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In a lot of ways, watching the new “Star Trek” is like watching Michael Mann’s "Miami Vice“. The only thing that film had in common with the TV show it’s based on is the location and the characters’ names. It’s also a good film. J.J. Abrams new "Star Trek" not so much. It feels like watching people who just happen to be named Kirk and Spock and Uhura and fly about on the Enterprise – which looks great, by the way. (Well, the outside. The bridge looks like it was designed by Apple.) But that’s really where the similarity to the Original Series ends. Which might be why the producers added Leonard Nimoy to the cast to reprise his role as Spock, the best part of the whole film. It’s ironic that he’s the most “human” character of the film, while the rest are broadly overdrawn cliches of their old selves. Scotty (Simon Pegg) in particular seems like he beamed in from a Scottish comedy show, providing badly misplaced comic relief that is as obvious and unfunny as a fart joke in a nunnery. But first things first. The film opens with a big space battle which gives us the birth of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine later on). Flash forward to a young Kirk speeding through Iowa in a stolen Mustang followed by a futuristic cop before ending up hanging over an abyss (a recurring motif in the film, so keep attention). Flash forward to Kirk brawling his way through an oddly contemporary bar before running into Captain Pike (a great Bruce Greenwood) who appeals to Kirk’s inner macho and gets him to sign up with Starfleet. Flash forward another three years and somehow, some way, the majority of the main cast ends up on the Enterprise. Somehow, some way, that whole opening takes way too long and I didn’t even mention Kirk snuggling up with a green-skinned woman, Kirk hitting on Uhura (Zoe Saldana), and Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test. The last bit the only recognizable characteristic Kirk 2.0 shares with Shatner’s Kirk of old, though missing the essence of that anecdote. But the plot finally gets going when the Enterprise is hurtled into a battle with the nemesis of the film, Captain Nero (Eric Bana), a tattooed Romulan miner who’s traveled back in time to seek revenge on Spock for wiping out the Romulan home world a whole lotta years in the future. (He also manages to find the time to wait 25 years for Spock to arrive despite his burning hatred doing... essentially nothing for a quarter of a century.)
Time travel plots are an old staple of Star Trek and especially the films ("The Voyage Home", "Generations", "First Contact"), but the twist here is that Nero’s messing with the time line has created an alternate one in which none of the characters are recognizable and the intelligent science fiction of the old show has given way to space battles, pretty young faces, and inexplicable sword fights. I know Sulu (John Cho) was a fencer(!), but there’s no excuse for facing two Romulans with a sword for no apparent reason when a planet’s at stake. Which is symptomatic of the weak script, which relies too heavily on coincidences (Kirk meeting old Spock by chance) and pseudo-scientific crutches (red matter?). The actors do their best. Zachary Quinto as Spock looks eerily similar to Nimoy and really tries hard, but has little in common with the beloved Vulcan. Pine makes a fine Captain, just not Captain Kirk. Karl Urban is the best of the new leading trio, nailing McCoy and apparently channeling the late DeForest Kelley, giving the best performance by far. The rest of the supporting cast, with Yelchin’s Chekov the most annoying plot device ever, have about as much to do as their old counterparts, but manage to do so without their inherently lovable quirks and characteristics. In a lot of ways, the characters only work because they can rely on the strong personas the original characters have taken on over time. Take that away, and you're left with barely realized characters that would struggle to make it in even the worst of blockbusters out there, put in a paper thin plot that would be laughable without all the canon and history Abrams is trying to do away with but has to rely upon anyways to make it work. Abrams’s direction is like everything he directs – very shaky. Worked for “Cloverfield”, but somewhat distracting for “Star Trek”. Even more distracting is the blatant over-use of lens flare in practically every single shot. The special effects are spectacular, as they should be in a predominantly action oriented space opera as there isn’t much plot or character development to distract from that. Maybe the sequels will delve deeper into the main protagonists, but I wouldn’t bet on it. In the end, the film accomplishes what it set out to do. Rebooting the franchise, de-aging the characters, and drawing in a younger demographic. But instead of exploring new frontiers, this one’s stuck in a by-the-numbers summer blockbuster. Ironic that one of the points the film seems to make is that “Sometimes, cheating is okay.” For a big cheat this is. Just don’t expect a lot of Trek in this “Star Trek”. |
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