[Editor’s note: Regular readers of SFScope know it’s very rare for us to review things twice. And we’ve never (so far) reviewed something three times. But this particular movie elicited strong feelings from both Michael A. Burstein and myself, and many comments from you, so I thought it’d be amusing, if not especially clarifying, to run this “tie-breaker” review. —Ian Randal Strock.]
Star Trek
Written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, Winona Ryder, Zoë Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana, and Leonard Nimoy
Rated PG-13
126 minutes
A couple friends of mine are having a disagreement. Michael A. Burstein wrote a glowing review of Star Trek for SFScope several days ago. On Saturday, editor Ian Randal Strock followed it up with his own largely negative review. As a friend of both men, and a fellow Analog science-fiction writer, I decided it would be fun if I wrote my own review to break the tie. With Ian’s blessing, I walked downtown to see the movie.
Only when I was halfway to the theater did I realize I’d probably be ticking off at least one of my friends with my review, and maybe both. Talk about your Kobayashi Maru scenarios.
I guess my review falls closer to Ian’s side. While I enjoyed Star Trek, it was with a great many reservations, and a foreboding about what the inevitable sequels will bring. Furthermore, if I had come into this movie with no foreknowledge of the canon, I don’t think I would have liked it. Hereafter lie spoilers, though fewer in the earlier sections, so consider yourself warned.
First, I’ll accentuate the positive. This is a very active and well-paced movie. It’s the second longest of all the Trek movies, but it never drags, even when laying out its character arcs. The special effects are everything we do, and should, expect from a $150 million movie—though that carries its own catch, which I will explain later.
The plot hinges on the vengeance of a Romulan from the future named Nero (Eric Bana), bent on punishing Spock for his failure to save his homeworld. His first incursion into the past kills James Kirk’s father, creating the alternate timeline that “reboots” the franchise. His second threatens the very existence of Vulcan, and soon Earth. It’s up to our familiar characters, thrown together in this crisis, to defeat him—with a nudge from the original Spock (Leonard Nimoy) at a crucial juncture.
Several performances are highly enjoyable. Karl Urban, playing Dr. McCoy, hews closest of the main cast members to the original character. His gruffness and cynicism are played up for humor—smart since McCoy is a good counterpoint character—and if we don’t see the original McCoy’s soft human heart, it’s only because the story doesn’t call for it. At the other extreme, Simon Pegg’s Scotty is almost nothing like James Doohan’s, but Pegg carries it off with a hyperkinetic charm. Again, he provides comedy to help break the tension, and yes, there is a pattern forming here.
Zachary Quinto handles the pivotal role of Spock fairly well, maybe as well as anyone not named Leonard Nimoy could. The deep gravitas Nimoy brought to Spock is nigh inimitable, so forcing the comparison is probably unfair. A good thing, then, that this is a different Spock, one whose struggle with emotions is far closer to the surface. It’s an interesting new wrinkle, and the Spock who will emerge from this in later movies will be a different man. Quinto will have the chance to make this Spock his own.
It didn’t help, though, that they give Quinto the worst Vulcan ears I’ve seen in 43 years of Star Trek. Pale, chunky, lifeless, horrid.
One other notable performance is Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike. Greenwood’s Pike is a hard-edged, no-nonsense officer, and his laying down a challenge to a young, rebellious Jim Kirk to make something of his life in Starfleet is the dramatic highlight of the movie.
But this leads into the things I didn’t like about Star Trek, and point one on that list is James T. Kirk. To be blunt, he’s a jerk, and I’m strongly tempted to use a more, ahem, colorful metaphor. Fine, the timeline-altering events of the movie have sent Kirk’s life down a different, troubled path, but we’re still expected to embrace this anti-hero not just as our protagonist, but as James Kirk, and I could not.
His tremendous potential comes across as an informed attribute, a combination of superb test scores (from someone who doesn’t seem to have the patience to sit down and take a test seriously) and what we know about “our” Kirk. When he rigs the famed Kobayashi Maru test to let him win the no-win scenario, there’s no brilliance or creativity, just the smirking arrogance of someone winning a first-person shooter on god-mode. He does much better playing the action hero, but it’s too late for the character by then. When Spock orders him ejected onto an iceball world (rather than stuck in the brig, or even beamed down to the world), I was with Spock.
Yes, William Shatner’s Kirk was self-confident to the point of arrogance, but he earned the right. Chris Pine’s Kirk’s arrogance just happens to be right, and there’s a huge difference.
Another problem is J.J. Abrams’s direction, especially of visual effects sequences. Too often he follows the modern school that holds that a shuddering, swooping, zooming camera makes for “authentic” action. Yes, film technology is now advanced enough that we can do this, so we must do this, no matter how disjointed the result. (I suspect Abrams watched a lot of Ronald Moore’s Battlestar Galactica before making this movie. Many space scenes are very similar, and the new warp-speed effect is a direct steal.) I never quite lost track of the action, but I was working harder than I ought to when I’m being entertained.
And while the main narrative written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman is strong and driving (if partly lifted from Star Trek II), grasp it at any of a dozen points, and it begins to crumble. Spock has to save some venerable Vulcans who carry the sum of his world’s cultural heritage—but his human mother’s conveniently right there with them? Kirk is dumped into an arctic wasteland, and just happens to stumble across the ice cavern where Nimoy-Spock was himself stranded? Kirk must goad Quinto-Spock into an emotional outburst to show he’s not fit for command in this crisis—but his own emotionalism doesn’t bar him from promptly assuming command? Well, movie logic is to logic as hospital food is to food. Oh, and the “huge monster erupts out of the ground to chase a good guy” scene, they ripped off from their own Transformers. I suppose it isn’t stealing if it was yours to begin with.
Orci & Kurtzman’s grasp of science is even worse. A supernova capable of destroying the entire galaxy? An ice world close enough to the hot desert planet of Vulcan that it hangs prominently in the sky? Magnetic distortion from Saturn’s rings? (From Saturn’s own magnetic field, sure, but the rings?) And my favorite, the water in a turbine listed as “Inert Reactant,” a glittering oxymoron. I’d hate these blunders in any movie: Star Trek gets no free pass.
The writers do well in giving hard-core Trekkers a huge number of cookies, often played for laughs. Sulu confessing his hand-to-hand combat training consists solely of fencing; Chekov struggling to pronounce his V’s correctly; the fate of a certain Admiral Archer’s pet beagle; yes, even Jim Kirk getting it on with a green-skinned woman. Dozens of these little gifts pleased me throughout the movie. They are responsible for dragging this review into positive territory.
And therein lies my greatest caveat with this new series. Much of the joy of the movie came from strip-mining Star Trek‘s past like the plains of Iowa. (Early on, young Jim Kirk almost falls into a canyon that has been mined out of the landscape. No, really. I guess they used the metals to build the Enterprise, right outside his hometown. No, really.) As much as Abrams and company sought to make a fresh start, this movie leans heavily on the legacy left to them. The changes they made ranged from intriguing to not quite bad enough to ruin things. If they set aside the crutch of playing off nostalgia and inside references, I’m unsure of their ability to make the next Star Trek entertaining on its own merits.
But they’ll be getting that chance. A confident Paramount greenlit a sequel even before the movie came out, aiming for a summer 2011 release. I wish them luck. I’ll even thank them for a fun two hours. But honestly, I’m more likely to spend the intervening time watching Star Trek II than Star Trek 2.0.