With the advent of Netflix and the dwindling choice of quality movies, my wife and I rarely go to the cinema anymore. I'll usually go once or twice a year, saving my trips for movies that should be seen on the big screen. Star Trek was one of these. I wanted to see this one for several reasons. For one, the original Star Trek TV series is probably my favorite show of all time. Two, I saw that J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost (as well as Alias, Fringe, etc.), was directing. We are such fans of the storytelling in Lost, I knew he'd do a great job. And, three, the movie has received great reviews across the board.
But, when I left the theatre around 12:30 am (we even went to the Thursday sneak peek show, something we never do), I felt like, to be fair, I needed to write two reviews. This movie was made with the idea that the majority of those who will see it are probably not very familiar with the original series. Most probably grew up watching The Next Generation and its minions and the original was not exactly prominent in their minds. And, even for those old enough to remember the original, not all are huge fans like me, so the movie attempts to appeal to all audiences.
So, here are my two reviews:
Epic Summer Blockbuster Grade: A
For the general movie audience, this is a great movie. It occurred to me at one point that I hadn't seen a film on this type of epic scale since The Lord Of The Rings. As summer blockbuster escapist entertainment, it's extremely satisfying.
There is a scope, color and grandeur to the film that is a "feast for the eyes," as they say. The action is often wonderfully paced, and takes you on a roller-coaster ride that will both exhaust and thrill you. It has all the elements of an engaging story--tension, light comedy, romance, etc., and pushes all the sensory buttons to make you glad you came, and for many, likely want to come again.
But, the main strength of the film was the display and development of the characters. And, with J.J. Abrams directing, I fully expected this. Abrams has shown himself to be a master at building a character from the ground up, making the back story be the main story--giving us the background on what makes a character they way he or she is.
His main focus in this regard is with the characters of Kirk and Spock (the others--Uhura, Sulu, Checkov, Scotty--are accurately portrayed and fun to watch, but more window-dressing than anything). While I had some issues with his vision and execution (see my purist review), the development of what made Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk, and Spock, Spock, felt in many ways authentic, emotionally connected, and certainly, compelling. It reaches beneath the surface of their well-known personalities and paints a nice picture of their origins, the connection to their past, their family, and ultimately, to each other. Abrams successfully builds a foundation that generally rings true with the characters in the original series.
Original Star Trek Purist Grade: B-
But, character isn't the only thing you need for a really great movie. You also need a sense of wonder (see my past article on this topic here). And again, this is also something I expected from Abrams, but was disappointed not to see.
In an interview I saw, Abrams tells the story of receiving a gift as a child--a "magic" box. His father told him: 'now, you can open this box, or you can leave it closed.' Abrams chose to leave it closed. He decided, no matter how great the contents of the box were, the magic was much stronger not knowing what was inside. That's what he has done with Lost. It's not about figuring out all the puzzles and uncovering the secrets, it's about relishing in the unknown, the mystery--the wonder.
At the very end of Star Trek, we hear the familiar lines from the original series: "Space...the final frontier...to boldly go where no one has gone before." But sadly, this was a sentiment merely pasted onto the end of a film that had little sense of exploration or the unknown. I know the main story was about character, but to leave out the wonder element really did a disservice to what made the original series so memorable.
As you saw, my "star trek purist" grade isn't an "F". There are many elements in the film that will please the series' fanatic, and they do bring back the elements of strength and conviction that were lost with The Next Generation, etc. But, other than the character strengths mentioned above, for the most part, I felt like this was more of an homage to the original series--giving us nuggets from the original we are nostalgic for--but ultimately changing the format to conform with the 21st Century universe.
And, that universe is one of virtual reality and digital stimuli more than it is about what is really "out there" or beyond us. While I said that many would enjoy roller-coaster feel of the special effects and action, I also felt that they were overdone in many ways. There was so much happening in sight and sound that I was almost too mesmerized to know that something was missing.
It really felt akin to the pulse of the latest video games that are so prevalent with the younger generation. Entertainment today is more about sensation than about ideas, more about the what the eye beholds than what the mind can conceive. In this way, it's not about wonder because it deals mostly in what we can see, not what we can imagine. The original Star Trek, even with its cheesy special effects and culturally-dated delivery, was superior because it reached into the realm of the unseen--philosophy, cultural vision & optimism, and very often, the spiritual & divine.
Abrams admits he was never a big fan of the original (his co-writers were), so maybe that's why he didn't carry this element with him into the new film. But, I suspect he did know, and perhaps in the name of profit, felt he needed to please the audience of today more than the audience of the original. And sadly, the audience of today has seen little of true wonder in movie-making. Mostly (pardon the cliche), sound and fury, signifying nothing.
So, maybe this part of the review isn't as much an indictment on the movie itself, but more an obituary for what has been lost in this genre of sci-fi, cinematic story-telling. I was hoping to see it resurrected with this latest Star Trek installment, but I fear it may never come again.
5 comments:
I largely agree with you. I watched TOS as a kid. However, a lot of non convention Trekkies like me (I didn't memorize scripts or wear costumes, but I honestly feel connected to the series and subsequent series) also found the 'Star Wars' vibe objectionable.
In TOS, TNG, Voyager, DS9 or Enterprise, if Scotty had beamed into a tank of water and gotten flushed, he'd have been seriously injured, as he would be in real life. There is a reason Stephen Hawkings and most NASA personnel love Trek. It's sci fi with a brain. This wasn't.
I like to say Star Wars is Science Fantasy, while Star Trek is Science Fiction. Red matter, red monsters which can snatch and eat an animal faster and stronger than Kirk but not Kirk, and Kirk hanging off ledges for half the film fit more with "Luke, may be the force be with you..." than Star Trek.
I was also very unhappy with the complete destruction of the old time line. But if this turns out to be a parallel universe (Mirror, Mirror) rather than a new time line, I'm OK with that.
On the other hand combining Nurse Chapel and Uhura into one character worked for me.
The best thing about the film was the casting. It was really, really good. Having a real Russian play Anton Chekov made that character bloom. Having a real WASP play Kirk didn't hurt, either. Quinto and Pine are both fine actors, and they showed it here. I wonder if Quinto's pay scale may rise above the charts for future Trek's though. Sulu? Harold and Kumar go to Vulcan... OK, that didn't turn out to be bad, either. After all, if Kumar can work for Barack Obama, who is himself accused of being a Vulcan, why can't Harold?
The Superman storyline reinvents itself about every 20 or 25 years, but it ads a new alternative earth and alternative universes (and we don't have Supes, we're on Earth Naught... Earth Prime has the Superman of the 1960s, Earth 2 the World War II Superman, Earth 3 has the 1980s Superman. At some point it will become formal that Smallville's Superman is on Earth 4.
This works way better for me than an alternate timeline that wipes out the entire history of the franchise, which is what they did here.
A better explanation of the creation of black holes would have been more in line with Trek, (sucking into a universe which has not yet experienced it's big bang would do it, 'red matter' does not) ...
On the other hand, having a green Rigelian Animal woman be a Star Fleet Student was brilliant.
Great comments, Barb! You're a more erudite sci-fi fan than me. Sci-fi with a brain...love it!. And, I didn't remember that Sulu was from Harold & Kumar. Probably best that I didn't. I also don't watch Heroes, so that worked too. I agree, that the casting was one of the best traits of the film. Abrams was wonderful at that with Lost, too.
I left out many of my nit-picky complaints just so I could get the main critiques in. Yeah, the timeline was stupid. And, I was waiting for the time problem to be fixed and Kirk to know his father (didn't he in the original story?). And why kill off Spock's mother? (and why cast Winona Ryder??) What's up with the Spock/Uhura romance? And two Spocks hanging out from now on? All unnecessary plot points to me. The only thing I can imagine is, as you said with Mirror, Mirror, they always planned to have sequels for this movie and intend to fix this stuff later.
I'm a real Science Fiction Geek/fanatic, but I'm picky about my Science Fantasy. Science fiction is a discussion in the form of fiction of real scientific issues, ideally looking at how it would effect human interactions and society, while Science Fantasy looks at how people would act in fantasy situations.
Terminator and I, Robot look at emergent intelligence in machines, a real issue. "The Ghost in the Machine" is a title of a book by my ex-husband, a Yale Professor and computer scientist and the son of the computer scientist who wrote the first artificial intelligence program.
I usually stay away from vampires. I admit I got drawn into the Buffy series. But while Buffy/Angel was Sci Fant, Bones (same actor) is Sci Fi. On the other hand, the writing was much better in the Buffy/Angel series... Buffy's demons were more 'real people' than most of Bones' characters are.
Likewise, Lie to Me is Sci Fi, although the real research being done into micro facial expressions doesn't appear to be leading anywhere... it's the Cold Fusion of lie detection. The evidence that the micro expressions tell you if somebody is lying isn't there. I prefer the Science Fantasy of the Mentalist, it's way more fun. Real advances in lie detection actually work on how much people add in detail. Bad liars contradict themselves. Good liars don't add detail as much as truth tellers. But what kind of drama would take hours to have a guy tell the same story six times?
And, by the way, the Red Matter thing aside, if you tried to drill a hole into earth, the planet is molten, and the hole just wouldn't happen. Vulcan, likewise, is volcanic (DUH). What more, if a black hole did suddenly appear at the center of a planet, the planet would start to collapse much more slowly than in the new Trek movie, and it would spin faster and faster. From the outside, the event would take many years, even many centuries, not minutes. If the black hole were small enough, it could even not happen at all. Due to the time warp factor (yes, traditionally, Trek used real constructs) the collapse would appear to happen much faster if you were ON the planet than if you were outside. However, even there, the event would take much longer.
And even today we would see a Star going Supernova coming centuries in advance, there's no way a little debate in the Vulcan High Council 375 years from now could slow Spock down enough to stop him from saving Romulus. Not that putting a black hole in the middle of the star would stop it from going Supernova. Some Supernovas actually end in black holes... they CREATE black holes.
Star Trek XI is really Star Wars in disguise, but with better character development. And I'm guessing that Winona Ryder is either a secret Trekkie or a big J.J. Abrams fan, and they got her for a song. That's how Whoopie Goldberg wound up on TNG. She was a fan willing to work for a lot less than her usual fee.
Again, great comments, Barb. Love your analysis. It all makes sense (especially the distinction between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy, and STXI being more "Star Wars" in disguise). I'm a writer/philosopher/theologian, so my analysis uses more broad strokes than yours does. Both are appropriate for Star Trek, I think, which is what makes the genre so compelling.
Well, you got me started blogging. First, I did the blog I already told you about. Then, I did a blog about my building, which has wonderful facilities, but which is badly served by realtors who fail to show those facilities to potential renters and buyers. Then, I started a revised website on the building...
But then I found Star Trek fan films. I found some of them were good. But all the websites about them were for the serious Trekkie who more or less had the scripts memorized, and not for the lite Trek fan who would never go to a convention or wear a costume.
So, I created a website for the lite Trek fan who was only interesting in watching, for example, actual shows, and not two minute intros for series that are never made.
This is it:
http://startrekreviewed.blogspot.com/
I also have a link back to your blog, which I will leave unless you object. See Blog 201.
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