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
Warning: this review contains a lot of spoilers. If you’d rather not know the minutiae of the plot, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
I’m going to declare my heresy, here and now. I am not worshiping at the feet of J.J. Abrams.
That’s right, I don’t think Star Trek was fantastic, wonderful, an incredible movie, great for all audiences.
Nope. I think he screwed it up. Oh, it was a pretty good action movie. Lots of nice fights, some decent space shots, mostly believable characters. I’ll grant all that. But then again, I expect that in any movie. None of that makes it a stand-out.
No, what makes a movie a stand-out is when the plot holds together, when characters do believable things for believable reasons, things that are in keeping with who they are. And when technology acts believably for technological reasons. And when the filmmaker gets the hell out of the way so the audience can get lost in the movie-world, rather than being constantly reminded that there’s somebody behind the camera, and this is his view, not yours.
I’m not going to complain about rewriting the Trek universe; I accepted that going in, for good or ill. Someone gave J.J. Abrams the big box that was Star Trek and said “Here, J.J. Shake it up good, really screw with it; it’s yours.” And he did.
But when the hell did we start building spaceships that run on steam power? How many gigamiles of pipes and tubes are in each of these things?
No, no. Start at the beginning. George Kirk shows himself to be a heroic son of a bitch, suiciding himself and his dying ship to save the lives of his crew (not coincidentally including his very pregnant wife, who gives birth to James Tiberius Kirk as she’s getting away). As Christopher Pike later tells young reprobate Jim Kirk, “Your father was captain of a ship for 12 minutes, and he saved 800 people. Can you do better?” Well, of course not, but that gives us the unbeatable standard against which Jim will fight (so it’s almost anticlimactic when he’s captain for less than a day, and manages to save an entire planet).
But hang on. First we run into 12-year-old James, who’s stolen a 300-year-old Corvette, and is hell-bent on destroying it. Why? Who knows? Someone’s upset with him, calling him on the in-car phone to bring it back, but we have no idea who it is. So Jim finds that someone has moved the Grand Canyon to Iowa, and manages to throw the ‘vette into it. Oh, the poor car.
At the same time, on Vulcan, another 12-year-old, Spock, is having his own troubles, being half-human on a planet full of arch-xenophobes. Well, he’ll find his own way.
Ten years later, Jim is apparently set on amassing his own record: a police record. He picks a fight in a bar (why a bar in the middle of Iowa is full of Starfleet cadets and extraterrestrials is again left as a question). After a pummeling, Captain Christopher Pike wanders in, gives Jim that father speech, and tells him he really wants to join Starfleet. And suddenly, Jim realizes he does (yeah, okay). Jim then takes a night-time motorcycle ride (see Top Gun), and looks upon the under-construction hulk of what is probably going to the Enterprise in three years (why we are building the world’s least aerodynamic, and least able-to-withstand-gravity starship, on the surface of a planet is again, not a question nice people ask). He shows up—without a pass or reason for being there—on a military base, gives the motorcycle (did he steal it?) to someone walking by (see Stripes: “We’re not parking it. We’re abandoning it.”) and wanders onto the morning shuttle to Starfleet headquarters; a shuttle full of Starfleet personnel (yeah, yeah, Pike is there to welcome him aboard, but still). Pike says “in four years, you’ll be an officer, and in eight years, you’ll be in command (must be a really tough service). Jim, of course, says “I’ll finish in three.”
Somewhere in here, Spock is accepted to the (racist) Vulcan Science Academy, declines, and decides to join Starfleet. But three years later, Jim is an obnoxious almost-graduate, and Spock is a full commander, programming simulations. Jim reprograms Spock’s Kobayashi Maru, no-win-scenario test so that he can beat it. But rather than being clever about it, Jim is the very epitome of stupid. His cleverness isn’t in discovering a way to beat the program, or trying to get away with it. His cleverness was the behind-the-scenes reprogramming so that, while everyone else is taking the test, he can’t really be bothered to be there, chomping an apple and waiting for his patch in the program to take over. What a schmuck.
Of course, he’s called before a board of inquiry, acts the ass while questioning Spock, and is saved only by the distress call from Vulcan. Every cadet is suddenly promoted to ship duty, because the entire fleet happens to be somewhere else, and they have seven ships in orbit with no crews whatsoever. Every cadet, that is, except Kirk. That’s okay, his buddy Doctor McCoy manages a way to sneak him onto the as-yet-untested flagship Enterprise which apparently has two officers aboard—Captain Pike and Commander Spock—with every other station manned by cadets (oh, except for 17-year-old navigator Chekov and helmsman Sulu who’s just fine, except he forgot to take off the parking brake).
And we’re off to Vulcan, about 90 seconds behind the rest of the fleet. Fortunately, Kirk overheard Uhura muttering something, put it together with Pike’s thesis on George Kirk, and realizes the Romulans are attacking Vulcan. Thank goodness Kirk’s here! Arriving in orbit, the Enterprise manages to avoid being destroyed (as were the other six ships that arrived 90 seconds earlier).
Well, the Enterprise is going to be destroyed, too, until Nero, the chief Romulan baddie, realizes it is the Enterprise, and so Spock must be there, so he can’t destroy the ship. So he calls Pike over to talk, and Pike puts Spock in command, and makes Cadet Kirk, who shouldn’t be here at all, First Officer. Then he takes Kirk, Sulu, and a redshirt for orbital skydiving: they have to parachute down to the drilling platform before the Romulans can destroy Vulcan. In orbit, once you open the door in the shuttlecraft, your parachutists will instantly drop toward the planet (forget everything you thought you knew about orbital mechanics). Redshirt dies, Kirk and Sulu save the day, but just a little too late, and the Romulans manage to destroy Vulcan with an induced black hole. Oops. Fortunately, Spock was able to rescue his father and a handful of other Vulcans. Unfortunately, he watched his mother die. Oops again.
Well, the Romulans didn’t just want to talk: they wanted Pike for his knowledge of the alarm code to Earth. They’re going to use one of Khan’s little ear-slugs to force it out of him (see Star Trek II). But just to make the torture that much more horrible, Nero is going to walk around in knee-deep water while Pike’s tied to the table… until the camera pulls back and the floor’s dry.
Spock’s in command, Kirk’s his obnoxious First Officer, and the Enterprise is headed off to nowheresville to rendezvous with the fleet. Kirk gets obnoxious, and Spock… throws him out an airlock. Huh? Yep. “Get him off my ship,” and away goes Jim Kirk in an escape pod. No brig, huh Spock? Fortunately, there’s this ice planet right there, where Kirk manages to land. And then he goes for a walk. On an ice planet. When he has to assume there’s a rescue on the way for the Starfleet outpost 14 kilometers to the northwest. Well, Kirk runs into a polar bear that wants to eat him. He runs, and then a snow scorpion about five times larger than the polar bear grabs the bear. But the scorpion doesn’t eat the bear. No, it throws the bear away, and then takes off after Kirk. Fall down a hill, run into a cave, and suddenly there’s a man with a torch, and the scorpion runs away. It’s Spock. Not the Spock Kirk knows, but the Spock we know, Leonard Nimoy, looking about 500 years old.
This old Spock explains what’s going on for those of us steeped in Star Trek, explains that he’s stumbled back in time with Nero, who blames him for letting Romulus get blowed up (and, incidentally, his pregnant wife: lots of pregnant wives floating around in the 23rd century). Spock had actually been trying to create a black hole to destroy the supernova that was going to (and did) destroy Romulus. But it’s okay, see, it takes just one little drop of this red stuff to make a black hole, and Spock’s little science ship has this huge tank of the red stuff (why?). So anyway, Nero has ditched Spock on this ice planet to watch Vulcan get destroyed (aha! so the ice planet is maybe a moon of Vulcan? Else where the hell are we that Vulcan is big enough in the sky for Spock to watch?). And together young Kirk and old Spock trek the last few meters to the Starfleet outpost (tell me again, what was Spock doing in the cave? What was he burning in his fire? And where the hell did these massive carnivores come from on a planet covered with nothing but snow and ice?)
And we find Montgomery Scott, drunk and lonely because he’s a supergenius (lots of supergeniuses running around, too). The Enterprise is several light years from here, but fortunately for the movie, old Spock remembers Scott’s later discovery of a transwarp transporter formula that’ll let old Spock beam Kirk and Scott to the Enterprise. Yeah, okay.
Welcome back to the Enterprise, hi young Spock, by the way, I should be the captain, not you. But old you told me there’s this regulation that if you’re emotionally unable, I can kick you out. But you’re a Vulcan, so you don’t get emotional (well, except for the clothed love scene you had in the turbolift with Uhura, and telling the Vulcan Science Academy to piss off, and following your parents’ advice to find your own way). Kirk pisses off Spock enough that Spock suddenly realizes he has emotions, and therefore can’t be the captain (??), so he steps down, and Cadet Kirk, who three days ago was being tried for screwing up in the Academy, is now the Captain.
Great, sez Kirk, turn the ship around: we’re going to Earth to stop the Romulans.
Ohmygod! It’s an attack! The Romulans are drilling a hole into the bay just a few feet from Starfleet Academy. Everybody, all you cadets, run outside and watch. (Waitaminnit! Didn’t they just send all the cadets away on the doomed fleet that went to save Vulcan?)
We gotta stop them, says Kirk and Spock. Let’s beam over to the Romulan ship and save the day. Running gun battle, leaping from impossibly high bridges without railings to almost-as-high bridges without railings (Star Wars: The Phantom Menace), and Kirk manages to find Pike. Spock, meanwhile, goes the other way, finds old Spock’s ship (which greets him as Ambassador, and young Spock, being no moron, realizes something time-travelly is going on here), and flies inside the Romulan mining ship for like ten minutes (think Independence Day) before he finds a spot to blast a hole through. No biggie, no problem for the Romulans. Then Spock manages to shoot down the drilling rig, stopping it before it does major damage to Earth (and why couldn’t we do this on Vulcan?). The drill falls. Ohmygod! It’s going to hit the bridge (see Golden Gate Bridge, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). Phew! It missed.
There goes young Spock! Grr, says Nero. I’ve been chasing old Spock for 25 years. Now young Spock’s going to escape with all the black-hole making stuff. Let’s just shoot down the ship, I don’t care about making any more black holes.
Nope, says Spock, I’m going to warp speed. Chase him, says Nero. Chase them, says Chekov. Chekov? Oh, yeah, apparently whenever the captain leaves the bridge (Pike did it, Spock did it, and Kirk did it), they give 17-year-old Chekov the conn. Apparently there are no officers on this ship (like, say, Lieutenant Sulu, who’s sitting next to Chekov). And now we’re all somewhere else, and Spock decides to use his little ship to ram the Romulans with all the black-hole making stuff aboard. That’ll get ’em.
Scotty, the genius transporter tech, manages to retrieve Kirk and Pike from the Romulan ship and Spock from the little science ship in one fell swoop. Great, says everybody, we’re saved. Yay me, says Scotty.
Let’s go to the bridge, Spock, says Kirk, while the doctor takes Pike to sickbay. Uh, excuse us? A day or two ago, Pike gave Spock the command because he was going into a hostile situation, but now he’s back, and standing on his own. I should think the only thing that would keep him from the bridge would be being dead. But apparently he’s good with being a passenger now.
Let’s think our way out of this, folks. The Romulans are gone, but we’re going get destroyed in the black hole that took them. I’m Scotty, Scotty says, I’ve got this idea. And he does, and it works, and we’re saved. Yay us!
Well, now we’re back in the same room Kirk was being tried in like four days ago, but instead he’s getting a commendation, and getting his command confirmed as Captain. That’s pretty good: from Cadet on trial to Captain in four days. Oh, and look. Here’s (now Admiral) Pike in a wheelchair, congratulating Captain Kirk and turning over the ship to him. Only, what did Kirk actually do to earn these plaudits? Not a whole hell of a lot. But he has to be a captain: he’s Captain Kirk.
Hurray, hurrah. Life is great. And young Spock meets old Spock in the hangar, and old Spock says he’s found a new planet, and he’s going to restart the Vulcan race, but young Spock really might wanna stick with Starfleet and keep being emotional, because it’s worked before.
Okay, nice movie. But remember, it’s a J.J. Abrams movie. You’d better remember that, dammit. Watch, we’re going to make sure you remember you’re watching a movie. There’s this thing called lens flare, when the picture is obscured by a flash (sometimes a starburst pattern) when the camera pans across the sun; well, J.J. and crew decided it’d be really neat to have those in every frakkin’ scene, constantly. It isn’t neat; it sucks. And someone in there decided that starships in the future are going to be massive oil refineries pumping water instead of oil: full of pumps and pipes and tubes, including water pipes four feet in diameter twisting and turning numerous times in order to bring water from a tank to a turbine, for no good reason except it’ll be funny when Scotty materializes inside of one and Kirk has to run alongside trying to get him out. Indeed, it’ll be funny if the interior of each Starfleet ship is like two decks: the bridge on one, and everything else (all those pipes and tubes and turbines and tanks) in a space eight hundred feet high. It’s okay, though, Scotty will mention a dilithium chamber at the end of the movie, but for everything else, let’s make it steam powered. Huh? And let’s poke a finger at Star Trek: Voyager: the hangar bay will have 40 or 50 shuttles in it. Ha ha. And let’s remember that this is Star Wars space, not, well, space. Ships have to swoop and steam and leave contrails. And, oh what the hell, we can show respect for at least a little of old Star Trek; there’s an Admiral Archer who’s got a thing for beagles. There, wasn’t that polite?
Yeah, okay, those are problems, but what do you really think? What do I really think? I think Nero was way too stupid to be on a spaceship, let along commanding one, let alone actually being the villain of the piece. Stupid? C’mon, he’s hurt. He saw his planet destroyed, his pregnant wife died, and most all of his race wiped out. Why’s he stupid? Well, lemme tell ya’. Nero watched Spock try to make a black hole that would destroy the supernova before it could destroy Romulus. Spock failed not because the theory was bad, but because he was just a little too late. But the black hole that did form threw Nero 150 years into the past. And Nero isn’t that stupid: he was able to figure out exactly where and when Spock would emerge from the same black hole, to catch him. And now Nero has the black hole maker, and he’s going to make Spock pay: he’s going to destroy Vulcan, and then the rest of the Federation, because Romulus was destroyed is going to be destroyed in more than a century. Okay, Nero, so tell us why you aren’t going to use your black hole maker to destroy the star that’s going to go supernova in more than a century, thus saving Romulus and your wife? Yeah, thought so. If you did that (the smart thing), there wouldn’t be a movie.
I’m sorry. I really wanted to like the movie. I knew it wasn’t going to be any of the Star Trek that came before, but Abrams did try to tie it in a little. But come on, man, continuity, movie logic, a passing nod to reality. Would it have hurt that much to try to make this okay shoot-’em-up a really
good movie?