Jeff reviews Star Trek

I procrastinated for a few days, and then a week, and now it's been over two months and I never posted any kind of review of "Star Trek." I'm going to post all of my notes anyway, if only for future reference via the pipes and gerbils that run this interwebby thing.

THUSLY, THERE BE SPOILERS. YE HAVE BEEN WARNED:

Stand down from Red Alert.

Based on the previews, the first 33 years of my life, fulfilled with six TV series, ten movies and about 700+hours of the "Trek" franchise, was about to be ruined. Yes, if the series continues based on events in this reboot by director J.J. Abrams, we can throw out everything we knew and start over again. Abrams didn't just start from the beginning, he turned it into an alternate universe where our favorite characters exist, albeit not in the world we knew.

And I'm actually okay with it. Go figure.

I think it was tweaked in a way that will make any changes acceptable, although it's really weird with Vulcan going all Alderaan and only 10,000 Vulcans left. I would have thought more would be scattered throughout the galaxy, however, since they're the delegated "first contact" representatives. Unlike other Trek movies where they'd time travel back to fix it all, Abrams wasn't having it. The planet and six billion Vulcans aren't coming back.

What really mattered was watching it my Darling Valerie during the movie, she not being much of a Trek fan and wouldn't know a Tribble from a Nerfherder, and yet she was completely captivated and having a whale of a time watching this movie. That allowed me to let go of the inner fuddy-duddy and enjoy the movie as another in a line of entertaining movies and shows that aren't terribly important in the grand scheme of things, only a lot of fun and, sometimes, thought-provoking.

Except I wouldn't put this in the thought-provoking category, because really this "Trek" is a BING BAM GOLLY GEEZ WOWZERS kind of summer action flick to draw in the masses.

Abrams started off with the familiar beeps and whistles, a quiet theme that snuck in once in a while, and plenty of little Trek tidbits for the hardcore fans. Every character gets their signature lines and humor, Kirk even woos a sexy green alien in her underwear, we hear a reference to Admiral Archer and his beagle, and we know when we see our first Redshirt that he's doomed from the start.

Now, a few notes, some good, some bad, some overly picky:

I admit to being very concerned about Chris Pine - whom I've never seen before - based on what I saw in the previews. After the movie, with the changes in the Trek mythology, I couldn't say that Chris Pine wasn't a good Kirk, because he wasn't the Kirk we knew, who was raised by his father. This Kirk was raised by a mean stepdad and is rebellious and acts out, but eventually he settled into a likable rogue who had that familiar swagger and charm who tends to "leap without looking."

We get to see Kirk "win" the Kobayashi no-win scenario, though we didn't see him get a commendation for "original thinking." What's up with that?

Columnist James Lileks: "Of the two movies that feature a bald angry Romulan driving a spiky gargantuan spacecraft to destroy earth, it's the best." Can't disagree with that. When the best part of "Nemesis" is watching Data die and not giving a flip, it's not much of a contest. Why can't Star Trek movies provide decent villains? I wouldn't have even known the angry rogue Romulan was Eric Bana if I hadn't been told before. And he wasn't even compelling, merely a lame, vengeful captain of a giant and highly dangerous ship riddled with metal and large gaps in need of rails, poor lighting and a crew wearing leather and tattoos. Wouldn't it be more effective and undermining to have a villain who actually came from a world of color and cotton fabrics, and provide some white hat-black hat banter with the protagonists?

 I'm going to give a head nod of agreement to the decision to cast actors and actresses who, for the most part, aren't famous or known to only a few viewers. We see them instead molded in the Trek universe without thinking, "Hey, that's the guy from so-and-so." For example, it took me a few minutes to stop thinking, "How much Trek did Karl Urban watch to imitate McCoy and get all ornery and slapsticky instead of being the hunk in LOTR or Chronicles or Riddick?" Of course, now they're pigeon-holed into these Trek roles and won't be able to get much work elsewhere, but hey, it could be worse. Let's meet them: 

Young Spock - Zachary Quinto, a.k.a. Sylar from "Heroes." He has some emotional issues and gets to date Uhura, although clearly his budding bromance with Kirk will change all of that.
Uhura - Zoe Saldana. No clue what she's been in, but she's got some sass, and a million new fanboy sites dedicated to her.
Sulu - John Cho, a.k.a. Harold of the "Harold and Kumar" movies, smoking far less pot here.
Chekov - Anton Yelchin from "Charlie Bartlett," which you didn't see and may never have heard of, trying to channel his best "nuclear wessels" accent of the original Chekov.
Daddy Kirk - Chris Hemsworth, an Australian actor in a lot of movies where the toilet flushes counter-clockwise.
Mommy Kirk - Jennifer Morrison of "House." The entire first ten minute sequence full of stuff all blowed-up and baby-daddy-mommy drama, I kept trying to figure out where I knew her from. And then she never came back.

And there were a few actors whom you should know by now pretty well:

Scotty - Simon Pegg of "Shaun of the Dead," pulling out the one-liners but not giving much of a glimpse into the genius our favorite Scottish engineer.
Spock's Earth Mom - Winona Ryder. I didn't even know it was her until Val said something later. My defense is that I wasn't looking for her to be a recognizable actress and her voice didn't ring a bell, either. Sometimes my powers of observation are lacking. Or it meant that I was enjoying the movie and not letting my mind wander.
Captain Christopher Pike - Bruce Greenwood, a first class "That Guy" in half the bad movies made the last 30 years.

Leonard Nimoy is the only original castmember to make an appearance, and it's not just an insignificant five second hello-goodbye, either. His furled eyebrows come back for a full half-hour of exposition to explain why we must unlearn what we have learned.

My theory as to why it doesn't have to be extremely awkward and odd that Starfleet would let new graduates run their biggest, newest, most brightly-lit ships: I think they're treating the just-graduated cadets as if they're from officer school, not the plebes who get killed quickly in engineering or cleaning toilets wondering "what the heck's going on out there with those stupid aliens." Think of it like in the English Navy days, the officers were young but because they were schooled as officers (mostly because they have rich parents, admittedly) and apprentice by the arm of the captain. "Master and Commander" would be my best example for that, I guess. Although I don't know if any Trek cadet would flush themselves out of an airlock to change their luck if the ship was adrift in space.

The scene on Hoth, er, the snowy moon, and the random MOUSs (monsters of unusual size), was too much like it was made to sell the video game later. It was action just for the sake of having action.

During the space battles I liked the wide shots of the action. Gives us a chance to catch our breath and see the enormity of space and the little ships going at each other. In a few words, the action is flashy, bright, quickly edited and there are gadgets galore.

Alas, I guess the Next Generation days are over, meaning that my chances of getting a Q-centric movie are gone as well. I really thought if they had incorporated Q into one of those films it had to be better than the crap plot that was, say, "Insurrection."

I would hope that we see the Klingons in the next one, especially since they were supposedly cut from this one, and they play such a major factor in the series and are the chief enemies in this timeframe. How can Abrams and his crew tweak them to make Klingons even cooler? We shall find out!

Another possible Klingon tie-in, could we get to see Worf's ancestors? Would Michael Dorn make an appearance as one of his grandfathers?