. Quinto has to balance between marking the role as his own while also paying homage to Nimoy's classic portrayal. The script's conceits allow to present Spock as we know him while still giving him amble room to infuse his own details. His Spock is written not a mimicry of the earlier version of Spock but instead as a new angle on the old character.

The duality between the old and new is the approached used for the whole franchise. This is not an attempt to replace the old version, simply a new generation putting their own mark on things. This franchise isn't going to be the cultural standard that the original version has become. It's not that good, nor important. It is entertaining however and will provide some relaxing cinematic eye candy.

The downside of the film are a few poor choices that seriously break the narrative flow. If you've seen the trailer you have already have witnessed the amazingly stupid young Kirk stealing an antique car and driving it over a cliff. In this sequence, he is being chased down a dirt road by a cop. Young Kirk then turns on the radio and LISTENS TO THE BEASTIE BOYS. What? No one listens to them now, except musically illiterate morons, and we're expected to believe this is something a kid would turn to a few hundred years in the future? The entire sequence should have been cut. It is as poorly conceived as the jazz sequence in Spider-Man 3.

There are other choices that cut into the story as well, like having Scotty being transported into the water pipes, having Kirk illogically being sent down to an Arctic locale on a planet, and other items that act as sidesteps to the main thrust of the story. All of these diversions steal time away from the main story which does need some help.

The main villain Nero, a revenge obsessed Romulan, is pushed to the back burner for most of the film and only appears when its convenient to establish character for Kirk, Pike or Spock. Nero is the least developed character in the entire film and is given the least amount of attention. His whole reason for revenge is not given enough depth to have any real meaning so his actions are without context and therefore meaningless. This deficiency would kill most other stories, this production survives because it gets the audience so wrapped up in the interpersonal drama on the Enterprise that this exterior force is more of an annoying procedure rather than life threatening conflict.

This is a solid movie that succeeds well beyond expectation. This is easily the most fun I've had seeing a McMovie since Iron Man last year. This is fluff but it is very good, very entertaining fluff.




Related Reviews:
Star Trek movies
Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn (1982)
Star Trek: First Contact (1996)


Other Critic's Reviews:
Happy Catholic
Need Coffee

Labels: Chris Pine, Eric Bana, film, JJ Abrams, Karl Urban, Leonard Nimoy, movie review, Star Trek, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana