Star Trek (****)
Directed by: J.J. AbramsStarring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Winona Ryder
Seen: May 9th 2009
**** Out of ****
(italics added after second viewing)
After seeing J.J. Abrams’ re-imagining of the Star Trek franchise, I was (and am still) in a Star Trek frenzy, and decided to try and rent another Star Trek movie at a local DVD shop. To my horror they did not have a single Star Trek film, the girl behind the counter did not even know of it, and that is the exact injustice the 11th film in the series is here to correct. In my opinion it will be successful, because man, this is such a cool movie, from the action set-pieces to the production design to the acting and storyline: everything just works. Regarding the DVD, we settled for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (RotS), which I was a big fan of two years ago, and what a disillusionment I had set myself up for.
Everything in Star Trek was better than what RotS had on offer, except maybe for the scale of the film. And I mean that. The acting in RotS is caricature-like, whereas Star Trek is completely serious about what it is doing. RotS almost constantly has tongue firmly in cheek (but is it intentional?), almost annoyingly so, Star Trek has great moments of comic relief. The lightsaber fights in RotS (upon seeing them again) feels extremely staged, as if they are purposely avoiding kill-blows to allow for more cool-looking saber-swishing, Star Trek’s fights are gritty and in your face. RotS’ Jedi leaping and bounding and fighting are at times very (unfinished) CGI, Star Trek relies on a reality-based look and feel.
By the end of RotS I was even staring in disbelief at the consoles, which are heavily dated as they were originally designed in the 70’s. Star Trek’s consoles were also designed in the 70’s, and they still look believable and cool (even though they have also changed over the years, the old ones did not age so much). In fact, everything from Star Wars dates quickly, whereas Star Trek seems to somehow remain current, and believable I have always discounted Star Trek as the second rate sci-fi phenomena, but not anymore, that title now firmly goes to Star Wars, as it seems that apart from budget, nothing else had the same level of input as the Star Trek films.
As a Romulan ship appears from nowhere (through time), the Federation Starship USS Kelvin investigates and communicates. The ship’s captain is murdered, and acting quickly, Acting Captain George Kirk saves 800 lives in his short tenure of 12 minutes. As he dies fighting the Romulans, and saving his crew, his son is born, James Tiberius Kirk. The scene is surprisingly emotional as George converses with his wife before and after her giving birth, while he is steering the Kelvin onto a collision course to save everyone, in the first 5 minutes of the film. James grows up to be a rebellious young man who decides to join Starfleet after a drunken fight with four officers, and the subsequent conversation with their captain, Christopher Pike (Greenwood).
On the first trip towards the space station he sits next to Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Urban), and close to Uhura (Saldana). The three continue their Starfleet education, and in their third year, as Kirk (Pine) is brought before a disciplinary hearing, a distress signal from the planet Vulcan ends proceedings as everyone heads to the rescue. Kirk “cheated” on a test designed by Spock (Quinto), and the two find an immediate dislike in each other, which is exploited to good effect in the film, as the two later start out on their great friendship the world has come to know.
I had only two small problems with Star Trek, and as I've just mentioned, both were minor. The USS Enterprise, the flagship of so much Star Trek before this film, is more of a background prop with one or two glory shots (which are so cool). You barely get to see the characters working on its consoles and really interacting with the ship like before (like, for instance, in First Contact). The second, even smaller issue I have is with the issue of time travel. The writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also writes LOST, have gone completely the opposite route of their LOST time-travel theory. In LOST the slogan is Whatever Happened, Happened, and no amount of time travelling will change anything, since it already happened. But in Star Trek, that is not the case, as some characters now remember dual timelines and are conscious of alternate realities. I prefer LOST’s approach to time travelling, but for the purpose of this film I willingly accept what is given here, since it is done convincingly.
From Kirk and Spock’s interaction to Scotty and Deep Roy living on a remote outpost to the space battles and revenge driven bad guy Nero (Bana) to Leonard Nemoy returning as an older Spock, Star Trek is awesomely cool and great fun to watch, and almost more so upon a second viewing, and Paramount also did not use the critic’s response to the film as a base for its marketing campaign for nothing.
After seeing J.J. Abrams’ re-imagining of the Star Trek franchise, I was (and am still) in a Star Trek frenzy, and decided to try and rent another Star Trek movie at a local DVD shop. To my horror they did not have a single Star Trek film, the girl behind the counter did not even know of it, and that is the exact injustice the 11th film in the series is here to correct. In my opinion it will be successful, because man, this is such a cool movie, from the action set-pieces to the production design to the acting and storyline: everything just works. Regarding the DVD, we settled for Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (RotS), which I was a big fan of two years ago, and what a disillusionment I had set myself up for.
Everything in Star Trek was better than what RotS had on offer, except maybe for the scale of the film. And I mean that. The acting in RotS is caricature-like, whereas Star Trek is completely serious about what it is doing. RotS almost constantly has tongue firmly in cheek (but is it intentional?), almost annoyingly so, Star Trek has great moments of comic relief. The lightsaber fights in RotS (upon seeing them again) feels extremely staged, as if they are purposely avoiding kill-blows to allow for more cool-looking saber-swishing, Star Trek’s fights are gritty and in your face. RotS’ Jedi leaping and bounding and fighting are at times very (unfinished) CGI, Star Trek relies on a reality-based look and feel.
By the end of RotS I was even staring in disbelief at the consoles, which are heavily dated as they were originally designed in the 70’s. Star Trek’s consoles were also designed in the 70’s, and they still look believable and cool (even though they have also changed over the years, the old ones did not age so much). In fact, everything from Star Wars dates quickly, whereas Star Trek seems to somehow remain current, and believable I have always discounted Star Trek as the second rate sci-fi phenomena, but not anymore, that title now firmly goes to Star Wars, as it seems that apart from budget, nothing else had the same level of input as the Star Trek films.
As a Romulan ship appears from nowhere (through time), the Federation Starship USS Kelvin investigates and communicates. The ship’s captain is murdered, and acting quickly, Acting Captain George Kirk saves 800 lives in his short tenure of 12 minutes. As he dies fighting the Romulans, and saving his crew, his son is born, James Tiberius Kirk. The scene is surprisingly emotional as George converses with his wife before and after her giving birth, while he is steering the Kelvin onto a collision course to save everyone, in the first 5 minutes of the film. James grows up to be a rebellious young man who decides to join Starfleet after a drunken fight with four officers, and the subsequent conversation with their captain, Christopher Pike (Greenwood).
On the first trip towards the space station he sits next to Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Urban), and close to Uhura (Saldana). The three continue their Starfleet education, and in their third year, as Kirk (Pine) is brought before a disciplinary hearing, a distress signal from the planet Vulcan ends proceedings as everyone heads to the rescue. Kirk “cheated” on a test designed by Spock (Quinto), and the two find an immediate dislike in each other, which is exploited to good effect in the film, as the two later start out on their great friendship the world has come to know.
I had only two small problems with Star Trek, and as I've just mentioned, both were minor. The USS Enterprise, the flagship of so much Star Trek before this film, is more of a background prop with one or two glory shots (which are so cool). You barely get to see the characters working on its consoles and really interacting with the ship like before (like, for instance, in First Contact). The second, even smaller issue I have is with the issue of time travel. The writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also writes LOST, have gone completely the opposite route of their LOST time-travel theory. In LOST the slogan is Whatever Happened, Happened, and no amount of time travelling will change anything, since it already happened. But in Star Trek, that is not the case, as some characters now remember dual timelines and are conscious of alternate realities. I prefer LOST’s approach to time travelling, but for the purpose of this film I willingly accept what is given here, since it is done convincingly.
From Kirk and Spock’s interaction to Scotty and Deep Roy living on a remote outpost to the space battles and revenge driven bad guy Nero (Bana) to Leonard Nemoy returning as an older Spock, Star Trek is awesomely cool and great fun to watch, and almost more so upon a second viewing, and Paramount also did not use the critic’s response to the film as a base for its marketing campaign for nothing.
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