homersimpson_esq
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SPOILER-FREE REVIEW! ALL SPOILERS IN INVISIOTEXT!  Abrams, 2009
"Pre-credits sequence..."
I've long been a fan of Star Trek. Note the wording - I'm not a 'Trekkie' in the dress-up, speak-Klingon, all-out fan which was so perfectly spoofed in 1999's Galaxy Quest. I'm your regular watched-most-of-the-series kind of fan. I grew up watching the re-re-re-re-re...re-runs of the Original Series, and my parents had them all on VHS, recorded off 'telly. I also watched most of the Next Generation series, all of Deep Space 9, all but the final episode of Voyager (that was frustrating), and the first handful of episodes of Enterprise. I've also seen the films countless times (the Original Series films, that is), not least all six in one crazy, exhausting day last week... So when I heard they were making a prequel of sorts, I was excited. I was a little uncertain on some of the casting choices (the Rohan dude off the Rings trilogy as Bones??) unsure as to how it'd fit into the 'canon', but more excited than trepidatious. What, then, did I make of this new incarnation, boldly going where no series had gone before (got that one out of the way nice and early...)? My insights run deep. Let me share them with you...
"Illogical"
I'll start off with my impressions of where the film goes wrong. Necessarily, this will be in invisiotext. Vulcan! They blew it up! Damn them all to hell. It changes something that is so absolutely essential. It's the Trek universe, Jim, but not as we know it. The Vulcan-Romulan conflict is something that is used to explore (as is always the case with Trek) human aspects, and it does so very well. Without that divide, that eternal conflict, that route is gone. It does open up a whole new direction into which to go boldly (split infinitives are so 23rd century), but I can't help but feel that it is a major change that perhaps could have been avoided.
Time travel has been at the centre of two of the best Trek films - The Voyage Home and First Contact. Time travel films come with their own set of peculiarities and each abides by different rules. I'm not going to try and be logical (!) about this, but it does seem that even on a basic level once the past has changed, the future changes around them. Nimoy-Spock should disappear. However, I'm willing to accept that since Nimoy-Spock was out of his own timeline, that he was somehow immune to the effects of history changing. After all, Doc and Marty were immune, being as they were in 2015 when old Biff went back to 1955 to give himself the Grey's Sports Almanack. They didn't disappear either, so I'll accept it in this film too.
Finally, it's highly, highly unlikely that a cadet would graduate directly to captain. The only allowance I can make to justify it to myself is that drastic times call for drastic measures. Still... Other than those three points, I couldn't really fault the film in any major way. Minor niggles I'll mention in the main body of the review below.
"Fascinating"
Much has been made of the fact that this film is made for those who are not Star Trek fans. I feel that much of that side of the publicity is really to overcome the whole Star Trek = For Geeks stigma that it seems to have attached to it. Which is unfair really, and by and large untrue. For while there is much that non-Star Trek fans will enjoy, as a fan I loved it. I loved it as a film fan, and I loved it as a Trek fan. This, Mr Lucas, is how you do prequels. Exciting, breathless, but with a sense not only of the import of certain key scenes, but also of wonder and marvel at it all. To pinpoint a few Trek-moments: We see the Enterprise half-built; we learn why Bones is called Bones; we learn Uhura's first name; we see Kirk beating the infamous Kobayashi Maru test; we see who actually created the test itself; we even get a reference to Kirk's allergy to a particular medicine that is mentioned in one really obvious throwaway line in one of the Original Series films (after last week they've all sort of blurred into one big film). These moments are thrown into the film like dilithium crystals powering a warp drive: the film will work fine without them, but with them it takes it to a whole new warp factor.
This is a different Enterprise. Chekov is there already, as is Uhura. Pike, while Captain with Spock as Commander, has a different destiny. (For the non-Trek fans, Captain Pike appeared in the pilot episode of the Original Series and was never seen again. In fact, the only main cast member who was retained from that pilot was a certain Mr Spock...) The inter-character relationships are different - significantly so in one particular case. Others start off differently ('I don't know, but I like him!') but balance is restored eventually ('green-blooded hobgoblin').
Michael Giacchino's music is, as ever, stunning. It manages to be entirely new, yet still familiar. Only once do we get those four distinct notes that precede the 'Space...the final frontier' title speech, before the end credits themselves. The rest of the time the music twists, turns, and plays around a memorable theme (I've been whistling it on and off since I watched it first last Friday) that is both ethereal, and full of pomp, depending on what is being used to play it on.
A note on the acting. Kudos must go to Quinto and Urban. Both have their performances down to an eeriely accurate tee. Pine is admirable as Kirk, but his performance is more individual. Gone. Are the. Mannered. Speech patterns. Remaining is the interplay between him and Spock - sparks fly, blows exchanged - and Bones - a friendship is nurtured. Pegg as Scotty is surprisingly fresh. I'm waiting for the weight to be added and a moustache to be grown for the inevitable sequel. Yelchin as Chekov provides both a) a realistic Russian character and b) classic dialogue-related comic relief on a par with 'Nuclear wessels'. Cho as Sulu brings the kick-ass, no-nonsense character that Sulu embodies. He also gets the coolest weapon this side of a light-saber. Saldana as Uhura brings a humanity and grit to what was never a particularly memorable character for me. In fact the whole main cast has been fleshed out with distinct personalities and interplay which makes the whole film far more satisfying than you might expect. The success of this film rests, not on the space battle effects, but on the relationships, human or otherwise, at the centre.
Which is not to say that the effects are not awesome. They are. More remarkable still is the success with which the design team have managed to both retain the look and feel of the original Enterprise, with its stark, white, 60s styling, but made it look realistic and workable and....cool... The engineering deck looks like it could actually work - it is teeming with people, and is grubby. Yet the bridge remains bright and crisp - albeit with the rows of lights and buttons replaced with floor to ceiling glass display screens. We see the Enterprise from angles never dreamed of in the 60s. (In one brilliant maneouvre Pike orders for the Enterprise to go below some space debris. They never went below anything in the TV series! Space was almost always just 2D with the Enterprise going to the left or right!)
There are those who will insist that Star Trek is uncool, that it is for geeks, that they're really not excited about seeing this film, that they might get round to it. They're wrong, they should be excited, and they should get round to it now. It's a fine line to tread between satisfying the fans, and appealing to the masses. But somehow, Abrams has done it. Sure there's the odd clunky line of dialogue (but where would Trek be without that?) the odd story hiccup. But for the vast majority of the film, it's a treat. A dilithium crystal-encrusted treat.
"Report"
The Acting - 8/10: as mentioned above almost everyone excels themselves. Bana is given precious little to do, but Quinto and Urban revel in their parts. Quinto and Saldana have real chemistry and their scenes are intensely real.
The Sound - 9/10: I really did like the music. Striking, emotional, and with a nice new rendition of the classic Original Series theme too.
The Look - 9/10: They've really managed to get the balance between workable future and recognisable style from the Original Series. It's where Enterprise failed (one of the places anyway) - it just looked too cool to precede the Original Series. This, however, while still very much a futuristic world, is recognisable as the one from the Original Series.
The Story - 7/10: This is where it loses most points, as highlighted above. It gets most of the points back on merit of those little Trek-moments, and by merit of the story as a whole working. There are still issues with it tho.
Success of Intent - 10/10: It was to be. In terms of making a film for both fans and non-fans alike, I struggle to think how they might have done it any different.
Overall - 43/50, or:
86%
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That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne.  TREK WARS |
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