Posted on 05/10/2009 12:14:38 PM PDT by pabianice
Edited on 05/10/2009 3:43:21 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
My wife and I saw the new Star Trek movie today. It is a long, very loud, two-dimensional, inadvertent look at what we as a society have lost in the past 40 years.
SPOILERS ***********************************************
The good news is that the FX and production are state-of-the-art. The bad news is that the plot is embarrassingly stupid and retro, the acting ranges from good to awful, and the production as a whole is one huge rock video. On top of that, the movie is so horribly loud that the audience had to block its ears several times.
J.J. Abrams, the man behind the incoherent "Lost," is the man behind this film, and it shows. Just as "Lost" long ago lost any semblance of sanity, his Star Trek is all about "updating the story." In the process of "updating," he has lost the bubble (as we Navy fliers say).
In touch with the contemporary 18-35 year old ethos, Abram's Kirk is a misunderstood genius who brawls and [expletive deleted by Mod] his way into his 20s, clearly not appreciated for what he is. He goes to Star Fleet Academy as an after-thought, challenged by a Star Fleet officer to do something worthwhile. Abrams rewrites and otherwise disregards the Trek canon at will to help support his thin as tissue rewrite of the Kirk-Spock legend. After all, today’s film-makers can’t be expected to actually be coherent over time. Do not expect anything in this film to gel with what has been told about Trek in the past 40 years; we are told that meddling with the time line has changed what we know to have been the case. What a lazy, dishonest way out.
The simple fact is that the original Trek was clasped to the bosom of the first fans because: (1) the stories were entertaining; (2) the acting was excellent (give William Shatner credit – why he has been vilified since is a discredit to a very fine actor; (3) the writing was largely imaginative, thanks to scripts from some of the greatest scifi writers of the 20th century; (4) given a meager budget, the show still looked good; and (5) teenaged boys who could not get dates adopted Trek like a starving man grasps a pizza.
The Trek saga had shown its age recently after Star Trek 10 cratered and there seemed to be nothing left for Trek to say. Paramount’s old cash cow needed to be put to sleep or somehow redone. Enter Abrams and a boat-load of new actors raised in the era of Grand Theft Auto IV and Madonna videos. The best-known actor in the new Trek (aside from Leonard Nimoy, who reprises Spock as a 200-year-old) is Zachary Quinto – the creepy character Syler from “Heroes,” which has been disintegrating for two years thanks to lack of plot). The rest of the cast are handsome/beautiful actors and actresses who are forced by the script to “re-imagine” the original characters. And this effort is largely disastrously bad. Perhaps the only successful one is Carl Urban, who does an excellent job of recreating Dr. McCoy in a younger version just the way we in the audience might have imagined (although in this version McCoy is also a graduate of Star Fleet Academy, unlike the original story line). The rest of the characters are pure Abrams: louder-than-life empty suits. Uhura is reduced to the love slave of young Spock (!) An Orion slave girl is now a Star Fleet cadet, bedding every other cadet she can find (very liberated). The new Kirk – Chris Pine – has the thankless task of trying to channel Shatner, a task he is clearly not up to. Instead, we see Kirk as a hot-headed, ready-fire-aim loose cannon.
The command architecture of the new “Enterprise” makes no sense, either military or literary, with the captain inexplicably making Officer Candidate Kirk the XO during Kirk’s first space mission, which he attends only through fraud. All the characters of the original Trek are made contemporaries in this re-telling and its hurts both story line and common sense. There is non-stop action (see: “video games”) but the audience is left unsatisfied since none of the characters are presented as more than two-dimensional cut-outs, with the names of familiar characters but no depth. You just don’t give a crap about any of them. The fighting scenes are ridiculous, with multiple killing blows given characters who suffer only a split lip(is it me or are today’s younger people such couch potatoes that they have never sparred in a dojo and are clueless about what being beaten senseless really does to someone?). So, after multiple beatings and phaser hits and jumps from 40 feet that do no damage to the people involved, the audience has been largely desensitized to what has occurred on-screen.
As the movie passes two hours and I was thinking strongly of a bathroom break, the story ends on an Alice And Wonderland plane. The new Kirk, having won the day through impossible fighting skill, genius IQ, daring good looks, and sheer force of will, is promoted from Cadet (E-2) to Captain (O-6) and given command of Enterprise. I couldn’t help myself – I burst-out laughing. Abrams – impatient with how the real world works and a child of I Want It Now! – simply discards any sense of reality and ends this story with Kirk in command of Enterprise without having had to bother with inconveniences like advancing through the ranks by proving competence and maturity and receiving the endorsement of his superiors – a process which actually take 21-22 years in the real military. Presto! We have Jimmy Kirk, boy genius, in command. This may seems fine in Abram’s world of Hollywood dementia, but all it did was make the audience at this showing laugh.
The rest of the plot is a re-telling of The Wrath of Khan. Ricardo Montelban had more dramatic flair in one finger than the current bad-guy actor (Eric Bana) has in his entire body. He’s a menacing as your junior high school guidance counselor.
In a broader sense, this movie shows what we have lost. Look at Flight of the Phoenix. The 1965 film with Jimmy Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Hardy Kreuger, Ernest Borgnine, et all, is gripping story-telling. The 2004 remake is hideously bad, with non-dimensional characters and an awful script yukking it up in a tale of desert survival. Today’s audiences don’t know the difference. Today’s audiences don’t know the difference between a qualified, patriotic presidential candidate and an empty suit who really shows his hatred for his own country.
Apace, the new Star Trek dumbs-down Trek to the 12-year-old level and leaves the viewer bored and with an ear-ache. The first sequel is due out in 2011.
I went to see it in IMAX today. My brother and I (51 and 52) and three guys I work with (27, 26 and 23)
We all thought it was great fun, and a welcome change. Mind you, I have not gone to a theater in...well, I simply cannot remember. But I enjoyed it immensely.
I know there were probably people walking out of the theater arguing “No way he could have done that, if they (INSERT SCENE FROM MOVIE HERE)...”
It was fluff and entertainment. I want something that is more real, I will watch “Band of Brothers” or something like that. And people will nitpick that.
I though McCoy was perfect...Sulu, was, well...NOT Sulu (THANK GOD) and Spock was well done.
I DO NOT watch television, cannot stomach it, and haven’t watched in years, and am a moviephile (Favorite Movie: “The Best Years of Our Lives”) so does my review help?
Go ahead...it was fun!
Custer had a highly successful 15 year career before making a number of mistakes that led to his destruction at LBH.
My point was that some men have been promoted to very high rank at a young age and been quite successful, not that any such man never lost a battle.
A lot of conservatives think I'm beyond it because I quit watching the X-Men series because I believed they turned into an endless series of "coming out of the closet" sequences.
Probably the only thing remotely liberal was the "youth in rebellion" meme attached to Kirk. I saw the movie as being a little disjointed, and relying a little too much on coincidences (particularly ****SPOILER**** select the following to read it!!!!when Spock gets hacked at Kirk and has him shot off the ship and he ends up on a planet about a quarter mile from the Spock that went back in time.) Aside from that, the characterizations are good, and there are quite a few references back to TOS, without the show being a parody of the series.
The show is extremely apolitical. I think this was a conscious decision, as they desperately wanted a successful reboot. Patrick Stewart showed his remarkable sexual prowess by screwing the entire franchise in Nemesis (more suckage than any movie should be allowed to have) and they dumped most of the new age, a woman can be a starship captain, Ferangi (loosely based on the Jewish stereotype) are the EVIL capitalists, etc., etc.
It's fun, it's loud, the chicks are in short skirts again, there's no cursing or blatant nudity, Sulu comes across as straight.
Enjoy it and have fun.
If you want an example of a very young man promoted to the highest possible rank who never lost a battle, try Alexander the Great. To be frank, he promoted himself, but then he also never lost a battle and conquered just about the entire known world of the time.
Another example is Charles XII of Sweden, who had a highly successful military career for 8 years, starting at the age of 18. He conquered and damn near destroyed Poland and a good bit of Russia before being clobbered by Peter the Great at Poltava.
Scipio Africanus started his highly successful career in supreme command at the age of 25, his great opponent Hannibal assumed supreme command at 27. Scipio never lost a battle, and Hannibal lost only one.
The guy that plays McCoy nailed it.
As for the volume — I always bring ear plugs to the cinema.
Thanks. Star Trek was my favorite TV show during its first run, but I’m not much on ‘canon’.
However, I suspect the ‘misfit is a hero’ plot will drive me nuts, since Capt Kirk was NOT a misfit. He merely believed what I was taught in OTS: Regulations are made for the guidance of the wise, and strict adherence of fools.
That is sound advice...:)
Thanks for your service!
Yeah..., my only clue that it was from a Russian showing was some Russian lettering at the beginning and end... LOL...
I agree with every word of this review. The human equation has been lost. It’s Lost Trek now.
No sorry the best shows on television are now Burn Notice followed by Chuck. Lost is just a poor attempt at trying to be clever, but ultimately fails to entertain.
Excellent review. I agree.
The complete destruction of the Trek universe timeline was cheap and disgusting.
In the original “real” world of Star Trek, Kirk was the youngest man to ever make Captain - in his mid 30s! Now in La La Land of 2009, it is as a brawling 20-something punk.
It does not mess with the original time line. The original time line is eviscerated. Everything you have seen for the past 40 years... all the shows, movies, books... GONE. ALL GONE. Poof, like that.
Not totally, Spock prime is still alive, and Kirk prime could be in the Nexus, waiting to make a difference again.
Richard, that’s COOL! How did you do that little piece of fancy formatting that makes you “select to read the following”?
Regards,
It’s no big trick. Just do a command font color=”white” The font becomes invisible because the background’s white.
Neat! Thanks for the info.
Regards,
Or no backdrop screens at all ("The Empath"). Talk about minimalist...
I haven't seen this movie yet, but plan to.
I loved the old Star Trek, and the Next Generation. Voyager left me cold. But....
I'll duck because I know that what I am going to say next will get me flak:
The whole Star Trek premise, from its beginnings until now, was built on the idea a Socialist Utopia. Forget "one world government" -- this is "one universe government"!
The Federation is an intergalactic multi-world UN with military "teeth". No one in the Federation every talks about money, except the Ferengi and they are "greedy capitalists". No one comes from "a country", although main characters clearly had accents. Spock's "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few --or the one" is the antithesis of individual rights.
I've always been able to enjoy Star Trek purely as fantasy, because the life that they describe could never be -- it is a utopia. But I am not so sure that other people (especially kids) raised on it have been so unaffected.
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