Movies we love:  the new Star Trek film —
He said, she said, but nobody said the right things
posted 5-9-2009 - 1:23 am

 
This isn't a review of the film: I'll get to that in another post. Rather, this is more of an observation regarding other reviews of the film. Other than Roger Ebert's, of course; I always like his comments, whether or not I agree with them.

Now that the new Star Trek has previewed here this weekend, I’ve been perusing some of the reviews here and there. Accordingly, I ran across the He Said, She Said commentary in The Scorecard Review online ... and after reading it and others on the Web, I began to wonder just exactly how many of the younger film critics are familiar enough with the Star Trek universe. If they’ve seen the films but never watched the original series, they’re really not qualified to say much of consequence about the new film.

As expected, He (Nick Allen) and She (Morrow McLaughlin) did their thing, parsing the movie’s action and wow factor, comparing it to the less favorably received X-Men outing, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Yet I found their comments off target, surprisingly. Not that I expected them to be anywhere near as lucid as Roger Ebert, but hey, somebody’s gonna have to pick up his baton and run with it one of these days. It would help if that person or persons were good at being on point.

She liked the new film, He didn’t and preferred Wolverine for some strange reason, but that’s not the problem. What’s wrong with their critique is that they analyze Star Trek without seeming to know much about the franchise or what made the best of the Star Trek episodes and films well worth watching and elevated them from simple space opera/fantasy to genuinely thought-provoking science fiction. Not all the Star Trek efforts represented real science fiction rather than fantasy, but more than enough did to put the franchise as a whole solidly in the sci-fi column. And it was all the better for it. Long before Alias, Lost, or the marvelously reinvented Battlestar Galactica, good Star Trek episodes and films made viewers jump at the chance to analyze and debate them, endlessly and enthusiastically. Before Star Trek, the only TV program that evoked a similar response was The Twilight Zone.

Disappointed in the He Said, She Said analysis, I left the following comment, for whatever it’s worth:

 
Well! Morrow and Nick, I'm surprised that both of you missed some essentials that made the best of the Star Trek films and TV episodes great, not just good. The first is a plot that thoughtfully explores ethical dilemmas and crises of the future. There are tons of examples I can cite from the Star Trek canon and the various series, but if you can't think of even one instance on your own, then you weren't paying attention. This new film ignored that essential and focused far more on pure action with a thin plot instead. Plenty of whiz-bang, not much food for thought. It's still fun, like eating cotton candy, but it doesn't really satisfy like earlier efforts did; however, the film may have done just enough to revitalize the franchise for a bit longer, IF J.J. Abrams learns from these mistakes (he may not, sadly, if big box office performance distracts him, though that in itself is not an indicator of quality).

The second Star Trek essential is clever verbal and physical asides that demonstrate the film isn't taking itself too seriously, and neither, perhaps, are some of the characters. Wit is always more entertaining than explosions. I'll give you three examples from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986):

* the scene on the bus where some biker is blaring a boombox, to the annoyance of other passengers, and Spock applies the Vulcan nerve-pinch to change that — I laughed so hard the first time I saw that that tears were leaking from my eyes! The rest of the audience had pretty much the same reaction.

* Kirk, on leaving their cloaked Klingon vessel in Golden Gate Park: "Everybody remember where we parked!"

* Dr. Gillian Taylor: [Wait,] Don't tell me — you're from outer space.
Kirk: No, I'm from Iowa. I only work in outer space.

Love it!

Finally, Nick, 'pulling a Kirk' does NOT consist of going against everyone else, being a contrarian, etc. It means using ‘cowboy diplomacy,’ a phrase that I believe the Trek world may have coined and is now in common use. It means taking action, any action, instead of trying actual diplomacy first. Just what one might expect out on the frontier, but something that was used far less often by the time Jean-Luc Picard commanded the Enterprise and the Federation was older, larger and more established.

BTW, I think I like Chris Pine's Kirk much better than I did William Shatner's Kirk in the TV series (waaaaay too full of himself, more smarmy and narcissistic than genuinely confident, and I never once believed that women in the future would find his pick-up lines remotely persuasive or that Shatner's Kirk would, in fact, get all the girls). Pine's take, however, gives us a good starting place to chart the long evolution of Kirk's persona into the at last more reflective, less boorish, self-mocking Kirk who departed in Star Trek: Generations. Besides, young women like the bad boys until they learn differently, usually the hard way. And those eyes — WHOOOOEEEEEE! We haven't seen blue eyes like that since Paul Newman died! Mmmmmmmm ....

Karl Urban's Bones McCoy, on the other hand, has too big a stick up his behind. The original Bones tempered his barbs and outrage with more wry, dry delivery and, again, a touch of self-mockery; McCoy always knew damned well when he was being a touch too hyperbolic and could dish out his sarcasm with a wink. That's what made his criticism easier to swallow.

In contrast, I find the old Spock/young Spock counterpoint credible and interesting — in fact, "fascinating!" ;D It's also satisfying to see a younger, more enthusiastic Scotty with some of that wonder and energy still intact.

Given all this, there might be room in the future for maybe one more outing with these younger incarnations of the original Enterprise crew we've come to know and love. After all, we're curious as to how they get from here to there.

And frankly, the buff Chris Pine is much better eye candy, filling out that uniform more handsomely than the lumpy Shatner ever did. At last: a Kirk worth ogling. One finally believes that the young Uhura might have been attracted to him, even if it was for only a nanosecond.

I think I’ll go see it again, this time on IMAX, and ogle just a wee bit longer ...