Trek Gets All Michael Bay’d Out [movies]

Star Trek

A Naysayer's guide

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Some people might call me a “Trekkie”, but I’m far from being a purist or some kind of psycho who can’t stand to see my beloved franchise tainted. I loved “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine” most of all and (feel free to call me a pansy, but) I’ve always been more of a Picard guy than a Kirk guy. There have been episodes I’ve loved and episodes I’ve hated, spin-offs that have worked and spin-offs that have embarrassed the hell out of me - same goes for the movies, and while the latest attempt at a reboot of the franchise certainly has it’s moments, all-in-all, it offers very little other than pretty CGI to the versed Trek fan.

First thing first, despite all the bells and whistles, the swirling camera shots, the lens flares and the Hollywood heartthrobs, this movie is basically “Star Trek: Nemesis” with a few roles reversed. Swap Spock for Picard and Nero for Shinzon and you have basically the same general premise – a maniacal villain that’s been wronged by the vast workings of the universe, but focuses his malice mainly on a Starfleet captain and wants to force said captain to watch as he destroys his home to avenge the wrongs inflicted upon his peoples…or something like that. Even Nero’s costume was pretty much exactly what Shinzon was rocking in Nemesis, with a little less goth-fetish and a little more of an old-timey chimney sweep look going on.

But aside from some plot similarities and the carrying over of characters from the original series, this “reboot” of the franchise is not really Star Trek. I’m not saying that simply because it sucked, but because the fundamental elements that make something Star Trek were absent. To me, Star Trek was never about Captain Kirk or Spock. It was never about Picard or Warf or Data or Janeway. Star Trek is about a universe in which humanity has gone through their absolute lowest point, when all seemed hopeless, and yet they powered through, overcame their petty differences and strove to create not only a world where people could live in peace and prosperity, but a unified universe free of money, greed and the corruption and exploitation that they spawn.

In the Trek universe, nobody gets paid for what they do, they work together for the betterment of society and all their needs are satisfied by technology. There are, of course, varying view points on what constitutes the betterment of society and thus there are conflicts between planets and species, but the Federation is supposed to represent something like the UN, where all are welcome and all are equal under the law. In this new vision of “Trek”, however, that is not the case. If you’re human, then you’re kosher – no worries there – but if you happen to have large eyes that are slightly skewed on your face or if you have a weird buggy look about you, then you can expect a life of second-class citizenship aboard the Enterprise or any other Federation vessel. Verbal abuse, constant belittlement, racial slurs and even physical violence are just some of the friendly obstacles you’ll come up against as a non-human alien in JJ Abrams’ “Trek”. Ethnically diverse background characters don’t have it much better unless, of course, they have some stereotypical cultural trait that can be exploited for gags, such as a funny accent or a background in martial arts.

If you think that Star Trek is about Captain Kirk being a cocky womanizer or Spock being an angsty emo then you’ve completely missed the point. Trek is about the universe itself, not just the characters that populate it.

The problem I have with this movie is that JJ Abrams admittedly has tried to turn “Star Trek” into “Star Wars” and they are just two completely different things. I’m not saying that you can’t bring Trek into the modern age or make it more action packed and accessible, but if you’re doing it at the expense of the true core of the franchise then you’re better off just naming it something else and starting fresh. When Ron Moore rebooted “Battlestar Galactica”, he completely changed the tone of the original, but at it’s essence they were the exact same concepts, just treated with a little more seriousness and realism. There was a real reason to approach that material again and give it the respect it deserved and it resulted in some incredibly groundbreaking writing and filmmaking. I would have been very happy to have the same thing done for “Star Trek”, but in this case it wasn’t necessarily the material that needed revamping, it was just the packaging. The only thing wrong with “Star Trek” was that the average Joe associated it with being a low-life social reject. But instead of taking Star Trek somewhere it had never been before, all they did was recast it, recycle familiar storylines and Michael Bay up the visuals. Did it make it more accessible? Sure. But did it make it better? While “Battlestar” went back and treated Glen Larson’s creation with more respect, Abrams does the opposite – this Trek is much hokier than it ever was before. The best comparison I can make is to the Batman franchise. This Trek is like Joel Schumacher’s take on Batman. It’s what someone who isn’t into comics thinks comics are supposed to be: campy, overly-stylized and aimed at twelve year old boys.

I hate to be this guy, I really do. It’s not that I’m out to piss on everybody’s parade or be that guy that’s always talking shit and never satisfied…I just calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. So please don’t start flooding my inbox with hate mail about how I’m just a lonely virgin who has never left my mother’s basement and therefore couldn’t possibly be qualified to pass judgment on “normal people entertainment”. Now granted, I am a bit of a grizzled old man at heart, but I’ve been known to experience this thing called “fun” every once in awhile. I get it and I’m not against it in principle. But if there’s one thing I absolutely hate is when movies try to blindside me into having “fun” by amping up the tension to a ridiculously over-the-top level, artificially creating situation after situation where the hero(s) must overcome some life or death obstacle or another in rapid succession that serve no purpose other than to take up space between one plot point and the next. It’s what I call “Indiana Jones-ing” a movie. You know, Indie gets to the top of the mountain, but “Oh no!” now he has to cross the dilapidated hanging bridge to the other side, but “Oh no!” the bridge is starting to give way and he uses his whip to grab onto an old tree trunk, but “Oh no!” the tree is coming loose, so he backflips through the air and somehow manages to grab a narrow ledge, but “Oh no!” now the dark-skinned antagonists are shooting flaming arrows at him, how will he ever survive?!?! “Oh my God!” his trusty sidekick jumps in on a motorcycle and saves the day, but “Oh no!” some other pointless thing happens to keep the tension going to distract you from the fact that the only thing that’s really happened in the last 40 minutes is that Indie walked into a temple and grabbed an ancient jeweled thing of some sort.

There’s a lot of that going on in the new “Star Trek”. Something is always happening, whether it adds anything to the story or is suitable for the moment at all and that’s another one of the film’s problems. Was there any purpose to Kirk encountering huge snow monsters on a frozen planet? Other than the fact that someone thought “Star Trek” needed more big monsters, not really. I’m of the school of thought that creating balance and context are the keys to making anything worthwhile. Danger means nothing unless you can compare it to safety, fear means nothing unless it can be contrasted with happiness. In order for something to have an impact, it has to shatter perceptions somehow, but if a film is balls-to-the-walls at every moment and the characters are always facing random dangers at every turn when it finally comes time for the hero(s) to face the real deal, it ceases to have the impact it’s supposed to have because we’ve already been there several hundred times already. The ending of this film suffers from just that problem and as a result feels very anticlimactic. Instead of leaving you with that “wow factor”, it becomes what feels like another in a long list of gags.

And speaking of gags…those were aplenty as well. Slapstick has never really been a huge part of Star Trek, but it’s plastered all over this film, from Kirk hitting his head on a steel beam getting into a space ship or Bones getting accidentally beamed into a sewer pipe, to an extended gag sequence that involves Kirk growing oversized hands and a speech impediment – a scene very reminiscent of Will Smith’s brilliant turn in “Hitch” (sarcasm is hard to inject into the written word, but yea, that was a hefty dose right there). Again, I have no problem with fun in movies if it suits the story or is relevant somehow, but that didn’t feel like the case here. It felt like the creators weren’t confidant in the strength of the material alone and felt the need to cram in any and everything that might keep the viewer from having too much down time to really let any of that material actually set in.

Then, of course, there is the junk science. I’m not going to dwell too much on this because I know only the geekiest of us actually care, but it does need to be pointed out. Number one - total lack of knowledge as to what a “black hole” actually is and how they work. You can’t just drive through the middle of a black hole like it was some kind of giant garage door. Number two – livable planets generally have atmospheres that would prevent someone from say, jumping out of a space ship and free-falling in a straight line down to an orbiting platform. Even if the pressure and friction of the atmosphere didn’t set them ablaze, orbiting structures are not stationary, they’re moving through space at incredibly fast speeds. On top of that, if a structure were low enough in the atmosphere to allow people to take off their helmets and not freeze or suffocate to death during their choreographed sword fights, then suffice it to say it’s probably too low to maintain orbit and keep from being pulled down by the planet’s gravity. And finally – is there sound in space or isn’t there? Make up your damn mind, JJ.

I must admit, I’m being pretty negative towards this movie here, but it did have some redeeming qualities. The aforementioned space jump scene was cool despite the improbability. Visually, the film has a lot of style and “flare” (if you know what I mean). The spacescapes are all beautiful, the ships looked great and many of the shots were framed well to create interesting compositions. If I were reviewing the film based solely on watching the whole thing on mute, then it would undoubtedly get a high ranking and in all honestly, if this hadn’t been labeled a “Star Trek” movie, I probably wouldn’t have many of the complaints that I have. But they decided to make it Star Trek instead of…oh, I don’t know…coming up with something original for once, so here we are.

One of the things I feel is necessary in a case like this is to put things into perspective and say exactly how this film stacks up in the grand scheme of things. It’s not as bad as, say, “The Pacifier and it’s certainly not straight-to-DVD quality. This movie is akin to Michael Bay’s “Transformers” in many ways. The stories to both films are inconsequential compared to the real stars, the effects, the action and the merchandising. Both claimed to be about things they weren’t – “Transformers” was more about high school students than Transformers and “Star Trek” was more about the zany adventures of James T. Kirk and his special destiny (not to be confused with the famed coverband Starbuck & Her Special Destiny) than it was about Star Trek. They both have throwaway pop music soundtracks, which isn’t exactly unexpected from “Transformers” since it is set in the present day, but it really felt out of place in “Star Trek”. As much as I love “Sabotage”, I have a hard time believing that people will still be ubiquitously bumpin’ that jam throughout the ages. I don’t even know all that many people who still have that in regular rotation now. Personally, I’d be interested to hear what kind of fist-pumpers people might be creating in the future, but I understand that such things would be problematic for fast-food chain tie-ins and high-octane TV spots, which we all know is the real point of making this movie.

Most of the time, after a Star Trek movie finishes and I’m walking out of the theater, I’m thinking about something grand, like whether there might be some validity to the Borg’s collective way of living, whether androids really could develop to understand emotions some day, if Spock and Kirk really should have saved those whales or if it was right of the Federation to get involved in such and such conflict on such and such planet, but walking out of the theater after JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek”, the only thing I was thinking about was the quickest route to Jack in the Box to get some curly fries. That about says it right there. It’s eye-candy and mindless distraction, nothing more. So if you’re looking for a “rock ‘em, sock ‘em good time”, a “roller-coaster ride of thrills and spills” or a “dazzling, high-octane whiz-bang of summer movie madness” then by all means, go see “Star Trek” and enjoy the hell out of it. As for me…I’ll be in my room watching “First Contact” and weeping.