»9th May 2009

Film Review: Star Trek

I'll try and summarise this quickly first.

Kirk and Spock were largely unlikeable.
Spock's character didn't make a lot of sense.
Simon Pegg was awful.
Simon Pegg had an ewok friend.
Kirk has green alien sex with a green alien.
There's two make out scenes between Spock and Uhura.
Eric Bana looked ridiculous.
The Romulans were bald-headed face-tatoo thugs.
Eric Bana's 'mining ship' looked like the monster from Cloverfield.
There were way too many shaky science fiction plot points (at one point the Enterprise is trying to escape a black hole but 'can't warp fast enough' which I'm sure is totally not how warping is supposed to work.)
Chekhov was beyond annoying.
Sulu had a fucking fold-out samurai sword.
Sulu had a sword fight.
There was a retarded parachute scene.
There was a retarded scene that ripped off A New Hope.
There was a retarded scene that ripped off Empire Strikes Back.
There was a retarded scene which rips of Return of the Jedi.
There was a red fucking insect chase for no reason.
There was a retarded British 'arsehole' as an Ensign Nobody who made no sense.
The Romulans had swords. (Actually, conveniently only the one who fought Sulu.)
The Romulans had trenchcoats.
The blackhole/time travel idea was retarded.
The technology was too futuristic.

Oops, so that didn't sum up things at all, well I'll continue shall I?

First, some context.
Going in to the cinema I was pretty confident the film would be okay. I was concerned that the director was J. J. Abrams, though had only connected that with directing MI:3 and hadn't realised that he was the guy who did Lost (which I hate, and would have saved me £6.50 seeing as the film being shit would have seemed a foregone conclusion.)
After the film I found out that until Roger Ebert wrote a review of the film, it had 100% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which meant that every review they collected for it was at least positive, Ebert's review--hardly scathing--brought it down to 96%.

This all confuses me greatly. Star Trek was one of the most awful films I have ever paid money to see at a cinema, if I had gone to see it on my own I would definitely have walked out.

How about I go through the various characters and describe them for you? Look, pay attention, it goes like this. I describe the character, and then in itallics, sum up their important contribution to the story.

Kirk



Kirk is a brilliant Starfleet captain which he only finds out after he stops being a rebel (for some reason, presumably) and joins Starfleet Academy (despite us being told that he hates authority, and is presumably tired of living in the shadow of his father who was also a brilliant Starfleet captain.) Kirk is a womanising, brawling, cheating jackass, who despite this is respected by his crew and is a highly successful Starfleet captain.

Kirk saves the day and follows in his father's foot-steps.
Spock



Spock is apparently brilliant at everything and as a half-Vulcan has learned to distance himself from his emotions. Despite this, we are shown him failing to control his emotions as a child and then later seeing him fail to control his emotions during a pivotal scene where Kirk viciously mocks him for doing nothing to save his mother, watching his mother die and doing nothing to save his entire fucking planet being wiped out. Naturally, Spock is also friends with Kirk.

Spock saves the day and gets the girl.

Bones



Bones is a brilliant doctor who is cynical, divorced, and hates flying. He helpfully tells us all this in his first scene. For some reason, he is also friends with Kirk and sneaks him onto the Enterprise, despite finding him deeply irritating. I guess we're just meant to go along with that.

Bones spouts cynical one-liners and raises his eyebrow.

Sulu

Sulu is japanese or something, enjoys fencing and is a brilliant pilot, despite us seeing him fail to bring the ship to warp in his first scene. We later find out that fencing is taught at the Starfleet Academy as an advanced hand-to-hand combat module. Right. Sulu has a fold-out samurai sword because he likes fencing, or because he is a brilliant pilot or something.

Sulu has a sword-fight.

Uhura



Uhura is black, an independent woman (tm), and is a brilliant translator. As a woman, she serves the important role of getting undressed in front of her lingerie-wearing, green, alien room-mate at the Academy whilst Kirk hides under her bed. Oh yeah and the important role of making out with Spock firstly after Spock loses control of his emotions (as Vulcans do all the time, apparently), and secondly when she appears in her second scene with Spock. Uhuru dislikes Kirk for his lame flirtations and because he is boning her green alien room-mate. Naturally, Uhuru respects Kirk.

Uhura is the T&A a woman.

Scotty

Scotty is Scottish and is a brilliant engineer. Despite this, we first see him as one of only two personnel on a back-water outpost that is falling apart. Scotty is portrayed by the renowned scottish actor, Simon Pegg.

Scotty is the comic relief.
Chekhov

Chekhov is Russian and can't pronounce his Vs and Ws, he is also a brilliant

He has to be brilliant at something otherwise why is he there? Oh that's right, he has a funny accent, like all those foreigners do.

Chekhov is the comic relief.
Pike

Pike is the Captain of Enterprise before Kirk Spock and is a highly respected Starfleet Officer who studied Kirk's father for his dissertation and who rescues Kirk from Ensign Meathead who didn't appreciate Kirk trying to chat up Uhura. Captain Exposition tells us how Kirk is a rebel and how he'd make a great Starfleet officer becuase he's insubordinate and seeks conflict with authority figures erm... because he taken on like five Ensign Meatheads in the bar brawl? actually, he'd make a great Starfleet officer because he's the protagonist and he kind of has to. Pike surrenders himself to Nero to allow for a torture scene and so Kirk and Spock have someone to rescue.

Pike is maybe a father-figure or something? needs rescuing.

Eric Bana

Eric Bana is a brilliant miner from the future who is Romulan. He hates Spock for trying to save his homeworld, Romulus. He has a massive mining ship with a big drill and a vat of 'red matter' which he is using to create black holes at the centre of planets of the Federation to destroy them. He hates Kirk because he had heard of him in the future. He wants revenge against the Federation for trying to save his homeworld.

Sorry I got that one wrong.

Captain Nero



Captain Nero is a Romulan from the future. He hates Spock for trying to save his home-world... Sorry, for failing to save his homeworld. He is a miner from the future and has a massive mining ship from the future. Naturally, mining ships from the future are bigger and more heavily armed and armoured than any other ship in the film, and we're told it destroyed over 150 vessels in one go(!)
Nero wants to destroy the Federation for... no, he wants to destroy the homeworlds of the Federation because the Federation failed in their attempt to save Romulus in the future. He killed Kirk's Dad shortly after he appeared from the future, and as a result, hates Kirk himself. Nero is named after Emperor Nero, the Roman Romulan Emperor Mining Captain who watched Rome Romulus burn be destroyed by a super-nova. How clever. Sorry, I really screwed up this one. How obvious, rather.

Eric Bana is the bad guy.

As you can see, all of the film's characters are nuanced and wonderfully observed and all serve important roles in advancing the story forward. None of them are broadly drawn, confused, contradictory, or superfluous at all. They all grow as characters throughout the film.

Things I liked about the film

Well okay, in all fairness, the first half or so, before they all went onto the Enterprise was okay, but that was mainly due to me having not seen the second half already. I doubt I'd be able to stomach the first half at all now. Here goes.

Character Development

I'm not doing very well here, this section is supposed to be about things in the film. You see, if you take my description of Bones for example, that he's a brilliant doctor, who is cynical, divorced and hates flying/space. That's the entire character right there, he tells us that in his first scene. He goes nowhere from that point, we're given no insight on his relationship with Kirk and I can't remember if he even speaks to Spock. Karl Urban plays Bones and does sort of look like DeForest Kelley but like the rest of the film only seemed to be tasked with capturing some of the original performance in the most superficial way possible. So instead of being the 'realist' foil to Kirk's passion and Spock's logic, Bones is merely a grumbling cynic who gets the odd one-liner.
Kirk is presented to us as a man living under the shadow of his famous hero father, and yet at no point does Chris Pine--the blue-eyed, blonde haired, lantern jawed lead--get to grapple with any of this. After his first stupid brawl in a bar after trying to flirt with Uhura, Kirk sits through a lecture about his father by Captain Pike but doesn't really comment on it. We're just supposed to go along with him. It's never really explained why he decided to join Starfleet in the first place: After sitting through Pike's 'you can be an officer in four years' lecture to, all we get from Kirk is him rolling his eyes and smirking. Kirk never really seems to change at all, he doesn't appear to sort of start the film a tearaway rebel and then maybe rise to the occasion as a Starfleet captain. Nope, he just shrugs, smirks and brawls his way through the entire film.
Spock is the only character who really gets any sort of fleshed out back-story, and even then it only succeeds in running contrary to everything he does after that. He's supposed to be a stickler for rules and a stand-out Starfleet officer on the one hand, but on the other, totally loses it after Kirk taunts him (there is a reason, albeit a stupid one for that scene) and then throws him off the fucking ship. I mean since when was that standard procedure? Don't they have a brig on this version of the Enterprise? You don't just fucking fire someone off the ship onto a planet like that surely? Oh yeah, I forgot, if he didn't fire him onto the ice planet, then that would have prevented the whole Ice Planet Interlude. Next.

The Ice Planet Interlude

Or, more broadly, 'stupid plot strands'. After Spock follows standard Starfleet procedure of firing disobedient officers onto the nearest planet to 'cool off', Kirk finds himself on the ice planet, which is supposedly near the now-destroyed Vulcan (oh shit, that was a spoiler wasn't it?) (that was the A New Hope scene by the way.) To keep himself in the film, instead of waiting for rescue, Kirk decides to walk across the artic tundra to the nearby Federation outpost. En route he is accosted by an arctic wolf-bear thing which chases after him (That's the Empire Strikes Back scene), shortly after a huge, red fucking insect thing leaps out of the ice, eats the wolf-bear, and then chases after Kirk as well. This insect thing does that whole tiresome snarling right in Kirk's face, when it could easily have eaten him whole and impotently chases him around. Eventually Kirk gets chased into a cave where someone (WHO COULD IT BE!?!?!) fends off the huge (did I get across to you, this thing is the size of a bus) insect beast with a poxy little flare. With that pointless chase scene over ('What the fuck is this? Jurassic Park?) Oh look it's Spock as Leonard Nimoy...

That's the bit where the Eric Bana's plan was explained.

So, Spock Ambassador Exposition tells us how he's from the future (that'll get anything into a J. J. Abrams film apparently); what's up with Eric Bana coming from the future as well; and tells Kirk how to save the day. But first, Kirk has to make not-Leonard-Nimoy-Spock lose control of his emotions, because naturally, as a stickler for the rules Spock knows he'll have to relinquish his command once he realises his emotions have compromised his judgement. Right. And why does Kirk need to gain command of ths ship? Well, he's like the captain right? (Not in this story yet!) Also, last time he tried to explain his plan to foil Eric Bana, Spock fired him off the ship, so he like needs to get back on the ship or they'll never stop Eric Bana!
So yeah, after this, Leonard and Kirk walk the 14km over to the Outpost where they find Simon Pegg... sorry, Scotty and his little Ewok friend (Return of the Jedi... Hey I just realised all the Star Wars scenes happened in this one bit of the film!) After some pointless comic relief and Simon Pegg's awful accent, Leonard gets everyone's shit together, tells Scotty that in the future he's actually a brilliant engineer and then tells Scotty the equation for transporting onto a ship currently in Warp which he has yet to discover (what happened to letting people find out for themselves?) Scotty says goodbye to his ewok who makes a wincing crying sound (I wish I was making this up) and then Scotty and Kirk are then transported onto the Enterprise which is currently warping back to Earth... Hang on, how long have they been on pointless ice world? How long did it take them to walk 14km? Captain Pike said it taken three minutes to warp from Earth to Vulcan, so how long does it take them to warp back to Earth? Like six hours?
That entire Ice World section was pointless. There would have been countless less contrived ways to introduce Scotty, Leonard Nimoy and if need be Scotty's Ewok Friend without the need for an ice-wolf-bear/giant-red-snarly-insect-dinosaur chase. Alternatively, they could have not introduced Scotty and his Ewok friend at all, seeing as they add nothing to the film or the story. Fuck me that was convuluted.

It's not as if that's even the first time that happens... You know, a pointless section of the film required either to introduce a character from the original series; advance the plot with some exposition; or make a reference to the original series for the fans to blow-off over.

The Green Alien Sex scene - 'Look I get it. Kirk's a womaiser, let's move on... Oh, wait, you needed the green alien sex bit in for fan-service right?'

The Beastie Boys car chase - 'Jesus, do we really need the Beastie Boys over this stupid car chase? Why does that traffic cop look like a gay robot fascist from an anime? Couldn't you have just told us Kirk was a rebel who didn't like his step-father like you were happy to just tell us Bones was divorced and hates flying?'

If J. J. Abrams is going to insist on stupid sub-plots (that's just like Lost! What a coincidence!), why couldn't we have seen the bit where Bones gets divorced by his wife after a particularly competitive game of Operation whilst on a plane suffering turbulence? You know, you could have had the Beastie Boys playing over that as well and you wouldn't have needed Bones to just tell us all that shit on the drop-ship at the beginning. You could totally have spun out the film for another ten minutes with that scene.

Science?

Or alternatively, 'stupid plot points'. I'm not demanding hard science here, but seriously guys, you can do better than this drok.


Gaping Plot Chasms

Or 'annoying inconsistencies'. Why did they go onto the para-drop mission unarmed? Sulu could bring his stupid fucking fold-out sword, so why couldn't they bring guns? How convenient for the only Romulan in the film with a sword to be faced off against the only human in the film with a sword. If the drill was high up in the atmosphere, how did the parachutes work and how could they breath okay? If it wasn't high in the atmosphere how did they not burn up? Why would a big ass drill (it was more like a huge laser thing on the end of a massive chain) be so vulnerable to small arms fire? That whole scene was a stupid excuse for action.

How exactly did Eric Bana, in the biggest ship ever, manage to disappear for twenty five years? Was he just taking it easy in the neutral zone or something?

Action


Pictured: some random spikes 'n' shit one of the dramatic battle scenes between the Enterprise and Nero's ship.

One of the things about Star Trek is supposed to be the idea that the crew 'thought' instead of 'fought' their way out of problems. Well apparently that doesn't make for a good blockbuster. 'Fire everything we've got!' was uttered shouted twice in the film, once by Eric Bana, and once by Kirk.
The excuse for the parachute scene was that the transporters were disabled. So hang on, whenever the transporters are on the blink, Starfleet parachute onto a planet? Also, why would the parachutes be retractable, when do you ever need a parachute twice? Oh that's right, when you decide to sky-dive off the big ass drill onto the planet being sucked into a black hole. Oh yeah, this was where Chekhov shows us his brilliant skill. The transporter guy was unable to get a lock on Sulu and Kirk as they were falling so Chekhov announces 'I can do that!' (subtly letting us know the he does have a brilliant skill after all) and then runs over to the transport bay (presumably it's just as close to the bridge as Engineering seems to be) and manages to wrestle the guy off the transport com and get a lock on Kirk and Sulu--in the throes of a totally manly embrace--before they hit the ground. After his brief foray into the realm of deus ex machina, Chekhov resumes speaking funny. Stupid.
After the Ice World soujourn, Kirk and Scotty are transported onto the at-warp-Enterprise, they find themselvesin engineering, except Scotty materialised in the middle of a water pipe. Cue Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory-style scene where Kirk bumbles around whilst Scotty is pumped around various random perspex water pipes.
Towards the end, Scotty beams Kirk and Spock onto Nero's spiky Cloverfield ship, deducing that 'if it follows any logical pattern, then the cargo bay should be HERE.' Hang on, Scotty, that ship easily dwarfs the Enterprise so is presumably pretty big, wouldn't say the bridge or the gothic torture room (which all mining-ships-from-the-future have) be a better place to transport them? Oh no, because the cargo bay would allow for a five minute run-and-gun shoot-out for Kirk and Spock because they're also brilliant marksmen right? This scene is shortly before the fight between Eric Bana and Kirk. Surprisingly, Kirk doesn't seem too bothered to be fighting the guy who killed his dad... I suppose at least this time Eric didn't bring his Romulan War Spear... Sorry, Romulan Mining Spear with him. Eric Bana conveniently Wolverine-jumps away, and is followed shortly by Kirk who then has his second having-his-hands-stomped-by-a-bad-guy-as-he-holds-on-over-a-precipice scene before he smugly dispatches the goon with another weak one-liner.
Too much stupid action. The way to defeat Eric Bana as it turns out is simply to 'blow the shit out of him' with Leonard Nimoy's slow ship full of 'red matter' from the future. So that's so long to the incredibly one-dimensional bad guy. Wow, that was tough, Kirk has a bruise on his cheek to prove it too!

Betrayal

Okay, so I'm trying to steer as far away from fanboydom as possible here, but it was really hard to stomach what they did to the various secondary characters from the original series. The original series was a product of its time, was intended as a message of hope, at a time of Cold War tensions, Star Trek depicted a future with a united humanity. Chekhov the Russian, non-specifically Asian Sulu and black Uhura all working together. So it's great to see today that the Russian was a neutered foreign clown (talk about hammering home his accent with a ship-wide announcement incorporating words like 'ewacuation' though sadly not 'xenophobic trawesty'), the asian guy has a fucking samurai sword and the black woman reduced to being a poorly written love interest shoe-horned in to give her some reason beyond being the foil for Kirk's impotent flirting. Somehow I can't see Martin Luther King persuading Zoë Saldana to stay on the film to be 'role model'.

Lens Flares


A typical scene on the bridge.

There's one thing I've not really mentioned yet, and I'm sure this can be entirely put down to J. J. Abrams. Lens Flares. Every god damn shot has a lens flare in it, maybe it's masking cuts and wipes? Who knows! There are lens flares every time someone walks onto the bridge, there are lens flares every time the camera ducks behind some perspex display panel to indicate that there are computers 'n' shit present (a really irritating trick once you notice it), there was even a lens flare when the two Spocks had a stilted, pointless conversation in the otherwise dark, dimly lit shuttle hangar.

Conclusion?

I could go on some more, but I'm getting fed up of typing about this awful movie. I am at a total loss as to how it got almost unanimously positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a fucking travesty of a film. It tramples on all the good qualities of the original show which justified a reboot/remake/rehash in the first place. There is no deeper insight into any of the characters from superficial mimickry of the original sixties peformances, it's enough to merely look vaguely like a character and say a few things that character said in Wrath of Khan. The one dimensional characters are not developed and merely react to the various zany events without really being effected by them. Only Spock has any sort of a proper back-story and motivations but comes across as conflicted and poorly written, the scene between Uhura and Spock before they make out was just excrutiating. I mean I think they taken the 'vulcan's hide their emotions' thing too far. Leonard Nimoy comes the closest to not embarassing himself, but has to deliver some woeful lines in the name of fan-service and aside from that merely exists as the deus ex machina firstly to get Kirk off the fucking retarded Ice Planet and secondly to solve the whole 'main plot' problem.

Once the shit has hit the fan about a third of the way into the film and they're all shipped off onto the Enterprise, it's just one explosion after another with the brief stupid interlude on the Ice Planet which was itself punctuated by a retarded monster chase. It's a wonder why the film is in such a rush, characterisation was skipped over to the point of being largely non-existant.


I'm sorry, but by this stage I'd pretty much checked out when it came to drawing pictures.

It's not as if the film particularly works as an action film. Aside from the first encounter between Eric Bana and Kirk's dad before the credits, none of the space fights were particularly memorable, most of the time it was hard to se what was going on, what with Eric Bana's ship being so god damn spiky. The brawls and fisticuffs quickly become tiresome. I could understand how that's a nod to the earlier series, but so was the redshirt during the para-drop scene, and that was just retarded 'oh shit, looks like he had the explosives. No matter, we'll just steal the Romulans guns and shoot the drill to bits.'

Kirk throughout the film has a kind of bewildered arogance which hardly suggests he's in any sort of danger at all. Again, maybe this is a nod to the original series, but it's still stupid. This invincible confidence is apparently infectious, during the lamentable para-drop, when Sulu reveals to Kirk that actually he's only studied fencing, you think 'hmmm, so maybe this guy is kind of brave but actually quite scared and out of his depth? that would make a relateable character right?' WRONG! It actually means he has a fold-out samurai sword and isn't in any trouble at all.

The frequent nods to earlier (better) incarnations of Star Trek were clunkingly awful. I mean it's a tired old joke about how Kirk had so much green alien sex in Star Trek, you don't need to throw that in there! The film might as well have been written by a teenager. Presumably we're all meant to lol when they reference something like that, I mean that's totally meta right?

I don't really think J. J. Abrams gets Star Trek, I mean beyond truly superficial mimickry, there's no heart at all to the story. The characters are at best just automatons and at worst one-shot solutions to problems like 'we need a sword fight'. We're never given any reactions to the increasingly implausible goings on. Spock seems to have been set up to carry the film but even when supposed to be dealing with the death of his mother, destruction of his homeworld, and genocide of his people, the best we get is a sort of confused squinting before he boldly goes with Uhura in the fucking turbo-lift. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it romantic sub-plot did result in one of the more unintentionally hilarious moments of the film where Spock breaks off the making-out when the lift doors open and cold shoulders Uhura in front of some Ensign Walk-ons. I guess vulcans just don't like Public Displays of Affection.

Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Village Voice, New York Daily News, Boston Globe, Washington Post, all gave this film full marks. They're all wrong.

Roger Ebert on the Chicago Sun-Times, he's closer to the money, "The movie deals with narrative housekeeping. Perhaps the next one will engage these characters in a more challenging and devious story, one more about testing their personalities than re-establishing them. In the meantime, you want space opera, you got it." Though if you ask me, Space Opera would require something more approaching say emotion or inter-personal conflict, which this film lacks. J. R. Jones on the Chicago Reader as the lowest reviewer on Metacritic, "There’s little evidence of the thought-provoking, concept-driven sci-fi that made the early Star Trek episodes so engaging."

At least I'm not the only one who's not totally insane.

I can't think of anything more to say right now, I am at a total loss as to how this film has had such otherwise positive reviews. Maybe I just hallucinated the travesty of a film I just described to you. If you do go to see it and don't like it, you've only yourself to blame.


Extar, over, out.


TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!