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.
The idea of “rebooting” the franchise with a younger, edgier teen cast was rejected by the makers of “Wormhole X-treme”
"HERE'S TO SICKLY SEASONS AND BLOODY WARS." - Famous British toast.
And as an example of promotion jumps.
Pershing - Captain to Brigadier.
Custer - 2nd Lieut. to Brigadier(Brevet)
IOW, people who work for Paramount are stuffing the ballot box.
Wow you watched a completely different movie. I found this movie to be a return to the TOS mentality, the closest Trek has come to it’s roots since half way through the first movie. It is once again bold. (SPOILERS) I think the argument between Spock and Kirk after the destruction of Vulcan was really an argument between post TMP Trek and TOS Trek. Spock, being the voice of post TMP wanted to meet with the fleet and talk and plan; Kirk in the roll of TOS wanted to go kick the bad guy’s ass. Trek had forgotten that they were supposed to be BOLDLY going where no man has gone before, they are once again bold.
J J Abrams used computer cheat codes.
Seriously folks (SPOILER ALERT)
“Prime” Spock, as they put it, is trapped in the past.
We have HUGE errors in the continutity only a pot head, snorting cocain, chased with a enian and johnny walker (ugh) can think is consistent.
(SPOILERS ALERT II)
Perhaps the next episode can address the continuity issues (principle planet destruction, main character’s sexual affair in his position as professor with one of his students, AMANDA GRAYSON!)
The sound track in the back ground was not trek, it was almost like it wanted to be Narnia I.
For the next one they better demonstrate their REAL skill at telling a story by respecting the cannons.
Using “cheat codes” just exposes weak writers who can’t tell a story.
(plus I though kirk did not become captain until his 30’s not 25! talk about blatent marketing)
PS: Keep in mind Paramout owns the star trek franchise outright pretty much. see: merchandising, video games, casino themes, dvd sales, spin offs, star trek perfume...
Spock of the future told them to...
In the case of Custer, the Union Army at the start of the war numbered 16,367 officers and men comprising 198 line companies distributed among 4 artillery regiments, 5 mounted regiments, and 10 regiments of infantry. Out of that, a number went to the Confederate side. The Union Army quickly grew to over 2 million men. They pretty-much had no choice but to promote any regular officers they had to senior command.
At the start of WW-I, it was a similar deal, with a force of 90,000 being quickly expanded to over 4 million.
If what we're talking about in this new Star Trek universe is a situation where they just began a war with the Romulans where 95% the Fleet consists of people who had been raw civilians a few months prior, then yes they would have no choice except to use whatever regular officers that they had available. I guess I'll find the background when I go see it later this week.
I think it was very clear Spock had a significant relationship with Uhura. (accademy professor/cadent student)
Technically speaking he isn’t “only a cadet”, he’s done the Kobiashi test, according to Trek rules that’s basically the final exam from the officer section of Academy. So he’s about to be not a cadet and a commissioned officer, by old canon at that point he was on the fast track to being a captain, in this new canon he’d just saved the earth as an acting captain.
I think it is interesting that McCoy is the one of the big three that did not change.
In Pershings case, it was not quite as complicated. He was married to the daughter of an influentional Senator, that and exemplary service with the 10th Cav at San Juan Heights with a certain future president(Teddy) didn't hurt either.
Pershing tied the decorum of the army from Miles to the future Patton. Even in Mexico, Pershing shaved every day and wore a tie. He demanded the same from his officers.
It was bad. And lazy movie making. It’s everything that Gene Roddenberry fought the network over. Now the first 15 minutes was OK. Just Ok. But they can’t expect Star Trek Fans to watch this and forget what Roddenberry wanted in the first series . If they had made it a Star Trek Movie with all new characters that would have been different. It still would have had problems with the time line and story telling . After the movie was over I had to talk to others in the Theater. The Young ones loved it. Most of the older people didn’t like it at all.
Ah, it's worth seeing. Pabiance is pretty much spot-on with his critiques, but there are a few things that make it worthwhile.
Roddenberry definitely got into the "Brave New World" concept, and the "prime directive" of non-intervention was another premise of us leaving more primitive cultures alone. In the original 60s version, there were definitely UN implications to the Federation, but it actually played out that the Federation was more like NATO, with the Klingons being the Soviets and the Romulans being the Chinese. This simply scaled the earth to the galaxy.
Even in the original series, I believe Kirk made a reference to there not being money, but this seemed confined to the military/exploration part of the Federation, as they made ports of call and apparently bought alcohol there. I think they deliberately kept this part loose, as is common with TV series (how often did people pay for drinks in Cheers?)
TNG lost me because Patrick Stewart would surrender the Enterprise to a life boat. They had way too many stories where surrendering was the "right and noble" thing to do. One of the things I like about the Kirk character is that he doesn't believe in the no win scenario and in this movie neither he or his father would ever consider surrendering their ship.
Another thing that lost me with TNG was that they got completely away from true science fiction and became totally new age. I remember reading an interview where the writers were bragging about how for TNG they would write plots, but instead of coming up with a real scientific solution, they'd write "insert techno-speak here" and have somebody insert scientific gobbledy-gook, usually involving tachyon particles. There was no true scientific principle behind many of the "solutions" to problems in TNG.
The abandonment of speculative science fiction for new age dogma hurt the franchise badly. Worf was also the best character from TNG, but they kept writing his character down. He should have been the toughest guy on the ship, but Data, Yar and everybody else beat him up. The franchise further degraded when Deep Space 9 deleted the "hopeful future" that Roddenberry created, replacing it with losers stranded on an out of the way docking station. In Voyager, the only memorable characters were the holographic doctor and Seven of Nine. The other characters were weak and insipid, including the captain.
Nobody's going to want to reboot any of the other series. I have to agree with some of the other posters that there's a "Muppet Babies" quality to the movie, in that the characters are VERY young to be assuming the levels of responsibility they do. Yeah, there's a certain idiocy to having a suspended stowaway assume command of a starship (I could imagine if a guy left the brig of an aircraft carrier and showed up on the bridge, assuming command.) In TOS, however, there were 450 people on the ship, of which apparently only about seven had actual jobs. Whenever there was extreme danger on a planet, the captain, the first officer and the ships's medical director beamed to the surface, while everyone else ran back and forth in the corridors.
They moved canon aside, that was part of the point of the story, this is an alternate time line, all that canon stuff happened over there in that other time line. This wasn’t a prequel, this was a shaking of the etch-a-sketch, they have no intention of this being able to lead up to TOS, this is the start of a whole new run.
you realise this means all those really sucky TNG movies can be removed from the cannon. Kirk may not be dead...
(Star Trek XII: Prime Spock, “what is the old police box doing here?...”)
They can only do that up to a point.
They have been many immitators of Star Trek that failed because they tried to do this. As of right now it is past momentum that is going to carry this film.
However, they can’t just trash the past because they can. Change for the sake of shock value is not going to be sustainable for a franchise.
No mistake and credit due to abrams for producing a star trek action film. (the final kobayashi test was more about what was happening inside kirk’s head exposed rather than running it dry and official as would have been expected. apple forbidden fruit?)
Then again, does this mean the ENITRE voyager series can be expunged from the continuity?
(SARCASM ON)
What are you talking about, the red shirt holding the explosives still died. That was true to the original.
paging Ensign Expendible, paging Ensign Expendible, please report to the transporter room...
(sarcasm off)
"HERE'S TO SICKLY SEASONS AND BLOODY WARS." - Famous British toast.
"sickly seasons and bloody wars" were the circumstances where promotion from Midshipman to Captain did take 20 years.
In peacetime 75% of Lieutenants, 80% of Commanders, and 90% of captains were unemployed on half pay, and noöne was being promoted, for any reason.
Super Rapid promotion only occurs during extended major wars, not as a reward (that's what medals are for). And all the back story of the Federation says the this was not a time of extended total wars. (For one thing Starfleet is a lameass military clearly showing the effects of peacetime neglect)
Yeah, Ensign Ricky took it in the shorts again.
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