Star Trek (2009). While I’m not as serious a Trekkie than say some of those fellows who attend the Star Trek conventions, I think I’ve seen enough of the 43 year old series now. I was really looking forward to the 2009 film that brings audiences back to the early days of the original Enterprise crew since it was first announced.
Unfortunately, one theatre viewing later at Ang Mo Kio hub on Friday evening, I’m left with mixed feelings.
What went well? For starters, the visuals are amazing. The opening battle scene in space reminds me of the similar battle in Revenge of the Sith, if on a smaller scale. There’s also a scene where Kirk gets chased by a huge critter at the ice planet Delta Vega: that was one scary looking computer-generated fellow.
Surprisingly too, most of the cast did a great job in their roles, with many nods towards famous scenes and lines repeated from the series and earlier films or just new takes. These would include Spock’s lines on theoretical improbability, Kirk’s reaction to the hypospray, the doomed Red-Shirt, and the Kobayashi Maru scene, first introduced in II: The Wrath of Khan. All delightful and funny at the right spots. Zachary Quinto – Heroes’ Sylar – as the pointy-eared ‘bastard’ Spock is Leonard Nimoy’s Spock channeled, and really deserves all the praise heaped on him by critics for his role in the film. Karl Urban has Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy nailed down too.
But Chris Pine’s Kirk is painful to watch. In trying to portray a younger and uninhibited James T. Kirk, what you get instead is a smug and arrogant prick that you’d be pining – no pun intended – for this ass to disappear alongside Vulcan into the Black Hole. So Shatner’s Kirk also bedded alien women. But at least his Kirk was charming.
But what really was the biggest problem for me? It was the story. No sophistication. No subtlety. And worse of all, employing the oldest and most tired plot device in Star Trek: time-travel… yet again. OK; time-travel stories are tricky to do, but they’ve been films that did them well: e.g. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and VIII: First Contact.
But the story in the 2009 film does something that none of the earlier films or TV series did. The new film uses a time-travel story to, basically, turn the entire Trek universe upside down. It introduces several key story events that renders inconsistent every other story that’s been already told in the last 43 years, barring the Enterprise TV series from 2001. In modern entertainment technology, it should had been called a ‘reboot’ – except that it isn’t, since the story starts in the correct (and only) timeline, but 10 minutes into it, branches into an alternate one. And throughout the movie it reminds audiences explicitly through the inclusion of the ‘old’ Spock played by Nimoy that the new story really ties in with the existing timeline.
I’m not dead set against reboots. Chris Nolan’s two Batman movies have shown audiences how it’s done. And the recently-ended Battlestar Galactica: Reimagined series shows that you can redo an entire series while remaining respectful of the earlier material. I think the new Star Trek film would had done better if it’d simply declared itself as a total and new reboot with no references to earlier material.
Story-wise, it’s the earlier scenes that work better than the rest. Early on we get to see Kirk’s birth amidst exploding chaos (literally) and Spock’s childhood.
Unfortunately, as soon as Eric Bana’s Nero shows up near Vulcan the story goes into lazy auto-drive mode. You get a villain returned from 150 years in the future, armed with a super-powered ship Narada that blows apart everything the Federation throws at it. The ship’s invincible (boring) but you never know why apart from merely that it comes from the future. Villain’s motivated by revenge, but you’ll never really feel any empathy for him. Kirk, Spock and the new Enterprise crew defeat him with lots of explosions, phaser fights thrown in. And upon victory, the Enterprise warps away to discover new worlds and lifeforms over Nimoy’s “Space: The Final Frontier” voice-over. That’s it for the story.
And as for Nero’s little time-travel jaunt, where’s the Relativity starship when you need her? That vessel is from the 29th century – which employs technology superior to Narada by 400 years if one wants to go with the technology by years game. And that ship, established in Voyager, was to watch out for time anomaly freak shows like this.
And the Enterprise sets are incongruent. The Enterprise bridge and corridors are so pretty and perfectly manicured that it looks like a storefront by Apple. But the engine room looks like a 1940s refinery with its big pipes and steel columns!
Then there’s the musical chairs equivalent scene of “Who wants to be Captain”. Utterly stupid.
And the superfluous fencing scene between Sulu and the Bad Romulan. Why do Starfleet officers carry phasers if they’re not going to use them in fights to the death? Might as well issue all of them with pirate-y sabres and red bandannas instead. Arrrrrrr!!!
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In all, whether one will enjoy the movie depends on how serious a fan of Trek one is. Ling has seen all the films, and most of Voyager, but doesn’t really know the story’s universe – she liked the new Star Trek film. If you’re not a (big) fan and thus without reference point, you’ll enjoy it too.
Me, this was yet another missed opportunity. Great visuals and effects, great cast, largely great acting, but a story that made me cringe.
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