Star Trek – Paramount, 2009. Directed by J.J. Abrams.

Finally saw the new J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot movie. Because of various different weekend trips I didn’t see it until about a month after most of my friends so I’ve been hearing nothing but how everyone liked it. I enjoyed it too, and it was about as good as I was expecting. I had a general idea of the plot with only a few minor spoilers. Basically I went in expecting a Summer Hollywood blockbuster formula movie that pushes all the right buttons, and also puts in bits here and there for the hardcore Star Trek fans. I think that pretty much that’s exactly what it was. When you have that sort of formula and a competent production it’s kind of hard to not enjoy, whether or not it was a transcendent is debatable.

This review will contain spoilers.

What I liked – I think what I enjoyed the most were the bits that fleshed out each character and their field of expertise more. In the original Star Trek the characters all have their areas of expertise, but you never necessarily got the sense that they were the best at what they did. Sure Spock is the science officer who can do all the great calculations, Scotty is a good engineer who can fix things, but you never got the sense that it was entirely special.

In this movie you find out Uhura is a top member of her class, knows three Romulan dialects and is really good at filtering through communication static and such. Oh, so then it makes perfect sense that Uhura is the communications person with the ear thingy on the flagship of Starfleet. Similarly you find out Chekov is a young genius at doing complicated calculations and Scotty is a genius when it comes to transporter theory. I think there were bits about McCoy’s skill, but I might’ve missed it because of a guy next to me was talking during a lot of the movie.

I think Sulu kind of got the shaft in this one because you don’t get much of a sense of him, only bit they stick in is the joke about him being a good fencer. Of course the story was primarily about Kirk and Spock so really everyone else didn’t get to do all that much. Most of them had their one scene or two, but other than that were on the sideline for the majority of the movie. Only person other than Spock and Kirk who got more time was probably McCoy. McCoy as people have been saying was dead-on McCoy. He definitely had the most direct quote fan-service in the movie, but thankfully the delivery was good otherwise it would’ve been really annoying to have the winking and nudging. More on this later though.

The development of Kirk and Spock worked well. Spock was Spock and Kirk was definitely very Kirk-like. Chris Pine I think did a good job of being Kirk without necessarily aping William Shatner, but there were definitely moments when he really was sounding like him. I think Kirk’s attitude is what came across best.

Thanks Hollywood – Okay here’s where I get my geek on. This next section won’t be very organized. Star Trek has always been very convenient sort of science fiction as opposed to hard science fiction shows in the stylings of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. There’s a lot of convenient technology and deux ex machinas. Still though they were always more science fiction than fantasy. That said

What the heck is this monster doing in a Star Trek movie???

A great English teacher of mine in high school once spelled out for us why Star Trek was science fiction and Star Wars was fantasy. Science fiction deals with probabilities and fantasy is possibilities. While in the farthest reaches of space it’s possible that a wookiee or rancor exists, it’s certainly not probable. Though The Force is mostly what makes Star Wars complete fantasy as opposed to science fiction. The giant spider monster thing made this movie move more towards fantasy. Also Kirk being ejected from the ship for mutiny? I don’t think there’s any precedent for something like this, at least not within Starfleet. Seems like unduly harsh punishment, wouldn’t they court martial him or something?

Like I said at the beginning, at the foremost this is a Summer Hollywood blockbuster action movie. There were a lot of scenes in this movie where it felt like there were wacky hijinks and gags that helped space out the more Trekkie moments in the film. Moments like Kirk’s enormous hands, the giant monster creature on the planet, Scotty inside the tubes in engineering, felt very much like they belonged in another movie and struck me as silly.

There were a lot of fan service-y moments in the movie that had nothing to do with Star Trek and all about being cool. Okay haha, Sulu is really good at fancing but he carries around a foldout sword? What the heck? Not only does he have a non-fencing foldout sword but the one Romulan he fights happens to also have a sword instead of a phaser or disruptor.

Turns out this one scene they showed in the trailers really IS my only real scene. But who cares, FOLDOUT SWORD BEATCH!

Uhura undressing while Kirk is under the bed, total fan service. I knew it looked out of place in the TV spot and trailers and yes, it was totally gratuitous in the movie too.

Yep, this is Star Trek all right... wait a second...

Comic-book guy geek out – Star Trek has never been a slave to its science fiction tag (remember when Beverly and Geordi vented the airlock, but prior to doing it they took DEEP BREATHS?), but still I’m a believer in a movie adhering to the guidelines it sets for itself. For one thing, if that one tiny drop of Red Matter (*cough*Shizuma Drive*cough) was enough to destroy the entire planet of Vulcan then they should’ve made the giant enormous ball of Red Matter smaller if they wanted to be able to escape it at the end of the movie. Also I know they need the shot of Kirk seeing the Enterprise being built, but would they really have built it on Earth where its physical impractibilities would make it rather unfeasible? My meaning that the saucer section is so huge it would be quite a feat to prop it up during construction. Far as I know, they should be building at a space dock.

This was the most practical way to build this, on Earth.

I also had a problem with the interior of Nero’s ship, why the heck would you have a ship with huge bottomless pits in it? A mite impractical wouldn’t you say? A friend told me that this was explained in the comic book, but I like movies to stand up on their own. I also questioned why Old Spock would’ve been the one on the mission to save Romulus in the future, would someone that old be the the most *ahem* logical choice? Also assuming they were following the timeline he was probably on Romulus at the time, but I can’t know that for sure so I’ll leave it alone. Did the Romulan ship not have many guards? I know Kirk and Spock shot up the place upon arriving, but no guards on Spock’s ship?

Pointy

Also transporting from the planet back to the Enterprise while it was in warp was awwwwwwwfully convenient. Come on, really? While on the subject of Scotty, why does he have to go all the way down to engineering to eject the cores when all he’s going to do is press some buttons? Would it not make sense that he could be hitting those buttons from a more accessible area?

One thing I also wondered about was the Kobayashi Maru scene. This scene is referenced countless times and is a rather big plot point in Wrath of Khan. Kirk as we know cheated the test because the test was made to be a no-win situation. But was everyong supposed to know so obviously that he cheated? There’s no shadow of a doubt that Kirk cheated in here, but I was under the impression no one knew it really. I think I have to rewatch Wrath of Khan again. I just know that Saavik (who takes the same test at the beginning of Wrath of Khan) didn’t know how Kirk beat the test.

Another thing was McCoy. Karl Urban does a great McCoy that fits to a T without feeling like it’s an outright imitation. That said, it seemed like he was a bit too similar. I felt like a lot of his gruffness would’ve come with age which means he wouldn’t be the full on McCoy so early on in this story, but maybe you’d be able to see him going down that road. McCoy is a cranky old man, in this movie he’s a cranky man in general.

I've always been this gruff, didn't you know?

The other bit I had a sort of problem with was Old Spock. So he’s just sticking around? Already because of the destruction of Vulcan, the original Trek series (except Enterprise T_T) are now alternate universe since they can’t possibly exist in this same timeline where there’s no Vulcan. Also Old Spock meeting Young Spock and giving him a little talk about how you shouldn’t always do what’s logical, but what feels right. I kind of thought that would diminish Young Spock’s development as a character if he had Old Spock lecturing him on this. Isn’t it more meaningful if Young Spock learns to develop the friendship with Kirk and occasionally lighten up of his own volition? Speaking of Spock, Winona Ryder? Really? They did a great job of creating a basically unknown cast but Winona Ryder is in it, really distracting.

Final Thoughts – Despite these criticisms I did enjoy it a lot, and will probably end up seeing it in theaters again (if nothing else, for a less noisy experience). Though there are moments that are kind of un-Trek-like I don’t think any of them are SO bad that it’s necessarily crapping all over the franchise. It’s more like moments when I’m rolling my eyes thinking “Really? That’s what you’re doing? Foldout sword?” but it’s not so blasphemous that I can call the entire thing off. The movie was indeed very pretty and shiny, the innards of the ship were cool (more pipes is cool!) and the characters were well done. Sure, some of them got short changed and Sulu’s one moment was decidedly un-Sulu-like but it doesn’t bother me enough to hate it.

I’d of course see another Star Trek movie like this, but I don’t think I would grow to love it and claim it as my own like I do the other Star Trek movies. As well made as it is, it still feels like it’s not entirely for us geeks because they make it so accessible. It’s giving geeks some fun bits here and there, but it’s watered down Trek. There’s very little science fiction sort of stuff in here because it’s a Hollywood Summer Blockbuster action movie. I’m not sure that these movies will