By Simon Abrams
There’s a quick, but relatively lingering shot of outer space in the first few minutes of J.J. Abrams Star Trek that illustrates why his “revamp” of Gene Rodenberry’s essential science fiction franchise works so well. In it, several seemingly microscopic ships are fleeing from a monolithic Romulan mining ship in front of an enormous sun. It comes hot on the heels of a glitzy, fatal encounter which establishes the ostentatious mood that elevates the origins of James T. Kirk to the heights of grand space opera. The awe that this image inspires succinctly relates how Abrams’ film achieves its goal of restoring the enormity of the universe these characters inhabit.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and, to a lesser extent, Star Trek: Generations (1994) and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) arguably achieve the same mix of personal pathos and unrepentant spectacle that Abrams does, but none of them work on the same scale. Abrams uses the film’s myriad gorgeous shots of space just as his screenwriters and frequent collaborators, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, use broad brushstrokes to paint a picture of young Kirk (Chris Pine) as a fated hero. This is after all a universe that fans and non-fans are to some extent already acquainted with, making it only—pardon the cheesy in-joke—logical to revive interest in the stagnant series by reminding us that Kirk, and hence the show, was always bigger than life.
This undoubtedly has a lot to do with the fact that Abrams’ financial empire affords him the opportunity to boldly use funds that no previous producer could secure before, but it’s not something that Abrams consistently flaunts. During most of the film’s spectacular scenes of violence, Abrams employs a gimmicky yet effective shaky cam technique that Ronald Moore’s excellent Battlestar Galactica revamp helped to make a genre staple. We can’t always see what’s going on, but we do get the impression of frantic action and immediacy. This is fitting because fighting in Roddenberry’s series was always meant to have a dirty taint to it. Through displays of grandstanding violence, as in classic episodes like “Balance of Terror” or “Arena,” we melodramatically learn to disavow bloodshed, or at least we do until the next fight.
Kirk is frequently at the center of these scenes of violence, though Orci and Kurtzman wisely have him extend the didactic olive branch typical of Rodenberry’s series as an empty but necessary gesture (somehow, showing mercy at the end of this story just seems wrong). Though Star Trek’s about the first adventure of the Enterprise crew as we know it, Abrams’ story is realistically all about Kirk. He was always the head of a team, but he also effectively speaks for them, learning their lessons through the periodic reform of his usual swagger. Even Spock (Zachary Quinto), who enjoys a sizable subplot, learns that he has to give up the limelight and become Kirk’s moral compass. He may get the girl in the end, but Kirk gets his captain’s chair.
Therein lies the real raison d’etre of Abrams’ thankfully over-the-top Trek. Peppered with an overwhelming abundance of fan service-friendly quotes and references to the original series, the film is a much-needed, self-congratulatory celebration of Kirk and co.—the supporting cast is all-around terrific—and of their importance. Over-the-top actions speak for themselves and a new mythology is established through a mash-up of the characters’ convoluted history, here boiled down to token gestures like Spock using the mind-meld and the Vulcan nerve pinch. For a franchise that has fallen so far away from its original glory, puffing its origins up to gargantuan size is exactly what the show needs right now to get back into the good graces of both fans and curious newcomers. For once, bigger is better. And, in this case, oddly more personal.
Simon Abrams writes about comics, books and movies for the Comics Journal, the L Magazine, the New York Press and Slant Magazine. Since last year, he's been obsessively keeping a film journal where he writes down something about every film he's seen.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
All About Kirk: Space Opera as Fan Service
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Quick thoughts on "Trek" -- I could easily post them on Matt Maul's review, but this one is higher up on the page; great job, Matt:
Saw it Sunday. Enjoyed the hell out of it. I don't think it's a great movie by any stretch, more "great for what it is." As deep shallow movies go, it's somewhat less impassioned than the "Lord of the Rings" films, better written and paced (but less visually interesting) than the "Star Wars" prequels (I know I'm one of about five people who has anything to say about those, so I hesitate to even bring them into the discussion, but hey -- George Lucas at his worst has more film smarts, and a more elegant sense of composition and cutting, than J.J. Abrams, who doesn't so much direct the action and dialogue as cover it, Monday Night Football-style). I missed the classicism that made the early "Trek" movies (not including the godawful "Final Frontier") and the original series a pleasure to re-watch. There were no individual moments as wrenching and lovely as Spock's death in II or the murder of Kirk's son and the subsequent destruction of the Enterprise in III, or the mind meld-mind rape in VI (the most chilling Spock moment in the entire run of his character), and no aesthetic choices as dead solid perfect as the old series' practice of filming most of Spock's mind-melds in a single take with no cuts. (For real; re-watch the old show and you'll see what I mean.)
I wanted more patience, more concentration from the movie at certain points. I appreciate the desire to keep things moving, but sometimes I missed the original series (and film series') willingness to just stand still for a moment and contemplate the characters and situations (which frankly is the saving grace of the franchise's first incarnation; about two-thirds of the episodes are passable to wretched, and the films have a pretty weak scene-by-scene batting average when Nicholas Meyer wasn't in the director's chair).
The obliteration of the planet Vulcan should have been more horrific; Abrams should have given himself license to linger just a couple more minutes on the Enterprise's reaction, especially Spock's. It's an act of genocide, for crying out loud. More horror, please.
That said, the performances were much more imaginative and controlled than I expected. I liked Chris Pine's bad-boy Kirk; he had a touch of early Kevin Costner about him, that surly stud I-don't-give-a-fuck-so-get-out-of-my way quality that made Costner so memorable in "No Way Out." The highest praise I can give to Zachary Quinto is to say that he re-imagined one of the great characters in pop culture history and didn't make me miss Nimoy in the least (though it was great, and moving, to see Spock Prime again; isn't it about time to acknowledge what a great actor he is, and how much depth and nuance he brought to that part?). Quinto managed the Nimoy feat of investing rather straightforward lines with layers of irony and sarcasm that were clear to the audience but seemed just controlled enough to plausible escape notice (and censure) by characters on the receiving end. (My favorite was the moment where he turns down admission to the Vulcan science academy, ending his act of effrontery with, "The only emotion I feel...is gratitude.") This is going to sound odd, but the actor Quinto most reminded me of was the late Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent/Superman, in the sense that he was acting inside a deliberately self-aware and sometimes self-mocking film but maintained an absolutely sincere tone throughout, without ever seeming at odds with what the director was doing. In this day and age, sincerity is the most difficult thing to play, and he played it phenomenally well. He won't get an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor because this is blockbuster sci-fi, but if by some miracle he did, it would be well-deserved, because the pop culture baggage and the complexities of the character and the obligation to make him utterly transparent and accessible to newcomers while still pleasing hardcore fans all pushed the degree-of-difficulty factor up around 8 or 9 at least.
The supporting players shone as well, especially Zoe Saldana's Uhura (finally, the series gives Uhura something to do, and a sense of self beyond the job) and Bruce Greenwood as Pike (hitting just the right mix of laid-back authority and bemusement at the young crew's greenhorn swagger). I suppose one could complain that Abrams erred on the side of populism, particularly with the abundance of self-aware, almost meta dialogue (borderline Joss Whedon but not as prickly and smart), not to mention the physical shtick (the vaccine bit with Kirk's swollen mits, the bedroom slapstick with the green babe, Scotty getting sucked into that system of tubes). But I like that sort of thing -- when a director has the balls to offer audiences a wide variety of modes, from nearly operatic melodrama (the opening sequence) to Abbott and Costello knockabout clowning, all in the same film. (John Ford used to do it all the time; Steven Spielberg still does.)
If Abrams would just make up a goddamn shot list for fight scenes and dialogue scenes (or direct as if he actually had one -- I'm sure he did have one here, because the film was too expensive to wing it) he'd immediately jump right to the top of my list of juggernaut showmen. I like the shaky-cam, pseudo-doc style when it's done with panache and an overriding sense of form plus content (the "Bourne" films were brilliant examples of the style; though the handheld work was derided as haphazard, look closely and you'll see that every move, every cut has rhythmic purpose, that the movie is actually going for something and achieving it). Here it just seemed lazy and of-the-moment. (Abrams is capable of better; he directed the pilot for "Lost," which was distinguished by some of the best move-to-reveal dolly shots this side of early Spielberg. Maybe he was pressed for time and had to run-and-gun to get through the shooting schedule? Or maybe he's just being fashionable?)
I also appreciated the way that Abrams used the time-travel gimmick to pre-emptively head off complaints that he was mucking with the timeline established by the other TV series and movies. In an alternate universe, all that stuff happened, Spock Prime tells Kirk (and by extension the Trekkers in the audience); this is an alternate universe in which different stuff happens. That's a great, clever, unpretentious way of splitting the difference between what Simon calls fan service and the desire to give newcomers a movie that's comprehensible and fun and not too insider-ish.
There also seemed to be an aspect of pre-emptive auto-critique in the movie's obsession with ambitious young people trying to please (or escape the shadows of) their childhoods and parents (and parental figures). Pike is the engaged, supportive dad Kirk never really had, the parent figure who helps him realize his potential without trying to turn him into something he's not and go against his nature. Spock Prime, though separated from Spock until the final encounter in the shuttle bay, fullfills much the same narrative function. I saw this as a clever (and again, unpretentious) analogue for this film's ambition to live up to the potential (realized and untapped) of the original show and the original cast without mindlessly replicating their achievements and killing their own capacity to surprise us. The went their own way while honoring their roots, which is exactly what I hoped they'd do.
I also liked the design of the Romulan ship, which looked like a moving, three-dimensional production design sketch, all bold, spiky, barbed lines that seemed to have been rendered with a blunt-edged charcoal pencil; also the way Abrams sometimes cut the sound and let especially spectacular and/or scary moments play out in eerie Kubrickian silence (or with music and no sound effects). The new "Battlestar Galactica" does this sort of thing, and it doesn't do it better. I was also intrigued by the way that the film made the Jewish aspects of Vulcan culture somewhat official by subjecting the planet to a mad genocidal campaign that wiped out much of the population and dispersed the survivors in a kind of Vulcan diaspora; Spock Prime's visualization of a new homeworld for survivors sounded kind of like a Vulcan Israel. I got a big kick out of that; it's exactly the kind of spelunking into real-world historical relevance that the original series did with such panache when it was firing on all cylinders. I'd like to see more of that kind of thing in future installments, and since this one is making a shitload of money, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the second film were more ambitious and heady than the first. As a sometime TV critic I've noticed that the second seasons of well-received shows tend to be the seasons in which the writers, producers and actors hit a creative sweet spot, taking bigger risks without becoming too full of themselves, meandering, fucking up and losing viewer faith. The best season of the original Trek was Season Two, in my opinion. I have a gut feeling this new franchise will follow that creative arc.
Matt: I don't know if you were an Alias fan (wouldn't blame you if you weren't), but the second season finale of that show features a lengthy one-on-one fight sequence that was better realized as an action sequence than anything here. Abrams CAN SHOOT action really well. He just didn't do so here for ... some reason.
*whistles*
I think I'm ok with the rough style of the fight scenes, because, as I said in my review, it's justifiable if you think of it as part of Rodenberry's whole "violence is a necessary evil" routine.
Aesthetically, I didn't find it that hard to take either; I really enjoyed the scene where Spock wails on Kirk, for example.
isn't "Kubrickian silence" just silence?
Also, pretty weak movie. It makes no sense and whenever things get slow JJA throws in a dinosaur chase or a cutesy midget alien and expects us all to coo because the characters have names we've heard of before. Much like Dark Knight, a serious critical reassessment is due once the hoopla dies down.
Francis: "isn't "Kubrickian silence" just silence?"
Nope.
Except for the space rescue sequence in "2001," Kubrick's silences were often accompanied by a subtle, continuous whoosh on the soundtrack that suggested the sound of air moving through the ear canals. A lot of directors have pinched this tell, to greater or lesser effect.
This was such a badly written film that I'm surprised that it is also the most highly acclaimed of the summer.
It really has a terrible script. And I find it sad that so many critics were incapable of realizing just how bad it really it.
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