Close…so close! They were so close to getting Star Trek right. I saw it on Friday and I liked it, but I didn’t love it and in some ways I’m terribly disappointed. I’m going to try to veer away from any huge spoilers, but I’ll drop a few things so be aware.
First, let me say that they got the casting right. I suspected they’d botch it from the beginning with either hammy overactors or simply irresponsible clones of the originals. Instead, they pretty much nailed it. Zachary Quinto channeled Leonard Nimoy’s original stoic, austere Spock and managed to humanize the character just enough. He was perfect. Chris Pines managed a slightly more action oriented, but equally charming / obnoxious Captain Kirk. He captured the swagger and brashness to a T. The other characters did almost as well. Karl Urban, as ‘Bones’ McCoy, kept the doctor as the cranky elder voice. Simon Pegg, was a bit too hectic maybe, but an admirable Montgomery Scott. The front two, Sulu and Chekov, were my least favorite castings, (played by John Cho and Anton Yelchin respectively) Both fulfilled their roles as crewmen, but in the case of Sulu, added too little personality, and for Chekov, perhaps too much, but neither overplayed their roles.
The most interesting casting was Zoe Saldana as Uhuru, the communications officer. She fills in admirably as the communications officer and also as Spock’s love interest. Spock’s never had a love interest, but it works well, especially since it is the one thing that Kirk loses at. It makes Spock not just the nerdy overachiever, but also as a capable, competitive opposition to Kirk. It worked very well.
The casting was top-notch and the setting was just as good. The updated Enterprise referenced the old one. No one would have suspected it was anything but the Enterprise, it had all the old beeps and whistles, but the updated look: smooth viewscreens, CGI space shots, and slightly more official looking uniforms fit much better than the old set certainly would have. The other settings, aside from an oddly grungy Romulan spaceship, which I’ll be discussing in a bit, were similarly perfect. Starfleet Academy looked like it should, the planets had that futuristic, distant quality, and Vulcan, an ancient, austere, but scientific planet, was perfect. The special effects were, predictably, top notch and well done.
Like I said, it was so close. The only problem was the plot. And not even the entire plot. The movie follows, along one thread, the interactions between Kirk and Spock becoming friends and leaders of the Enterprise. A cold wariness and general dislike evolves into a strong friendship. Kirk’s rashness is just a bit tempered; Spock’s unintentional cruelty is forced out of him. Bones is there being grumpy, Chekov comedic, Sulu weird, etc. The crew comes together in perfect fashion to save the day. It worked.
The overall plot, however, showed far less discretion. An old Ambassador Spock tries to stop a supernova and winds up going back in time along with a disgruntled Romulan space miner, altering history. Kirk’s father gets killed (which is actually a decent touch) as the Romulan arrives in the new timeline. Twenty five years later, a rebellious Kirk joins Starfleet. He joins the Enterprise which responds to a Romulan on Vulcan. They arrive to find the Space Miner destroy Vulcan, (but only after a ridiculous fight scene on a giant drill bit). The rest of the story has Kirk meet the Old Spock and give him advice on dealing with the New Spock so that the crew can come together to prevent the Romulan from destroying Earth. I’m going through this quickly because it doesn’t make all that much sense. Black Holes == Time Travel, is really the key thing to take away. In the end, New Spock and Old Spock are both alive and living in a new universe with a destroyed Vulcan. Presumably the other universe still exists? Maybe not? It’s not explained and I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Except…that other universe would be the one that everyone has spent the last forty years living in during each of the various series and movies. That seems so very depressing and so insulting really. They wanted to reboot the series…great! They could have made a new Star Trek set on a different starship during the same time as the original Enterprise, or anywhere/when else. They never needed to erase the previous timeline for the new one.
Aside from being a hokey plot device, the time travel was just so completely unnecessary (and scientifically dubious in a series that tries to maintain at least a veneer of respectability). The real story was the growing friendship between the various crewmen. The overall plot just needed enough action and danger to give the crew a reason to bond and nearly any story could have done that. Something simple would have sufficed: an older Ambassador Spock is traveling to a resigning of the neutral zone treaty between the Romulans, Klingons, and Federation. Along the way he tells a younger Ambassador the story of the first time he helped sign the treaty. Then the movie would flash back to the crew going through Starfleet and coming together as they battle some rogue Romulan who is trying to sabotage the peace proceedings. Is it the most exciting story? Not by any stretch. Does it allow for enough action to be exciting, stay true to the generally peaceful mission of the Federation, and give the crew a danger to confront? Yes, I’d say that it does and, most of all, it doesn’t throw the rest of the long and stories Star Trek Universe into complete disarray.
If you like (but don’t love) Star Trek, you should probably see it. It’s certainly better than the last handful of Star Trek movies that have come out and, well, it’s not a half bad take on the whole universe. I’m cranky because they’re making changes to MY universe, but they actually did a good job. The casting alone must have just been a nightmare. They worked hard to get that much right so there was obviously an honest attempt at honoring and expanding the world. I wish they could have gone in a slightly different direction (and I still think time travel is 99% lame), but it was fun to watch the old crew get together, at least one more time. For ‘Trekkies’, I suspect the movie is as disillusioning as the new trio of Star Wars movies were for that bunch of fans, but for everyone else, it’s a pretty decent movie.
