Star Trek (2009)
2009, United States
Director: J.J. Abrams
Screenplay: Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci
Star Trek (2009) is a bit of a poster child for movies that “I don’t get.” It’s not that the plot was confusing or anything, but rather the average movie-goer’s reaction. I was in London when Trek came out, and the Tube was littered with posters proclaiming a litany of praise for the film: “Four stars!” “Summer movie of the year!” “Best Trek movie ever!” And so on. The poster was literally covered with 20 quotes like this. Now I think this exuberance is reflective of an average movie-goer’s opinion of this film, as well as a great many Star Trek fans. My disconnect with the world might be best summarized thusly:
“What movie were you watching?”
I know, I know, I’m a curmudgeon before my own time. But help me understand by what rubric people were giving this movie such high praise. Is it because the special effects are so spot on? Or the cast so winning? Because it certainly does have a fine look and a winning cast. But surely, surely these viewers were not heaping the praise on the movie’s plot, or writing? Were they?
To me, Star Trek was an average summer film. It got some superficial things right. It didn’t particularly shine in the action department, but then we do not expect Star Trek to. The deeper problem is that it was boring. It did not reinvent the characters like, say, a Batman Begins (and I’m not even the biggest fan of that movie). That’s a problem, because we already know all these characters. It revisits them not for their own sakes, but perfunctorily. Kirk is a renegade because we see him in a clichéd scene in which he recklessly exceeds the speed limit as a kid (at a rather unbelievable age, I might add). This is followed up by your garden variety bar fight scene. Spock is an outsider because we see him in a clichéd scene in which kids pick on him in school. The rest of the film does not venture beyond even these cursory character outlines. It establishes the broadest sort of characterization for the rest of the cast (Uhura is a workaholic, Scotty a smartass, Bones a cynic). It does not allow them to reflect and interact, perhaps because there is a quota for spaceship battles in the runtime.
Lacking any sort of meaningful conversation, there is a lot of fluff in this film. What is the point of watching Scotty getting stuck in a tube for five minutes? Is this supposed to be funny? It’s a joke that went whizzing over my head like a full torpedo spread. What’s the point of his alien sidekick? Or of (spoiler, I guess) the awkward relationship between Uhura and Spock? The starship battles look pretty enough (I actually really liked the look of the ships), but they are so one-sided they are not remotely dramatic. Similarly, Kirk is chased by a giant snow beast only because we expect such things in a Star Trek film, not for dramatic purposes. At least when it happens in The Empire Strikes Back we get to see Luke use the force.
The writing is generally weak. The main villain is exactly like every other Star Trek movie villain, only less so. There is amazingly little time spent on his motivation. He does not feel threatening (even though he has one bad-ass mining ship) because as a character he is so laughably sketched out. He could have been summarized with the opening line: “Uhh, I’m from the future, and I’ve got like this blue-collar/Romulan angst, so fuck you all.” Do not even get me started on the deus ex machina laziness of assembling the Enterprise crew due to the convenient deaths or resignations of senior officers.
Style: 7
Great looking film, fine cast (though, when was the last time they got the casting wrong in a reboot/adaptation? It’s getting more and more uncommon.) Leonard Nemoy was perfectly cast for the role of “old Spock.”
Substance: 4
The jokes fall flat, and the plot is so classic Trek that there is nothing interesting or new about it. Innovate, please.
Overall: 5
Star Trek was an average movie at best. One of the rebuttals I’ve heard is that the movie effectively set up the alternate universe and thus the sequels. This is true. But couldn’t it have accomplished the same thing in a better movie? Doesn’t the mere existence of a Star Trek reboot, y’know, reboot the franchise? I don’t get why you wouldn’t demand more.
July 27, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Honestly, it sounds like you were expecting a Star Trek movie to NOT be a Star Trek movie. In your litany, one recurring theme seems to be prevalent: “It was too much like the Star Trek we knew, and not enough like some weird version of Star Trek that I, as perhaps the only one on the planet, was hoping for.” To me, that sounds like the utter definition of subjective relativistic appreciation of the film, but I will nonetheless play your game and offer some reactions to your views.
1. It was “boring”, because it didn’t re-invent characters.
Star Trek completely re-invented the idea of James Kirk, Spock, and even McCoy. Taking the first, the character of Kirk is portrayed as a fundamental early-life renegade — in contrast to his disciplined upbringing in the Prime timeline — and, as a consequence, he misses out on a lot of formative command-opportunities (such as witnessing the planetary massacres on Tarsus IV (“The Conscience of the King”)). Kirk does not enter Star Fleet academy until 2255, five years later than originally, and he never visits Neural, befriends Tyree, or sees the cloud creature. There is no Cadet Kirk that ever witnesses the Axanar peace mission, and he never meets Carol Marcus while on assignment. In short, this is a totally new Kirk: he trades his experience for a rugged feeling of command, a total anti-Picard in a way that even the original Kirk was not. He commands through his emotions and struggles to find sound judgment. He is the perfect foil for the new Spock, who is also radically transformed into a Half-Vulcan who readily embraces his humanity and now struggles with empathy and recognizing how he, too, is affected by emotions.
Perhaps you do not see re-invented characters because you may not appreciate that Star Trek, at its core, was always the story of Kirk and Spock, and how through their embodiment of the two facets of Cold War America, they overcome prejudice and apprehension, confusion and danger to seize opportunities for a bold, optimistic future. This storyarc is preserved while the characters are essentially inverted — it was a brilliant decision by J.J. Abrams.
2. There was a lot of “fluff”.
While there were obvious scenes that were little more than a contrivance, they serve principally to facilitate the exposition — which in general, is excellent. Through the tangents, you learn about Spock, how he relates to his family, his culture, and his own values. You begin to understand through these cut-scenes and pull-aways the alternate reality that was created because of the arrival of Nero (for example, the cut-scene that shows Spock taking his Vulcan Science Examinations — one of the questions is about the theory of infinite parallel universes, and how for every set of probable outcomes, there is an equal proportionate consequence that creates a correlating reality). Perhaps you only saw the movie once, and because it did not live up to your expectations, you didn’t appreciate the many rich nuenaces like these that helped identify the open-ended possibilities of what was being done.
3. The Writing was “weak”.
Star Trek villains are not intended to be complex characters; from General Chang (essentially, a Klingon Shakespeare afficionado with a penchant for conspiratorial cackling) to the Borg Queen (a sex-crazed assimilating neo-communist cyborg), Star Trek villains are supposed to be static and flat, to better contrast the dynamism of the protagonists and how they are able to triumph against seemingly overwhelming odds. Because Nero was like all other Star Trek characters, the writing could focus on the “real” challenge — the new alternate reality, how it would change the course of the universe, and what it meant for the characters who now play upon its neverending stage.
I really recommend you re-watch this film with an open-mind. Star Trek, as a whole, has been shoe-horned into more or less all of the same types of stories that could be told over the 500 or so episodes spanning its series. J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kutzman, and Danel Lindelhof came up with a really elegant solution that was neither reboot nor reimagining, but a bold new direction full of exciting possibilities. By redefining the characters and placing them in a significantly varied starting scene, it’s safe to say that the stars are truly the limit for what this series can become.
July 27, 2009 at 7:04 pm
“Star Trek” isn’t all that people make of it. Best summer movie of 2009? Definitely not. Indeed, this film is the very definition of a summer blockbuster: big on effects, short on story. It can best be compared to the likes of Independence Day (which, let us not forget, people continue to insist is an amazing movie. Hint: it is not. It’s hackneyed schlock that made tons of money because a) people are morons with no discerning taste, b) it came out in the summer, c) it featured a popular leading man and flavor-of-the-month sidekick Jeff Goldblum, and d) had a lot of shiny objects) Subject the part about the popular leading man, and you have JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek”.
Abrams’ reboot of the Trek franchise is ostensibly two different movies in one. The first half focuses on the development and back story of characters with whom millions of movie goers are already familiar. It manages to stay interesting for the first 30-45 minutes. When you can take something that people are already well-acquainted with and still make it engaging, you’ve done something right. Star Trek succeeds where the prequel Star Wars trilogy failed (repeatedly) in this respect.
Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk is an impulsive, cocksure kid who lives completely by the seat of his pants. Anyone who has ever heard, “has potential but doesn’t apply himself” (as I so often did through school) will instantly identify with this new, angrier, more impulsive Kirk. Trekkies the world over should be delighted with Pine’s performance as he not only looks like a young William Shatner, but brings much of the same on-screen presence to the role (intended as a compliment).
Zachary Quinto’s Spock is equally spot-on, a point which is made all the more eerie by virtue of the fact that Leonard Nimoy also reprises his role as the elder-Spock.
Karl Urban is DeForrest Kelley-incarnate as the much younger but no less emotional Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy. And not to be outdone, Simon Pegg is a delight as a largely comic-relief Scotty.
With such an obviously talented and meticulously constructed cast, what could possibly be wrong with this movie? Well, how about the entire second half? Once the characters are established, they (with the audience bewilderingly in-tow) are shoved into the Enterprise and sent off on a mission to (guess?) save the galaxy. I hope I’m not spoiling the film for anyone by saying that the plot is very convoluted and involves time travel (which should always be used sparingly, if at all). Let’s pause for a moment to reflect upon something. Has it ever occurred to anyone that time travel works best in comedy movies such as Back to the Future and Star Trek IV? Do you know why? Because it’s easier to suspend your disbelief. The tone of the movie is less serious, so the audience is far more forgiving of the plot holes. Try to use it in a more serious film, and it becomes, at once, extremely hard to swallow.
Alright, back to the review…
The main characters are all Starfleet Academy cadets in this film, which makes their abrupt appointment to the Enterprise rather, er, unbelievable, even considering the defcon-1 state of emergency they suddenly find themselves in.
All the more outrageous is Kirk’s out-of-nowhere promotion to first officer. At this point I was seriously wondering if anyone had read the script before production started. Kirk literally boards the Enterprise (against orders, I might add) and is appointed first-officer by Captain Christopher Pike who is immediately willing to look the other way with regard to Kirk’s brazen flouting of regulations.
The latter-half of the film is a sad descent into a strung-together and very generic series of action sequences. Eric Bana’s “Nero” is quite literally a villain that could have been cut-and-pasted from any number of other movies. Sadly, he ended up here, lacking any shred of sinister calculation that made Riccardo Montalban’s “Kahn” (Star Trek II) and Christopher Plummer’s “General Chang” (Star Trek VI) such excellent movie villains. While we don’t question his motivation (spoiler: the exposition in this movie is constantly IN YOUR FACE) we don’t wonder whether Kirk and Spock will triumph over this intergalactic bozo, either. He’s such a feeble villain that the audience rests comfortably, asses firmly planted on the entire seat cushion, never once moving to the edge.
If seeing a bunch of mindless ‘splosions and jumping-stunts (this is where characters literally jump from one platform to another) is something that you think makes a movie great, then Star Trek will not disappoint. However, if you’re hoping to see the second coming of “Wrath of Khan” (the best Trek installment), you will not find it here.
Still, the film is exceptionally well-cast, and the film starts out well enough. The second half has a few moments (mostly Simon Pegg stealing scenes), but you could get up and go to the bathroom at any point in the final hour and return to have this exact conversation:
“What did I miss?”
“The Enterprise fired a bunch of phasers at that other ship, and Kirk jumped off of something.”
“Did he make it?”
“Barely, but yeah.”
I find it very discouraging that so many movies are like this nowadays. And I find it even more discouraging that theater-goers eat this fluff up and praise it like it’s some second-coming of the Golden Age of Cinema (uh, is there any reason we should have four — count ‘em, FOUR! — Fast & the Furious movies?)
And no, it’s not because I’ve gotten older and am more intolerant than I was as a kid. It’s because I was interested enough to study film in college. It’s because I like good films, and good films focus on character and story from beginning to end. If that’s what you look for in movies, then congratulations: you are very likely smarter than the average person and have some semblance of discerning taste. You would probably like “Wrath of Kahn”. Check out that movie. It is glorious.
August 1, 2009 at 9:25 am
Thanks for the comments, Juan. Your unique perspectives never fail to enrich this blogspace!
I must disagree with your assertion that I was looking for a particular type of Star Trek going into this film. I WAS looking for a good movie, and this is the only measure by which Star Trek fell short of expectations. Why is it unreasonable to expect and demand a good movie, particularly for a beloved franchise like ‘Trek?
Ultimately, you will have to do more to convince me that this is an above-average film. The plot was not interesting on two levels – it was not novel in any way (forgive me for asking the writers to innovate over previous Star Treks), and it provided no sense of drama or suspense. Most movies, especially summer blockbusters, have the good guys win in the end. GOOD blockbusters make you question this outcome for at least a little, and there was no sense of this in Star Trek. Now maybe this isn’t important to you, but I believe Plot, Drama, and Suspense are some of the core characteristics of storytelling, without which you are often left with a hollow shell.
While it may be true that the characters were reinvented to some extent, insufficient effort was put into the redevelopment process. As I mentioned in my review, Kirk and Spock were reinvented through some fairly lame, fairly obvious scenes while the rest of the cast was given only cursory development. Reinventing characters for its own sake does not make a good movie…inherently interesting characters and effective character development, conversely, can go a long way towards making a good movie. To touch on one of the fundamental differences of opinion here: I’m more inclined to look at the bottom line (are the characters good? is the plot good?) whereas you’re more focused on relatively superficial acheivements (did the characters CHANGE? did the universe CHANGE?)
Look, the fact is, this is a reboot. Things are going to CHANGE regardless of whatever other effort is put into it. Your list of potentially impacted events from the Star Trek timeline is impressive but ultimately not particularly relevant. The decision to create an alterate universe, and create the potentials you describe, could have been made in five minutes. The much harder task was crafting a movie that effectively supported the reboot idea. In this task, I believe Abram and his staff performed adequately at best, and that’s ultimately what this is all about.
(Sort of an aside…you mention that Nero is similar to other Star Trek villains. On this point, I agree. Most of the Star Trek movie villains are simple-minded and poorly developed – but note this review is a commentary on the current movie, and not the relative merits of its predecessors. I will say that while perhaps none of the Star Trek movie villains are truly strong, they have been getting ever more laughable, culminating in the notational antagonism of Nero and the absurdly basic Shinzon from Star Trek: Nemesis. Truthfully, I find the most effective Trek villains to be faceless, truly alien entities, such as the pre-Descent Borg or the alien probe from Star Trek IV.)