Yesterday I spoke about Star Trek Online, and I'm going to continue along a similar vein by giving you my thoughts on JJ Abrams' 2009 reboot, Star Trek (referred to henceforth as New Trek). I'll be quick and blunt about this. On the face of it, I thought it was a pile of steaming shit. I struggled to sit the entire way through that movie without pitching violence and outright hate at the screen, and I learned quickly that I was not alone in my nerdrage. Oh, the butthurt over that movie. What struck me the most was the fact it was made by a man who's gone on record as saying that Star Trek isn't enough like Star Wars. I wonder if we were to pay a visit to Mr Abrams' home, would we discover that he has systematically mutilated the ears of his dogs in order that they look more like cats? Would we take tea with him to find him serving plates of muffins mashed flat by a swift and brutal hand so that they'd more closely resemble cookies? This is not the man to be making Star Trek. This is a man to be given white wallpaper and a box of washable crayons. What clinched my annoyance with New Trek was the fact that one of the lines to promote was 'this is not your father's Star Trek.' Funny thing is, Mr Abrams, I rather liked that Star Trek, but I didn't know my father, so thanks for bringing that up, Abrams.
Let's not forget that this is the man behind Lost, a show which ended with the loudest 'Meh!' in history.
New Trek was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The most common rebuttal to this is that it's science fiction, so the facts don't matter, right? No. Shush. Go sit in the corner. Star Trek is not Star Wars; it's science fiction, not space opera. This is not remotely to say that I don't like Star Wars for what it is. Far from it, in fact! But they are not the same beast, not by a long shot.
Grumpy spoiler warning. In one part of the film we see that a black hole permits time travel. Neat! That's a handy thing to know, isn't it? Here I was thinking that I'd be crushed to a singularity. Then, later, we see a black hole artificially created in the same way hungrily munching through a gigantic starship. Wait, wait. You said... Never mind. Nero, the villain in the film, strands Spock (the proper Spock) on the planet Delta Vega to watch Vulcan being destroyed. Now, I don't remember precisely where Delta Vega is meant to be in relation to Vulcan, but I'm fairly certain they're not even in the same solar system off the top of my head. I might actually be wrong on this point, but I don't think I am. Even if I am, do you think we'd need a special effects extravaganza on par with New Trek's destruction of Vulcan if we were to make a movie which featured the destruction of Mars, shot from Earth? "I speak Romulan. All three dialects." I have sat next to a student of linguistics when that line was uttered; you will not hear rage as articulate and focussed, like a breathless beam of hate heaped on the altar of New Trek for such idiocy.
Red matter. Fucking red matter. JJ Abrams, you piss off. First Star Trek isn't enough like Star Wars, now you're writing Lost into the equation?! Your magic
God, I couldn't help but love that movie.
What?
It was stupid shit. It was absolute tripe. In every way it was a clumsy, ham-fisted attempt on the name of Star Trek rather than a loving homage. I am super excited about the second one! I still can't sit through the movie in its entirety without humming the Imperial March or wondering if Prince Charles is having a nice morning. But I'm wired up wrong, I must be! I'm looking forward to a second film in this new take on the franchise! What kind of sick bastard am I?! Let me try to explain, and maybe you'll see things from a new perspective. I certainly did.
I couldn't explain to myself why I was still wanting to see more, even when what I was being shown was almost physically offensive, until I sat and had a chat with Simon (the Viking of World One Stage One Fame) who is, in many ways, a man that helps me channel my unfocused love/hate of something. I don't always agree with him on his take on a game or movie, but I enjoy our discussions, because he has a fairly reasoned approach to things. So I sat back while he explained to me why it was New Trek was not a blight on my DVD shelf (yes I fucking own the thing!) but a blessing, and the more I listened the more I found myself agreeing. Most of the movie we were given with New Trek felt like it was a kid in a costume, leaping up and shoutinging "I'm Star Trek!" The analogy isn't great, since what the kid was instead shouting was "I'm Star Trek, but not in a way you remember, I'm different! Let's play a different game!" In a lot of ways, including Leonard Nimoy's appearance, it felt like it was clinging to legitimacy by feeding us things we remembered rather than showing us a different take on the universe that we were familiar with. That might not be an entirely fair criticism to make of a movie which is the first in a breakaway timeline to a fifty year old franchise, but hey, that's the impression that I get.
But there were good things, too. There were, you stop laughing. Simon Pegg's Scottish accent is about as good as James Doohan's, so you in the peanut gallery can quit mentioning it. One of the things I hear in hushed tones from fans of Star Trek - and I mean the scary old neckbeards who're having these hushed discussions in shadowy corners as if expecting the Obsidian Order will swoop on them for their crime against the sacred Trek - is that the Big Three felt right. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban. Here were three guys which held the weight of the entire movie on their shoulders with every moment on screen. Here were three guys which weren't given the best script in the world to work with, but, I personally believe, had their hearts in the right places the whole time. I liked Pine's abrasive, headstrong prick of a young James T Kirk, a man who hasn't been tempered by his years in Starfleet. I liked Quinto's take on the impossible war of reason, logic and humanity in an ordered mind. Karl Urban as Leonard H McCoy, though? That man stole every scene he was in and with good reason.
Dammit, Jim!
What made the original series (TOS) and its movies was the dynamic between the three heroes of the Enterprise. We all have our favourite secondary characters, true enough, but the beating heart of Star Trek was Jim, Bones and Spock and, in a way that I think absolutely works with the beast they created, New Trek got them right. It's also got the distinction of being visually stunning. Point defence phasers? Probably about my favourite introduction to anything in Star Trek for a long while. The interior of the Enterprise has been compared to an Apple store ad nauseum, and to say nothing of those who didn't like the exterior redesign (Flare ALL the lenses!) but frankly, New Trek was incredibly pretty to look at. The battle between the Kelvin and the Narada? I got chills. I'm not kidding. It was spectacular.
So here's one last thought to put things into perspective. New Trek felt in many ways like dumb action without much of a plot, too much happening while it hoped to ride on being something new and shiny. Who couldn't say something similar of Star Trek: The 'Motionless' Picture? A movie which in many ways felt like too much of a plot with nothing really happening. What we got after that was Wrath of Khan, arguably one of the greatest science fiction action movies of all time and definitely my favourite amongst the entire back catalogue. Star Trek: Generations? A movie fighting to snatch the baton from its predecessors and break into a jog on the big screen rather than being scuppered by people's expectations of what a Star Trek movie ought to be? Then we got First Contact. Arguably another of the great science fiction action movies of its time and 'the one good Next Generation film.'
I hated JJ Abrams' Star Trek. I will be first in line to see the next adventure of this bright, young new crew and their gleaming white Enterprise. Go figure!
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