Movie Review: Star Trek

    I don’t remember when I first heard about this project.  But I know it was during one of the very deep low points in Trek fandom.  Enterprise had been canceled (the first Trek show to meet that fate since the original).  Nemesis had been a bomb (the first film to not make its money back in theaters) at the box office and with this viewer.  Voyager still haunted the psyche with its deep shadow of raw suck.  And science fiction in general (not to mention the viewing public) seemed to have moved on.  Then the guy behind Lost says he wants to do Star Trek?  Is he high?  Nobody is gonna want to see that.  Those few people who still lay claim to the name Trekkie aren’t going to climb out of their Mountain Dew and pizza stained computer chair, away from their internet chat board where they’ve just proved to some 8 year old kid that they know more about what a Klingon likes to do on vacation, to pay 10 bucks for a ticket and see a Trek film made by some mainstream guy who has several successes to his name.  Especially not one about Kirk.  How could they be so stupid as to not do a (insert ridiculously obscure character only a dozen people remember and could never sustain a solo project) movie?!  Fools!

    Recasting iconic characters.  That’s tough.  Look at how people reacted to Daniel Craig playing James Bond, and based only on his hair color.  And that’s a character from a book who had already been played by at least 7 actors (5 in the official series).  Right off the bat, everyone is complaining about the casting of ‘children’ to play Kirk and crew.  Of course, the fact that Chris Pine was only a couple years younger than Shatner (and playing 5 or so years younger) when the original show started, or that John Cho was much older than the original Sulu, or that only two of the cast hadn’t yet reached their 30s didn’t sway anyone.  Pine didn’t look like Shatner looked in Wrath of Khan, therefore was far too young!  Internet chat rooms were full of naysayers saying nay.  As with my Star Wars love (and most other love), my Trek love was always strong, but filled with glaring gaps I simply chose not to acknowledge.  Voyager?  Didn’t happen.  Hugh and the neutering of the Borg?  Didn’t happen.  Season three of Enterprise?  Didn’t happen.  (Episodes 2 & 3 of Star Wars?  F no.  Never heard of them.).  But this movie happened.  I have no problem with original timeline Spock traveling back in time and sparking this alternate history.  It’s hardly the first to appear in Trek.

    Like the best Trek films, this movie has a great deal of enjoyable character interaction.  Sure, it’s a bit weird, because they set Kirk and Spock up as rivals.  But otherwise, certain rhythms fall into place.  And each cast member gets his or her time to shine.  Each one has a job and gets to do it.  The use of Christopher Pike as a mentor for Kirk is interesting (his own life-path altered in this reality).  And the destruction of an entire world lets you know that they mean business and that this really is a different timeline.  Anything can happen and the future is up for grabs.  I like that.

    Now, the film is not perfect.  Hardly.  It features some of those irritating things Trek is known for.  Constant preaching about the rules followed immediately by characters throwing them out.  Also, I’m fairly sure that military command isn’t just handed off to whomsoever one wills, nor do people who stow away get promoted to second in command because they‘re hanging around.  I was waiting for the bridge to be left in the hands of the delivery guy who happened to be standing in the corner (‘Hey, UPS guy!  You have the bridge!’).  And the overall conflict of this movie, like nearly every Trek film, is basically a retelling of Wrath of Khan.  Sigh.  Strange new worlds?  New civilizations?  Nope.  We’ve got revenge obsessed thugs to punch into submission.  Boldly going where Trek has gone again and again for the last 30 years (thanks Ben).

Khaaaaaan!  I mean, Nerooooooo!

    But while not perfect, it is a perfectly entertaining movie.  It follows my golden rule for Trek movies.  “First make a good movie; second make a good Trek movie.”  It remains largely true to Star Trek’s overall context while understanding that it is not 1967, 1987, or 1997 anymore (ever notice how Enterprise feels like it was made by the same people in the same way as Next Gen, how there was no maturation of style or technique in 20 years of televised Trek?  I did.).  Now, you might think I just mean that it’s effects were upgraded or that they cut more often.  I don’t.  Though those things are true.  But it has a tightness and purpose that has been missing for a long time.  Not to mention that all important sense of fun.  My hope when I walked out of the theater was that from this seed of a new beginning, we could see some really interesting chances taken, new paths for classic characters forged.  Alas, that is not what happened.  But taking the 2009 film by itself, the potential it represents for Trek’s reinvention is enormous, breaking the stagnant cage it had been locked in for so long.  Here’s hoping Into Darkness proves to be a stumble (V, Generations, Nemesis) the series can easily get past with a quality follow-up.  And I agree with co-Dork Brad that to see what I really want in Star Trek probably requires a television series.  I just hope that a new Trek show would learn the lessons of the last decade.  Short, intense, well produced seasons, without filler (see: Rome, Mad Men, The Shield, etc. for examples).  But in the meantime, this film helped put Trek back in the cultural consciousness like it hadn’t been since the height of Next Gen’s popularity in the early 90s.  So, I tip my hat.

-Matt

A Fistful of Star Trek! (Matt’s Picks)

    J.J. Abrams second Star Trek movie is out this week (see Brad's sadly accurate review), and we Dorks are taking a look at some of our favorite Start Trek memories.  I’ll tell you straight-up, I’m an original series man, as a general rule.  I enjoy Next Gen and yes, I’m the guy who liked Enterprise (except for that danged third season!).  But I’m old school.

5.  There. Are. FOUR! LIGHTS!  Picard just went through his very own 1984 interrogation at the hands of one of the greatest character actors of all time, Mr. David Warner.  And in those last few moments, maybe he too had learned to love Big Brother.  Patrick Stewart acts the bejupiter out of the scene.  Yet another of the many times Picard went through far more than most men should.  Even when he’s broken, he’s not broken.  All the phasers and spaceships in the universe don’t hold a candle to the human (or alien) drama of Trek.

4.  Kirk puts his boots on.  You know, the ones he’s recently been knockin‘.  Look, it’s just a fact of life that one of the things that made Kirk cool was his amazing ability with the ladies, whatever their DNA might look like.  He loved them.  They loved him.  He made great strides in the name of interstellar relations.  Sort of the Federation’s answer to Sir Richard Francis Burton (without the javelin through the face).  On the one side, this is the male fantasy, that women from all over the galaxy want what we Earth dudes have.  But in its pervy little way, it’s also about accepting a whole universe of variety (Giving too much credit?  Probably).

3.  Kirk battles an honorable man.  The introduction to the Romulans featured the great Mark Leonard as the dignified old soldier who must square off with Kirk.  These are two good men, two skilled and wary men, battling because of their situation, not any animosity.  Men who could have been friends, were circumstances different.  It is a sad episode, because the Romulan commander is no villain, and his loss is clearly a tragic one.

2.  “We’ve made too many compromises already; too many retreats.  They invade our space and we fall back.  They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back.  Not again.  The line must be drawn HERE!  This far, and no further!  And I will make them PAY for what they’ve done.”  Picard loses his mind.  And if he has to stand in front of the wave of all-consuming Borg and drive it away by hand, he is more than ready.  All the pent up frustration and rage of a civilized man pushed past the point of no return bubbles up.  He is Ahab.  He is King Leonidas.  He is Beowulf.

1.  Spock makes contact.  Since I was a boy, Devil in the Dark has been one of my favorite episodes of all Trek.  Its message holds as much appeal to me today as it did 30+ years ago.  One of the things that makes Trek great is that it’s more than just us & them.  It’s more than war and strife and hate.  It’s about recognizing differences, accepting them, and learning from them.  The Horta is a hideous monster, a glob of animated mineral, and it’s been lurking in the caves, killing mine workers.  But there is more to the story, and it takes patience and a willingness to look past the surface and see a deeper truth.  I could never point to just one episode and say, ‘this is Star Trek.’  But if I had a gun to my head, this is the one I’d suggest.  If ever there were an uplifting and optimistic story, a look at what we could be at our best, it’s communicating with and understanding the Horta.

-Matt

Movie Review: Star Trek III The Search for Spock

    OK, first thing you’ve got to know is that like in comic books and TV, when characters die in the movies, they should stay dead…But they don’t.  Star Trek II was a resounding success (going on to be most people’s favorite of the franchise).  And in the aftermath, there was no way they were going to stop making Trek movies.  So, along comes Star Trek III.  But, one of the three core characters, one of the folks who made Trek what Trek was, lay dead in a photon torpedo casket on the new Eden of the Genesis Planet.  What to do?  Hey, remember that weird shot from the end of II, where Spock grabs McCoy’s head and whispers ‘remember?’  Yup.  Spock ain’t all dead.  Just mostly dead.  If he were all dead, there’d only be one thing to do.  Go through his pockets for loose change.  But being mostly dead, he’s partly alive.  Thus, the Search for Spock.

    With this movie, we start to see more Klingon culture, which would go on to be developed much further a few years later in The Next Generation TV series.  We saw their red lights and bumpy heads, and heard the first snippets of their guttural language in The Motion Picture.  But  here we see more of their nature.  And, we learn more about the Vulcans and their weird mystical beliefs (for logical people, they’ve got some pretty illogical things going on).  And finally, there are the secrets of the Genesis Planet.  And we have Kirk’s son David back, and Savik, the Vulcan (played by a new actress).  David seems like less of a twit this time around, but becomes instead, a tragic hero with a flaw inherited from his father.

    While obviously, the quest to find Spock (well, reassemble him) is central to the film, it also continues Star Trek II’s examination of age, of friendship, and mortality.  What I notice more now are the moments between the characters, the old friends and companions.  These are the bits I enjoy most.  And I’ll admit the last sequence, with everyone together after the ceremony; it gets the lump of coal I have in place of a heart to twitch, if just a bit.  This film is the second of the trilogy within the series.  It builds on the events of The Wrath of Khan, brings back a friend but destroys so much.  Kirk loses someone else, the crew loses something important, and the Genesis Planet…well, it just loses.  And that all sets up for Star Trek IV.  I don’t know if its hindsight (or foreknowledge?) or the effects of having Spock reborn so easily, but watching the movie now, I feel like the losses don’t have the impact they should.  Does Kirk even think about his son again before that brief moment in Star Trek VI?  Nobody mentions poor Carol Marcus from the previous film.  Where’s she at?  And the Genesis Planet?  Shouldn’t its loss mean something?  Even the Enterprise gets little more than a ‘well, stuff happens.’

    The frustrating thing about this movie is that it takes the positive, optimistic scientific development (the Genesis Planet) and turns it into a Frankenstein’s Monster, a corrupted creation that will eventually destroy its creator.  So, in Star Trek II, the morally challenging and interesting question of genetic engineering is turned into an unquestionably anti-science thing, making specific allusions to the Nazis’ Aryan myths with all the blonde, blue-eyed, pretty people (watch Space Seed, the supermen were ethnically diverse).  And then with Star Trek III, the hopeful technology for terraforming is turned into a specifically anti-science thing, an allegory for nuclear weapons.  Sigh.  With the exception of V’ger (which raises its own questionable ethics), are there any non-negative portrayals of science in this series?  Can we get some pro-science stuff in Trek?  That would be swell.

Did someone say fistfight?

-Matt