Not too shabby.
Star Trek
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Paramount Pictures, 2009
By Sean Kelly
I have been a fan of Star Trek since I was a kid. Though I am too young to have been able to properly appreciate the original series, I was converted into a young Trekkie watching The Next Generation. Still, I developed a liking for Kirk, Spock, and company when I glimpsed them in a handful of reruns of the original series. There is an undeniable charm that the original crew had. Star Trek (this film) returns to those characters as the base for an ingenious reinvention of the Star Trek series.
I have seen all ten of the previous Star Trek movies, the six featuring the original crew and the four featuring the Next Generation crew. Thinking back to the movies, I have to agree with the even/odd rule that states that the even numbered films were the better ones. I can definitely say that Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and even Nemesis were more enjoyable than Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Search for Spock, The Final Frontier, Generations, and Insurrection. Following the even/odd rule, the new Star Trek film (either the eleventh in the series or first in a reinvented series) ought be doomed.
However, this film, the second directorial effort by Lost and Alias mastermind J.J. Abrams (his first was the enjoyable Mission: Impossible III) will either destroy that rule or reverse it: we won‘t know until the inevitable follow-up. Star Trek pulls a clever reboot of the series, bringing us back to the original characters without ignoring or shattering what has been established. I can’t say exactly how this is done without dropping some major spoilers, however I will say that it includes time travel and an appearance by Leonard Nimoy as the elderly Spock.
There were some worries that Abrams would take the more diplomatic and serious Star Trek and turn it into a high action film like Star Wars. However, even with a hearty portion of action in the film, it still retains the heart of the franchise. Further to Abrams’ credit, he’s taken the Star Trek universe and managed to ground it in our cultural reality (even including an unexpected Beastie Boys song), making this vision of the future feel more plausible than ever before. That said, there are enough classic references in the film that should keep even slavering fanboys happy – including the return of the expendable “red shirt” character.
As for the new cast, they’ve done a remarkable job. I can now stop remembering Chris Pine only for his role as the crazy Neo-Nazi redneck from Smokin’ Aces. Pine shone in the tricky role of Kirk, making the character his own while incorporating some of the character’s classic mannerisms. The same can be said about Zachary Quinto (Sylar from Heroes) in his role as Spock. Karl Urban was spot on as Leonard “Bones” McCoy and Simon Pegg essentially stole the show as Scotty (to the point that I wish that he had been introduced earlier). As the Romulan villain Nero, Eric Bana didn’t possess the brilliance of Ricardo Montalban inhabiting Khan Noonien Singh, though he pulled his weight and was rewarded one scene reminiscent of The Wrath of Khan.
Coming from a fan of the series, Star Trek successfully reintroduces Kirk and the crew to the next generation, while retaining enough of the essence of the old series to please long time fans. Now that this new crew is properly established, I look forward to future to see them boldly go where no man has gone before.
** Contains minor, MINOR spoilers **
I was super happy with this film. The only thing I didn’t like was that the fight scenes are directed like crap, but that’s the style these days, and the fights weren’t terribly long or involving anyway, so it didn’t really detract.
But man. Everyone was SO good — particularly Karl Urban (Bones), Pine (Kirk) and Quinto (Spock). And for once time travel was used in a story that didn’t make me want to bash my head in with a claw hammer. BRILLIANT way to re-invent the entire series.
And I would like to point out that as per my special request in the May previews section, Kirk DID in fact make it with a green alien babe!! THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS HOPING FOR!
Great goddamn movie.
Caesar, I’m surprised to hear you say that considering that this film is basically One More Day and Brand New Day wrapped into one package. It’s a total retcon, all that stuff you learned about Star Trek in the past is gone, never really happened except for in Spock Prime’s memories.
WHAT??
Good GOD Miles, are you for real? I can’t tell if you’re being genuine or you just like seeing me flip out. If it’s the latter, YOU ARE IN LUCK GOOD SIR!!
Differences between the two as I see them:
a) Spider Man is a much more beloved character for me. Star Trek characters, meh.
b) One More Day is a careless, lazy, poorly done retcon with no consideration given to the fans and no care given to proper storytelling. Star Trek Zero isn’t a retcon AT ALL. It, as they say in the movie, is an alternate timeline or parallel universe. As I understand it, both timelines exist, which is a much better way to use and explain time travel and makes about 120% more sense than regular time travel stories, eliminating the traditional paradox that always accompanies time travel.
c) Star Trek Zero does not have characters acting like complete fucking idiots and doing non-characteristic things just for the sake of a story that they couldn’t think to tell any better.
d) In Star Trek Zero, when old Spock is talking to young Kirk, he doesn’t explain the situation by saying, “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it”, like the retard editorial staff at Marvel.
e) At the end of Star Trek Zero, everything makes sense and is copacetic with the explanation provided. There are no surprises that pop up that can’t be explained by the plot — i.e. you don’t have Harry fucking Osborn showing up being very NOT dead without ever accounting for why exactly he didn’t die.
f) Further along that point, Star Trek Zero solidly establishes the new status quo in this new, completely different Star Trek universe. Viewers know the score. At the end of One More Day nobody had any fucking clue what was going on (so, nobody knows Peter’s identity even though he revealed it to the world? did Harry every marry Liz and have a kid? Norman Osborn doesn’t remember who Peter is, even though he discovered his identity in the 60’s and used it to kill Gwen Stacy? but Gwen Stacy is still dead, even though Norman never would have known to go after her if he didn’t know Spider Man was Peter Parker? shouldn’t Venom know Peter’s identity, since when the symbiote bonded with him years ago and found out his identity through the bonding process?) — to the point where Marvel had to publish two page spreads EXPLAINING TO THE VIEWERS WHAT THE FUCK WAS HAPPENING before most Spider Man comics came out in Brand New Day, which by the way STILL did not answer most of the questions I asked here.
There. Those are the main differences. I trust these are clear enough.
Good day to you sir.
I SAID GOOD DAY!
So, In comic terms, this is less “Star Trek: Brand New Day”, and more “Ultimate Star Trek”.
Anyways, I enjoyed the movie. It’s a shame that no one ever seems to remember what Romulan character design is supposed to look like, but what can you do? It was still pretty solid.
It’s not “Ultimate Trek” because the universes are linked. The Marvel U and the Ultimate U are entirely separate, there is no way for them to meet.
The other shit can’t happen in an “alternate timeline” because that’s not how it works. Like that episode where the Next Gen crew has to save Samuel Clemens from a bunch of time-travelling aliens. They were like, “we gotta save Clemens because otherwise our timeline — and therefore WE — won’t exist.” If that wasn’t the case they would have been like, “fuck it, so there’s a timeline where aliens ate America in the 1800s — who gives a shit. Our timeline is A-Okay. Let’s to to Risa and drink some Romulan Ale.”
It’s a better handled retcon, for sure. But it’s a big fat recton.
:-\
“That’s not how it works.” Yes. Well obviously Star Trek stories are the definitive word on the actual workings and nature of space-time.
But we aren’t talking about the real world. In the real world there will probably never be warp speed or transporters of sassy aliens that all look like us but with different ears and bushier eyebrows.
We’re talking about how it works in Star Trek.
And in Star Trek, when a timeline is changed by a timetraveller if fucks everything up. Like in DS9 when Sisko travels back to our near future and impersonates some guy named Bell. When he comes back, he looks at a history book and sees that Bell’s face has changed to his own. He altered his own timeline.
So when you destroy Vulcan, nothing can happen the way it did in the last bunch of series.
I know that’s not the actually thing that would happen, but those are the rules that this universe follows.
I personally find it quite funny that J.J. Abram’s TV show Fringe started seriously discussing the concept of alternate realities right when the film was coming out (I wonder if that was coincidence or if the episode was scheduled on purpose).
Sure they are. But it’s just not how it works in this movie.
Gotta side with Ceasar on a bunch of stuff here (although naturally there are a number of Spider points in contention here, but I’m talking of Star Trek)
First off, the Regular and Ultimate universes ARE linked, they’re part of a multiverse, as shown in Exiles, and the Marvel Zombies stories starting in Ultimate Fantastic Four, and bunches of Marvel Guide style books. Just need to point out that saying this movie is like Ultimate Star Trek is a fair comparison.
As far as freaking out over changing the past erasing their present, it shouldn’t be surprising that various Enterprise crews aren’t entirely sure what will happen when they go messing around with the past (either their meeting will cause each Jennifer to simply go into shock and faint, or it will result in a time paradox that will completely obliterate our galaxy… granted that’s a worst case scenario- paraphrasing Doc Brown, which I had the time to get the exact quote, but you get what I’m saying), because of how well established it is that those guys don’t have that kind of technology. From this perspective, I wouldn’t want to change the past either if when I’m slingshot manouvering around the sun to go back to the future I end up in an alternate timeline/universe from my own with no way to travel to my own reality.
So when Sisko changes the past and it effects the future, he is in an alternate reality. It’s infinitely similar to the reality he knows, but still alternate.
You know what always bothered me about the Star Trek universe? Across pretty much every series? Time travel. Specifically, how easy it was. It was like anybody with a warp drive and a pocket calculator could go back in time if they wanted. I think that’s why I never got into Star Trek nearly as much as I did Star Wars. Star Trek always had some weird ’scientific’ explanation that would save the day at the last second, and it gets a little tiresome.
“Well if I triangulate the blah blah blah and create a positronic emission field, there might be a chance we could cause a tachyon chain reaction and blah blah blah everything’s fine now.”
That being said, I really liked Kirk’s preferred method of solving problems, even though ‘punching it in the face/having sex with it’ probably shouldn’t work as often as it did.
With the exception of episodes that had people and ships from like 500 years in the future (when time travel is possible), most of the Time Travel in Star Trek is caused by black holes or other one-time anomalies (this film included).
So, it’s not THAT easy to travel back in time in Star Trek.
It probably seemed that way to me because there are a fair number of time travel stories in Star Trek. But I recall the story that first made me think that time travel is way too easy; and that was First Contact. Probably my favourite movie in the series, and definitely my favourite New Generation movie.
Basically after the Borg ship is destroyed above Earth at the beginning of the movie, it launches a small sphere that independently creates a temporal rift, so they go back in time and conquer Earth when its citizens are too technologically backward to defend it. And then at the end of the movie, the Enterprise returns to the future somehow, but I can’t remember how. I don’t think they used a black hole or anything.
Regardless, I think time travel has been a well that the Star Trek writers have dipped into way, WAYYYY too often.
Oh! I just remembered, it’s like Book 3 of Harry Potter, where they give Hermione a time travel necklace or some bullshit, SO SHE CAN TAKE TWO CLASSES AT ONCE. “Here kid, here’s an unbelievably powerful artifact that could change the world any time you used it, it oughta help you with your double case load. You’re what, 14? I think you’re ready for it.” And they use that necklace to go back in time and save the day at the end of the book and then NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN (as far as i know, i haven’t read all the books). Shouldn’t they be using that thing every time something goes wrong? Just go back in time and fix it.
And that my friends, is why most time travel stories are lame.