Star Trek tells the origin story of the characters in the much loved Star Trek movie and television series. A science fiction gem, Star Trek even made this Star Trek hater’s heart race.
In an Iowa town, a little boy, James Kirk, shows his rebellious streak, throwing caution to the wind. After a chance encounter, Kirk (Chris Pine) decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Star Fleet. It is on his way to training that he meets Dr. McCoy, (Karl Urban) a surly ships doctor. Vulcan/human half breed Spock (Zachary Quinto), seen as handicapped by the Vulcans, struggles to find his identity. Almost instantly Spock and Kirk begin to fight with each other, even as the maiden voyage of the U.S.S. Enterprise goes awry, and this bunch of inexperienced cadets are thrust into a situation that will require all of their skills in a skirmish against the Romulan enemy Nero (Eric Bana).
Quality acting is cornerstone of success for a science fiction movie, because it is the responsibility of the actors to make relatable an unrelatable circumstance. If the acting fails in a science fiction movie, all the great visuals, amazing gadgets and cool creatures will not make a lick of difference to its watchability. The acting in Star Trek is no exception, it succeeds on the quality of the actors. Chris Pine is piggish, strong and funny when the scene calls for it. Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty, has a brief appearance but makes the audience laugh enough that it will be hard to forget him. Zachary Quinto, who has the hardest role by far, was able to create a surprisingly tender and warm character for someone whose primary source of wisdom is dispassionate logic.
The writers, Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and to a great extent Gene Roddenberry, give the actors a script rich with character development, romance, humor and science fictiony goodness. The dialogue is natural enough as to almost be invisible; it is just part of the story. The only exception are the cliché Star Trekisms required by Trekies across the universe. I could’ve done without the cheeseball dialogue that made the original series such a misery to watch. I refuse to “live long and prosper” or to “stop acting like an infant.”
On the upside, the blinking lights and ridiculous omni-directional deck movements are replaced with more sophisticated visuals. In fact, the computer generated special effects are so well crafted the audience can take them for granted. The heat coming off the explosions and the cold areas of space feel as if they change the temperature of the theater. With the exception of one scene where they got the lighting totally wrong, it is hard to distinguish the green screen effects from standard backgrounds.
Director J.J. Abrams has to be credited with making the unbelievable aspects of Star Trek in a way the audience has no choice but to believe it. Hell, I had as much fun as the fanboys in the theater.
Star Trek is an exciting not to miss sci-fi adventure that will appeal to those who can spot the Tribble and those who think a Tribble is something basketball players and babies do.
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Comments
The elder series doesn't hold up well (it's campy now). The stories do.
In the middle of the Vietnam War and a space race with the evil Russians that we were told want us dead... well, this worked.
It was cerebral for its time. We also had: Hogan's Heroes, Beverly Hillbilly's, Bewitched, I Dream of Genie (spelling?) Petticoat Junction, Andy Griffith (he was an Amercanism, what we wanted to be) ... escapism was needed and provided. The Disney movies were all camp.
I was 7 when 1970 arrived. Realism was about to enter (rear it's wondrously ugly head)... I shan't mention the movies I love from this generation, the list would be too long...
I have read several glowing reviews of Star Trek and let me add: Chris Pine and the entire cast and crew of Bottle Shock while in Sonoma (special thanks to you teamsters, no they didn't have sex with me, that's an old tired joke I served them dinner and drinks. Chris was very polite, Bill Pullman was a gentleman, even inviting my beloved to lunch with him) were exemplary nice guys.
I like nice guys that get the brass ring...
It starts off with an emotional sucker punch and it doesn't let go 'til the credits roll. And the minor logic holes (the kid saves the Earth one time and they make him a Captain?) were almost unnoticeable next to the snappy dialogue, even-handed acting and absolutely stellar special effects.
Even my wife liked it, and she generally rolls her eyes at all things geek. I thought it was because she thought Chris Pine was hot, but it turns out that it was Karl Urban she was digging the whole time. :)
Let's add in the amazing last microsecond save due to transporter technology for the zillionth time, a villain who sounds like he's from Bakersfield, planet Earth Once Again Left Totally Undefended by the amazingly stupid Federation fleet.
Let's face it. If there are lots of good visuals, explosions, CGI bling, spaceships, emotional stuff and some hot women, and it all moves around really fast, with lots of noise and heavy breathing, who cares that the story is dreck. Lord knows we would all be struck dumb with brainlock if Spock wasn't up there uttering his amazing speech about his one true friend for another frozen moment in movie history.
I've had it with Trek. Whatever dregs of believability, good sci fi, and storyline was left in the zombie series have been buried by this dumb MTV-cam mess. The first scene with Kirk as a kid was great though. Put the kid in the next movie. Kirk and Spock as twelve year olds. Way better than the rest of the flick.
I guess I have to say I really liked it and perhaps can't explain why. It was exciting, compelling, dramatic, funny....and the character of Spoc (the younger) was heartbreaking. I think he made the film. What a vulnerable portrayal, what a fabulous performance. Truly, a fine and career-making job on his behalf. I really liked the Kirk character too, in spite of his hooligan demeanor. I must say that a couple themes stood out that made me think about creating my own post about this, but you beat me to it, so here they are:
1. It's amazing how the kind of rebellious, subversive, insurrectionist, noncompliant behavior that Kirk displays is precisely what gets kids suspended and expelled in school. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have movies like this b/c they provide bad role models; au contraire, I'm suggesting that the uniformity and compliance-oriented nature of American schools in some ways simply erases this kind of imaginative, risk-taking, bold behavior that ultimately represents true leadership. No wonder we end up with presidents like GWBush. Sure we have Obama, but remember, he didn't go through regular schools and was homeschooled or foreign-schooled much of his life.
2. Torture. It makes a regular appearance in every ST movie and many of the episodes. It's starting to bother me. I mean, many of us are making the intellectual case that it doesn't work, and then we hold up institutions like ST--enlightened, progressive most of the time--that clearly use torture as a means to coerce people toward certain ends.
Technically, it's not for zillionth time - from the characters' perspectives, it's for the first time. :)
Reverb, admit it -- you just didn't want to like it. I really didn't find much different, gaping plot hole-wise, than anything I've seen in Star Trek for the last 30 some-odd years. It's space opera, not "2001."
Makes me want to do the same thing to my blog.... hell, makes me want to do the same thing to my life!
I am breathlessly awaiting the TV series, based on the movie, based on the TV series.
Big thumb for your review, and my enduring memories.
P.S. Chris Pine: the next James Dean
P.P.S. Reverb, methinks your inner-child needs an ice-cream cone.
I agree with everyone about Zachary Quinto's performance, but I expected as much from him. I very much enjoyed seeing him interpret the roiling emotions he displays as Sylar on "Heroes" in a completely new way as Spock. Karl Urban, though, was to me the real revelation. I think the channeled the essence of DeForrest Kelly's portrayal of Bones McCoy without seeming like he was doing a bad impression. I would have loved more screen time for Scotty because, like cowbell, you can never have enough Simon Pegg.
Two things made the movie for me, at the end of the day, carrying me past the nits: the sly and often very hilarious delivery of the various characters' iconic catchphrases, and the casting. From the small parts (like "House's" Jennifer Morrison as Kirk's mother) to the main cast, everything just felt...right.
And Leonard Nimoy, in what is likely his swan song, probably gave his best performance as Spock since Star Trek II.
And I love the dialogue that references the original series. Of course, we're hopeless "Trekies" and just beam when those lines are delivered.
denese
I too now join the fray, and no spoiler alert needed here!
Movies, every last one of them included, are fictional concoctions of fakery. Therein lies their fatal flaw, and therein too, for a magnificent few, rests their redemptive charm. By those measures, the indispensable acid-test of worth (in my opinion) applicable to ANY movie, regardless of era, genre, whatever, is its ability to make us SUSPEND OUR DISBELIEF.
The best made movie, upon sufficient reflection, will reveal itself to have played fast and loose with character, plot, history, causality, reality. This is the very NATURE of the beast... inherent in the form. So... if a movie only can propel you from one scene to the next without your throwing your hands skyward in impatience at its liberties with reality, if it only can keep you caring about what happens next, then that movie is WORKING... And if that movie can maintain this propulsion through scene after scene for its entire duration, then that movie is a WINNER.
My standards are exacting, and a large majority of movies fail this test and thereby do not work; they are losers for me. They cannot make me willingly relinquish my incredulity and trust them to sweep me along for 60 continuous seconds, let alone for sixty minutes or ninety minutes, the approximate run-time of most feature-length movies. My exacting standards, however, are not impossible to meet...
Many movies PASS this test of disbelief-suspension, and some even deliver heart-racing thrill-rides while they hijack my skepticism to make me believe their slick lies. This Star Trek does! And for this, it is a winner. I would echo the comments of Reverb, above, who finds fault with the many holes of fallacy in the movie... Yet, I disagree with his verdict that this movie sucked. By the same token, I sympathize with Lainey who says he agrees with those criticisms of Reverb, but then still finds he likes the movie -- and is at a loss to explain why... I would suggest that these contradictions are reconciled by this movie's power to sweep away our disbelief in the urgent need to see What Happens Next. I submit that all those faults and flaws which Reverb identifies loom up only upon reflection after the closing credits have rolled... If any should peek out during the flow of the movie, a viewer (at least one who is not implacably determined to reject this story) will ignore it in a good-natured willingness to "follow the bouncing ball".
Cerebral, analytical, skeptical — these are my default modes. Thus, at some of the scenes depicting the workings of a Black Hole created by this oozy “Red Matter”, I found my mind jerking away a tad to imagine the rueful dismissal all this frippery might receive from Sir Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist who was a prime exponent of Black Hole theory (with its inescapable event horizons and essential dissolutions within singularities, which were not all that inescapable or essential in this movie)... But then I thought, too, Sir Stephen (whose playfulness is amply evident even in his serious writings) would probably be so fascinated with the multifaceted face-off between Nero and Spock across space-time, he wouldn't care how carelessly this movie shreds the fabric of space-time! Sir Stephen, I’m guessing, might gleefully suspend his disbelief, sucked in by this movies narrative energy — at least until the house-lights came up.
I confess that I did. This movie made me want to believe. That is why this movie, for all its improbable laxities with reality, does not suck. This Star Trek works, and it is a winner! It rocks.
Nevertheless, Stephen Hawking is not "Sir Stephen"...as this item from mid-2008 explains:
«Professor Stephen Hawking has revealed that he turned down the offer of a knighthood over 10 years ago.
«The Birthday Honours List 2008, released to coincide with the Queen's official birthday, once again contained nothing for Hawking, which has been puzzling some observers for many years.
«However, the scientist has released correspondence showing that he was approached with the offer of a knighthood over a decade ago but refused it on principle.
«"Professor Hawking does not like titles. In fact he dislikes the whole concept of them," a spokesman told The Times.»
I regret my error.