Biting the Bullet: The Plotmeister Reviews JJ Abrams' "Star Trek."
...Otherwise known as "Jar Trek," or "New Trek."
Beware spoilers. Do Not Read if you haven't seen the movie, and that's an order.
This review is intensely personal, just like Star Trek is intensely personal. It is the response of someone who identifies deeply with Star Trek and proudly claims the name Trekkie... so, someone who alternately somewhat enjoyed watching the film and wanted to throw things at the screen.
This review is a combination of my responses to various people as we discussed the film, and is probably not the end of my thought on the matter. I'm writing it to clarify my thoughts about this New Trek further, and because anyone who has seen the film and liked it (read, mostly everybody) has failed to understand my reasons, and my rage, against it.
From what I've seen on TrekSpace, I'm in a minority. There are few who agree with me. Of those, I've quoted the best at the end of this review. Their words are well worth the read; they spotted many things I didn't.
"Abrams has trashed our fictional history. More than that, he has trashed Roddenberry's vision of the futrure. I am disgusted that so many are willing to take this pill just because it says Star Trek on it."
- "ClaudeParish," TrekSpace.org.
"This latest movie was not Trek. It was a standard "made for TV" style movie of the week on sci-fi channel... It's so juvenile."
- "Tony in Hawaii," TrekSpace.org
That pretty much sums it up. Details below.
In part, my difficulty with this movie is my problem with most new movies (my other recent example is X Men Origins: Wolverine.) What really pisses me off is Star Trek is now just another part of this category.
Essentially, there's a graph format to movies lately. Everything is "epic." It all tends uphill on the graph--not necessary in quality, but in style and the kind of epic being aimed for--culminating with, at the peak of both this style and pure awesomeness, The Dark Knight. Everything after that has been a gradual (or not so gradual) decline in quality, originality, and taste. The worst example I've seen is Wolverine. Unfortunately, JJ Abrams' new Star Trek also fits on this chart. Although it's not quite as bad as Wolverine. The soundtrack was also highly disappointing. The best part was in the middle of the credits, when strains of the original theme song were discernible.
What I've been hearing a lot of from friends (who, by the way, mostly aren't Star Trek fans anyway, which makes me want to ask why the have the right to judge this movies place in Trekdom overall,) is that I should "take it for what it is."
Well, Abrams has said what it is, and that is unacceptable. From "This isn't your father's Star Trek" to "Forget everything you know," this a complete rewriting of the original scope and focus of the idea of Star Trek. Which makes this not Trek, but a subverted, Dark Knight-wannabe, bad fanfic "star trek." It's a ton of bullshit, is what it is. It's a "decent" movie, from lax modern standards which require only loud music and lots of explosions. Despite including quite a few "sop" lines for real fans, Abrams has taken the soul of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry's original vision, and made it as commonplace and unexceptional as every other "epic" movie and fandom coming out of modern times. This is his greatest crime against Trekdom, but not his only one.
The movie has its good points, but in that way it's like the Harry Potter movies: individual okay moments, while overall... no. Actually, it's quite likely you'll enjoy it. While watching it, I enjoyed parts of it, although I'm not sure I would a second time, now that I've had a chance to process it. The more I think about it the more I realize what they've done, what the future movies will do, and it hurts, it really hurts, to think they've brought something so amazing down to this level of stupid.
So it can be fairly enjoyable, depending on your taste in movies and stance on Star Trek. Big deal. Family reunions can be "fairly enjoyable" depending on who's around. But there's none of the spark that made it originally brilliant. They're just riding off already-present fame, and if new comers see this movie, they probably won't like what it was based off, and I wouldn't blame them for not liking Star Trek at all if this was their only introduction to it. As in the quoted reviews below, even Leonard Nimoy just "walked through his lines" in this one; even granted the alternate timeline, the way this movie plays out is an alternate universe. The characters are not themselves. The audience it's aimed it is not people who can appreciate what has always been Star Trek's strengths--it's ideas, and, as even William Shatner admits, (on Star Trek biography) its themes of friendship, tolerance, loyalty --but visual affects-oriented teenagers.
Or, as someone else put it, it's "Galaxy Quest: the Serious Movie." What I call "cannon fanfic." Although I'm beginning to question the "cannon" part, despite it's "official" source.
Also, the way it resolved--or rather, didn't resolve--is going to eat at me. I was pleasantly surprised by the casting of Scotty; I thought for sure that was going to be a disaster, but it wasn't. It wasn't Scotty, but it could have been worse.
The two great characters in this movie, and the best acting, were Captain Pike, and, to my immense relief, Bones. The idea that they might do something godawful to Dr. McCoy and the memory of DeForest Kelley in the role was the first possibility that had me watching this movie on tenterhooks. But while definitely different in style, and appearance, overall I have to applaud that actors efforts and the scriptwriters who did his lines. Pike's performance was the strongest of the film, and I think they did justice to this previous Enterprise captain.
The worst casting/acting, besides Sarek, was Sarek's wife. Couldn't they have found anyone else to play her? Yikes. Also, her death was... as contrived as Kirk's "pushing" Spock into emotional upheaval. Their invention of that regulation was entirely unnecessary, too. As Chief Medical Officer, McCoy could have declared Spock unfit to command at any point. But that would have been too easy. Too cannon.
Chekov really threw me. His hair was short, curly, and blonde, for one thing; his accent was incredibly thick; and his sudden skill with transporters was... out of nowhere. He is, apparently, now the TOS Wesley Crusher. Eesh.
Nero was also lame. Khan was a much more chilling villain. Hell, Shinzon or whatever Picard's double's name was, was better, and the TNG movies are... well, that's another kettle of fish entirely, although I immensely prefer them to this movie. Nero's best bit was his introduction, and it was practically comedy. "Hello Christopher..." They're playing at Star Trek, but aren't... really it. Not to mention, Nero's motivations were old hat, and the "science" involved for his "great revenge" was fuzzy at best. In fact, there's not a whole lot holding the plot together except explosions. The amazing thing about Trek technology was that, internally, it made perfect sense. The "red matter" at the heart of this "adventure" was... a placeholder. What happened to good old Trek ingenuity? I guess that's what happens when you have a big budget and only commonplace inspiration.
So there was no new interesting technology; actual Trek-sounding dialogue was re-used from old movies, so the funny bits were missed by half the audience and the serious bits felt tacked on; and there was no cerebral content to it by any stretch of the imagination. Star Trek has often been based on Shakespeare, and, to misapply a "Spock vs Q" quote, "Shakespeare would be apalled."
Character assination: Sarek is the obvious one. By re-doing him, they re-did Spock. Mark Lenard is probably turning in his grave right now. That's not alternate timeline, that's re-writing the fundamental essence of who these people are, and why they are. Kirk wasn't just headstrong, but a delinquent; and, as it took me embarrassingly long to realize, by making them all this young, they cut out significant parts of the development of each character. Spock's development is almost nonexistent, and what is there is completely opposite Spock--and Kirk's is worse. He never met Gary Mitchell. Don't understand how important that is? Most of his whole personal history isn't there. He's not just alternate-timeline different, he's an ill-matured, ill-qualified, completely different person.
Then there's the "romance" bit. It completely threw me. If Uhura gets with anybody, it's Scotty. Everybody knows that. But that was a distinct impossibility the way this Scotty was set up, and anyway shouldn't happen til they're quite a bit older. Her with Spock was worse than Caspian/Sarah in the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. Awful. Even plot-wise--it was superfluous and out of nowhere. And again, it violated what we know about how the Trekverse works. Fellow officers don't PDA on transporter pads like that, certainly not as the setup for a cheap comedy line.
Then there's the destroying of Vulcan... all things considered, probably my absolute most detested part of the movie. Are they completely insane? This isn't just an alternate timeline, it's practically flat out war on Gene Roddenberry's creation. You can't have the Federation with Vulcan. It helped found the Federation, it helps guide it and shape it. What they did to Vulcans in this movie, from Sarek to the planet as a whole, was simply despicable. Instead of being major players, they're simply props for comedy, stick figures of tragedy in the background. Even Spock... they used him, they used his humanity, as the driving gear in what little character development there was.
Spock's conflict between his heritages has always been the great strength of his character, but in this movie they showed only two things even remotely connected to that, and showed it for another purpose entirely: 1. Violent!Spock, and 2. Love-stricken Spock, and they did it to paint a stronger difference between TOS!young-Spock and New Trek!young-Spock. The latter is completely OC. Like Sarek, he simply shares a name with his original blueprint. Leonard Nimoy has said he had a hard time with the third season of TOS because the people in charge didn't care about the characters and kept trying to steer them in ridiculous directions. ("Spock's Brain" was one of the worst examples that actually made it to air.) I can't believe he didn't have the same problems with this movie. But apparently not.
This is not to say there were moments I didn't enjoy, but even those parts--like Spock's greetings to Kirk in the cave--were "sops" to fans. Just gauging the reaction of the group in the theater to those bits, both humorous and sentimental, I'd say maybe a 1/4th of that small group knew anything about the original series, and overall, while there were a few blatant "Awesome!"s at the end, I think most of them were about as confused as I was.
In one way, the movie rushes headlong into the familiar set-up, at least in the sense of everyone on the bridge at their appropriate places. But the Kirk/Spock friendship begins developing not of its own accord, but because older Spock tells young Kirk it ought to be doing so, so snap to. This is the worst sin an author can commit, especially a fanfic author--using outside influence to get the universe to the point you want it to be at without letting what makes it special happen at all! All appearances, no heart. So much for the claims of New Trek fans that this movie is all about friendship and character development.
Speaking of plot devices: the alternate timeline is one of the biggest problems with the movie and it's saving grace. They get to screw with the amazingness of the original series but at the same time leave it untouched because it's "an alternate timeline." The problem is, the new generation of fans is only going to know this version. Plus, like every other action movie coming out these days, it's "epic" without being epic. Not to mention, it fails to be internally consistent. They didn't just create a new timeline, but a new universe, violating all the sci-fi laws Trekverse has abided by concerning other timelines and how these things work. As noted above with character development.
Star Trek lasted 40 years before getting "reinvented..." I gues now we have to deal like other fandoms. Unfortunately, Star Trek is not like other fandoms. It's unique in the history of television, and in the range and depth of this 'verse. (Sure, Star Wars is big, detailed, yada yada yada. But that's not under discussion here, or under attack by a new movie. Go with it for a minute.) Those who wished to contribute officially to this 'verse have always had a great deal of respect for what has gone before, for the fragile vision of hope and liberty at the heart of Gene's creation. Even when they made changes, they did so in ways that harmonized with the larger whole. The first example of this is, of course, TNG. When it revolutionized the Trekverse, lots of people were unhappy. But it was still Star Trek. Most people came to realize that, and to love it for the same reasons they loved the original series. This movie blew that tradition of creative, positive change to hell.
As much as I wanted to like this movie, I just can't. Like the Harry Potter movies, it has bits and pieces that are decent, but as a whole, and especially considered its place in the wider Trekverse, I feel that as a fan of the original spirit and intent of Gene's genius vision, I cannot support this movie or the direction its sequels are most likely headed.
It was perhaps inevitable. But now, however awful the thought, there are two Treks: Gene's, and Abrams'. It's going to split fans ten ways from Sunday, and this beautiful creation will never be the same again.
But I do believe there are enough people out there who understand what Star Trek is and is supposed to be, who believe in Gene's original vision enough, to hold fast to the true core of thought and love that made this series great. And when push comes to shove, this is the core that will survive. When our grandchildren are introduced to Star Trek, this will be the reason they love it. They, too, will have to come to grips with all the Wannabe's and frauds out there, but maybe they'll do a better job of creating real Trek, so that unfortunate... misunderstandings... like this new movie can be prevented in the future.
So, it appears I am in yet another fandom minority... opposing "New Trek." It's just not Star Trek. Like it if you must, but, if not for God's sake, then at least Gene Roddenberry's, at least get that straight.
Live long and prosper, Star Trek. And Trekkies. Your series needs all the help you can give it.
Despite JJ Abrams' best efforts...
STAR TREK LIVES!
~ * ~
Quoted Reviews: (trekspace.org) :
T'Bree: "Yes, elder Spock is there to be the guardian of what went on before, however, despite what they're telling us, it's all moot. What once was, isn't. And will never be again."
"I realized I was watching Galaxy Quest: The Serious Movie." (missed the username on this one)
TrekkieGal:
"I was told JJ Abrams was a Star Trek fan. Can I argue? No, because evidently his views differ from mine. So what exactly am I scared of? Well it's not change. It's losing something dear to me. Like the State repossessing my home thats been in my family for Generations. Like being tortured by a Cardassian being told I see 5 Lights. Like telling me "Forget what I know", and "This is not your Fathers Star Trek". Trust me, I don't watch Star Trek for my father. But what was started 40 years ago when women wore pants, and were able to handle a First Officers Position. Where, a Russian, an Asiam, and an African can share equal rights as humans. Where it was about the People, primarily since the budget sucked. Star Trek was never a Hot Rod among Muscle cars. It was never the Death Star, or Tie fighters. It was never a "Mind Blowing thrill ride that is this summers Iron Man". I never saw Iron Man, why would I want to watch this?"
(unknown username:) Agreed, this movie was lousy and made for male teens who are easily impressed by loud explosions and tatoos.
Tony's in Hawaii's review:
Star Trek XI: Another Disappointment
I know, I know, this movie is on another time line, (which was confusing and not explained in great enough detail) but, it’s not on an alternate universe. The characters in this movie should be recognizable enough that they are identifiable enough to the originals. The only character I liked was the McCoy character. Kudos to that actor, Urban I think his name was. All the other acting was sub-par. Even Nimoy just walked through his lines. Nimoy was in the movie just to help sell movie tickets to those 40 and older who were thinking about going to the movies. Oh, the actor who played Pike, he was pretty good.
The movie plot was non-believable and a rip-off of so many other sci-fi generic plots where some energy beam is bombarding a planet intent on destroying it. Initiated by a tall generic bad guy with tattoos… or bald… or both.
And speaking of rip-offs:
Kirk jettisoned to a snow planet and chased by huge local fauna. (Ripped from Star Wars Hoth planet and the Snowbeast)
Huge local fauna getting eaten by even bigger fauna while in pursuit of our hero (Ripped again from Star Wars in Jar Jar Binks water world scene)
Scotty in the water tube scene (Ripped from Men In Black and Futurama)
Checkov saving Sulu and Kirk with his fancy transporter skills (He’s basically Wesley Crusher with a Russian accent)
Just not Trek: Uhura’s and Spock’s public display of affection on the transporter pad. Unless your under some alien influence, this just does not happen in front of your shipmates. I think the Uhura character was discredited when she convinced Spock to assign her to Enterprise when the cadets were being assigned ship duty. You got the impression that she so easily manipulated Spock because she was “sleeping with the professor”. Not that this doesn’t happen in real life, but it’s just not the wholesome attitude Roddenberry first projected.
In my view this movie was not worth the $9.50 I paid to see it. I would not see it again. I will not buy it when it comes out in DVD. I’m presently looking for the receipt from Burger King so I can return the 4 Star Trek collector glasses I bought there last Thursday.
All the other Trek movies were better then this one, except the first one, which was worse. Most ST:TNG TV episodes were better then his movie. All ST:E episodes are better then this movie. The Futurama cartoons with Trek characters in them are better then this movie.
The movie made a few lame attempts at humor but it only worked with the McCoy character. This movie was not made for the thinking man. It was made for the visually stimulated individual. It you like special effect and watching things blow up with big sound, you’d probably like this movie. If you like figuring things out or watching character development, don’t bother, watch some of your old reruns on DVD.
JJ Abrams, please don’t make anything anymore. Any Trek filming should be left to Berman and Braga.
Grade: D (or 1 ½ stars out of 5)
