I got home not too long ago from seeing the Star Trek reboot film by JJ Abrams.
SPOILER WARNING: If you have not seen the film, and you have any intention of doing so – do not continue reading. The no-spoilers review is: It’s good, go see it.
I enjoyed the film, really – it’s a good action flick. it presses all the right buttons for a movie. It has a good story line, good acting, good effects, is paced pretty well, and had a healthy dose of humour added in to lighten things up. All in all – what one would reasonably call a good movie.
My only real reservation is that it does not feel like Star Trek. I joked that perhaps The Onion is right -but it’s not, really. JJ has taken a number of characters and story lines, and twisted them around to deliver them back up in something that’s… not quite my idea of trek.
The only specific thing that I can point at is Quinto and Pegg’s characters. These two are played by actors who, while talented, are so very definitely other characters. For me, Quinto never stopped being Sylar (albeit dressed in spandex and pointy ears), and Pegg’s Scotty with some random sidekick (Jar Jar 2.0) had me somewhat confused.
Perhaps, though, this is what is necessary for a reboot of the franchise to succeed. If it had been called anything other than Star Trek, none of the above minor whining would have been applicable (except perhaps the Jar Jar comment. Seriously, wtf was with that thing?)
Other than these relatively minor points – it was a good movie, and yes I’ll be getting it on BluRay when it comes out.
Edit: Sorry, one little rant here since it just occurred to me: What’s the goddamn logic behind the promotions?
In the start of the movie Pike says it’ll be four years at the Academy, and another four(!) to get a Starship – so after three years Kirk is still a Cadet (on academic suspension, no less), yet Pike is able to bump him to Commander – what the hell happened to the other, more senior officers?
They had at least 6 admirals running that Academic Review board (and apparently handing out the awards… since an academic review board obviously runs Starfleet), and the Enterprise (according to Memory Alpha) should have a crew of somewhere around 400 – yet there was noone more senior than a Cadet to run a Flagship? Seriously? GTFO.
I’ll agree on a lot of that, but I’d also say considering it seems a lot of StarFleet was destroyed, and the fact that Older Spock probably helped it along, and the Fact that Kirk Saved Earth by disobeying orders made him the perfect choice to be the new Captain.
Sure, a lot of Starfleet ships were destroyed, but they still had those 6 admirals (who, again, appparently ran both the Starfleet Academy and Starfleet itself), the old NX01 Enterprise crew, not to mention the other 400 odd crew on the NCC-1701 Enterprise.
One thing, thinking about it, why did they need all that Red Matter? I mean it took 1 drop to make a blackhole, so why have so much of it? And why didn’t Old Spock blow up his ship instead of letting it be captured.
Well I haven’t seen it yet and from what I read here it seems that the producers and directors not only twisted the story of Trek, they totally blew it out of the water. When you go back through the original series and the books written since then dealing with the original NCC-1701 you get a whole different history of the ship and James T. Kirk. Examples are the first Captain of the NCC-1701 was Robert April followed by Christopher Pike then Kirk. Kirk got his big break on the Farragut as a junior officer that propelled him to command of the Enterprise. The other thing is that at that time the Enterprise was not the Flagship of Starfleet the USS Constitution NCC-1700 was (the first ship named of the class tho not completed the Enterprise was) and from there it passed to the Constellation (Seen in the episode with Commodore Decker and the ice cream cone shaped, planet eating alien weapon) and from that ship finally to the Enterprise when the Constellation was destroyed. It wasn’t until after the Enterprises’ first five year mission under Kirk that Starfleet reserved the name Enterprise for the Federation Flagship. So as you can see the “story” of Trek is not only twisted it was folded, spindled and mutilated. Still it be a case like the new planet of the apes film, a good film but not planet of the apes.
Will,
I think you hit the nail on the head with the comment “My only real reservation is that it does not feel like Star Trek”. Completely agree here.
It is pretty clear that an attempt has been made to reinvent the series, using the idea of an “alternate future” to do it. So, really…we aren’t seeing a continuation, but rather a new story with a similar “history”.
Anyway, my 2c worth..and I’m sick of the “quotes”