By Ali Arikan
Oh blessed be, nerds; oh happy day! Time to gambol. Star Trek is finally cool! HUZZAH! And here’s the bonus: J.J. Abrams, the director, and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers, have found ingeniously oafish ways of crowbarring every single aspect of common Trek lore into the film. The single most moving line in the history of the entire Star Trek canon is destroyed to underline a scene that would have otherwise been quite powerful. It’s obvious the filmmakers studied Gene Roddenberry’s space saga closely, got to know it inside out, and it shows in their slavish and graceless dedication to the franchise. But, you know what they say: Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in your fruit salad.
This is probably one of the busiest blockbusters I have seen in a while (soon to abdicate its throne to the second Transformers flick, surely). Jim Emerson has talked about the ubiquity of the lens flares, which are not so much distracting as plain amateurish. Half the dialogue scenes seem to be one shots or extreme close-ups of the actors, the camera tilted at an angle, lights flaring in the background to test the audience’s patience (or see how many of them will have an epileptic fit). Abrams’s background in TV is most obvious in his compositions: A one shot of Kirk (Chris Pine)—CUT—a close up of Spock (Zachary “Eyebrows” Quinto)—CUT—a two shot of the star-crossed lovers’ resisting the urge to play a round of tonsil tennis—CUT—a one shot of Kirk, etc, with coruscating beams of light in the background that blind the retinas.
Abrams has crammed his “reinterpretation” with nuggets of info, old and new, and constant winks at the audience. We find out why Bones (Karl Urban) is called Bones (alas, it has nothing to do with involuntary arousal, as I’d always assumed). We see exactly how Kirk cheated the Kobayashi Maru, a part of Trek lore since The Wrath of Khan, considered by many—but not me—to be the pinnacle of the Trek movies. There’s a mind meld (basically a mental intercourse) between old man Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and James T. Kirk, whose intergalactic wanderlust appears out of leftfield, as does his bizarre obsession with Uhura’s (Zoe Arikan, née Saldana) first name. We even get to laugh at Chekov (Anton Yelchin—that guy has a dynamite agent, by the way; this Friday, we will get to watch him as Kyle Reese…Kyle FRICKING Reese) in a scene that steals from Galaxy Quest, and see Sulu (John Cho) fence. Scotty (Simon Pegg) has turned into C3PO, with an inscrutable midget sidekick to boot—a cross between that alien from Enemy Mine and Verne Troyer. Finally, the strong emotional bond between Kirk and Spock, understated by the use of irony in the original series, is explicitly homoerotic in this new version. Kirk and Spock’s relationship is not gay as in the-video-for-Toto’s-“Rosanna”-gay. But it’s still pretty gay.
Which is all by way of saying there is absolutely no nuance in J.J. Abrams’s film, not even a soupçon of subtlety, no genuine humour. It’s all piff-paff, whack-bang, etc, packed with heaps of post-modernist “irony” or whatever it is they call this bollocks. Nudge nudge, wink wink ahoy. We are all wallowing in a never-ending adolescence these days. So, instead of making us laugh, J.J. Abrams just wants to make us feel clever, and the whole thing becomes a big ego-massage. Like buying an I-Pod.
The film starts with a not-quite-so-graceful pan underneath the hull of a starship, the USS Kelvin—the camera makes its way along the surface, following its contours, and gently rests above the bridge. The slightly dizzying effect is reminiscent of Revenge of the Sith’s opening shot, and the short sequence is but the first of many allusions to Star Wars. Forfeiting the awe of the sci-fi parables of the 1960’s might have been necessary in an update in this fickle, nay, cynical day and age. But the film fails to replicate the grandeur of the original Star Wars even though it so obviously swings for it: it plays the notes, but not the music (which reminds me, even Michael Giacchino, the finest composer on television, provides here a score that’s as obtrusive as it is incongruous, with his themes borrowing liberally from such second-rate John Williams compositions like “Battle of the Heroes,” again from Sith).
As is now expected from almost all summer blockbusters, the plot is an arbitrary contrivance between set pieces as it chugs along to its inevitable culmination in which the crew of the Enterprise proper will find themselves in their traditional roles. And, of course, a second raison d’être of the film is to update the Star Trek brand. By the time Star Trek: Nemesis had limped into the theaters in 2002, the franchise was not just senescent, it was moribund. Now that J.J. Abrams has apparently injected new life into it, it merely feels like old wine in new bottles. Gone is the idealised liberalism and quaintness of the original series, replaced with mind-numbing vacuity. You know, what the kids call “cool.”
And talking about cool, the tattooed villains in this piece—disgruntled Romulan space miner Nero (Eric Bana) and his band of merry men—completely lack the hysteria and the larger-than-life bravado of some of the more memorable Trek villains, like Khan (Ricardo Montalbahn). Nero’s ship is shaped like a gigantic mutated porcupine; its inside is one giant crepuscular abyss, with suspended platforms littered haphazardly, and I was reminded of the interior void of the alien mothership in Independence Day. (Mind you, Scott Chambliss’s production design is otherwise excellent—my favourite aspect of the film, and I will pay special attention to him in the future; absolutely amazing stuff). We first meet Nero when Captain Robau (Faran Tahir) of the Kelvin is brought in front of him for interrogation—BUT, y’see, Robau is so not worthy to talk to Nero, and Nero is in such a bad mood anyway, that the conversation takes place through Nero’s first officer Ayel (Clifton Collins Jr). It’s like Mean Girls…in space.
Even though a bloody miner seems particularly pedestrian, I’ve always had that problem when it comes to Star Trek villains anyway, my feelings toward them ranging from mild dislike to complete contempt. If you could travel through time and space (and alternate universes), then you’d pretty much have it made, wouldn’t you? That’s the end of every single problem in the entire universe. So villains with planet-sized hammer drills don’t really come across as that insurmountable a threat to me. And that is exactly why Q is the best ”villain” the show has ever produced, just like Galactus was the best adversary of the Fantastic Four. If you are dealing with heroes who can disregard the physical laws that govern the universe, then your enemy is obvious: The Abrahamic God. Let’s see how you deal with that hirsute fucker.
Which brings me to my main gripe with not just J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (Start Trek?), but the whole franchise itself. I have always found the idea of Star Trek infinitely cooler and more awe-inspiring than the execution. The revelation that the first contact with an alien race was made with the Vulcans in the eponymous movie is probably the only instance when I had a Cheshire grin in terms of any Star Trek experience (OK, that and Uhura’s [Nichelle Nichols] dance in The Final Frontier). There are moments that move me, like Spock fixing the hem of his coat (as observed by our fearless leader Matt in his recent video essay), Kirk’s eulogy, the final scene in The Next Generation (“Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit”): They make me blub every single time. I sometimes spend hours rummaging through Memory Alpha or reading the episode synopses on Wikipedia. They fill me with joy and elation. As Jim Emerson wrote in his piece about the new Trek, even the image, the very design of the Enterprise fills me with wonder.
(Aside: I feel the total opposite when it comes to JRR Tolkien’s works. When it was recently announced that Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro had revised their plans with regard to the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit, they talked about incorporating Gandalf’s battle with the Necromancer in Dol Guldur into one of the two films. I had no idea what half the words in that sentence meant, so I searched for it on Wikipedia and this is the sort of information I got:"In the Second Age, before Sauron occupied the hill, Silvan Elves of the Woodland Realm under Oropher, father of Thranduil, populated the area of Rhovanion around Amon Lanc, but they withdrew northward, evidently to avoid conflict with Lórien and Moria."
Oh, dear lord.)
But there is a dark underbelly to Star Trek, one that is often overlooked. In his book Science Fiction in the 20th Century, Edward James writes, “Star Trek shows that humanity can improve, that society can change, and that there is a final frontier to be crossed and conquered. Star Trek embodies, in unadulterated form, the optimism in humanity and faith in progress which was so characteristic of American science fiction up to the 1960’s.” And that is true. In a way.
Because despite the assertions of Star Trek’s countless producers and myriad fans, the entire franchise (but mainly the original series) has always been about underlining 20th century prejudices, but on a cosmic scale. The only species not defined by an overarching, stereotypical character trait is the humans. All others can be described with one word, and one word only: Vulcans are soulless, Klingons are aggressive, Ferengi are sly, etc. The arrogance on display is palpable: Only Homo Sapiens have the right answers, the rest of the races littering the galaxy are somewhat primitive, despite their mastery of space and time well in advance of us. The ones that are slightly more well adjusted, like Spock or Worf, have all adapted to our ways: this is not integration, it’s assimilation. In his seminal essay "Raffles and Miss Blandish" (which compares, incidentally, the way the same story—in this case, crime fiction—got to be told in two different times), George Orwell writes: “People worship power in the form in which they are able to understand it.” And the way Star Trek creates its pantheon of gods, sitting proudly atop Mount Enterprise, is through an “us vs. them” anthropocentrism.
But that’s a whole other essay. J.J. Abrams’s film fails not because of the problems with the franchise, but because of the problems with him. Despite the franchise’s many failings, the fault, in this case, is not in Star Trek; it is in Abrams.
Ali Arikan is the author of Cerebral Mastication.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Star Trek 90210? Or Star Trash? Or whatever you want, K.
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21 comments:
McCoy is called "Bones," traditionally, as a diminutive of "Sawbones," the sort of thing that the old "country doctor" McCoy might have called himself, and Kirk might have overheard and chuckled at, at some early point in their relationship. This knowledge fills me with shame.
As for ST, I quite enjoyed it, but not as much, I confess, as I enjoy the seething, sweaty, neckbearded nerd rage that a costly summer blockbuster might dare to show explosions and pretty girls in their underwear. (Where was the reward for the real Trek fan, the ones who paid to see The Voyage Home and Nemesis in the theaters? cries a voice in the wilderness.)
It occurs to me that this Star Trek can be entertaininly read as a romantic comedy, ending, in accordance with tradition, with a wedding between the apparently commonplace but destiny-filled youth who rises to the rarefied class of his aristocratic bride through the performance of extraordinary deeds, but the question is whether the wedding is of Kirk and the Enterprise or Kirk and Spock.
Maybe I'm dense, but I didn't see anything homoerotic between Kirk and Spock.
>>All others can be described with one word, and one word only: Vulcans are soulless, Klingons are aggressive, Ferengi are sly, etc.
Three words, man: Deep Space Nine. I'll admit that the other shows and movies left a lot of the aliens as rather thin creations, but DS9 did an awfully good job of enriching the Star Trek universe. The Ferengi, for example, became a plausible and dynamic culture. But otherwise the point is correct.
I'll agree that the new Star Trek left something to desire stylistically, but I've never felt Abrams possessed any special technical virtuosity, and, honestly, that's never been the series's strong point. I thought the film was a generally entertaining movie that mostly held together. When it comes to the Trek movies, that's about all that you can expect. The extent to which the intellectualism of the series infected the movies is greatly exaggerated. (The shows were always a more reliable entertainment in my opinion: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine were pretty excellent, and ST remains a phenomenon better unrolled on the small screen.)
I suppose I'm just not sympathetic to the "They betrayed Star Trek!" argument after seven years of Voyager, four years of Enterprise, Insurrection and Nemesis. Berman and Braga betrayed Trek far more than anyone else possibly could. Admittedly, I didn't watch much Enterprise, but it seemed like nothing after Deep Space Nine was willing to try to reinvent Trek in any appreciable way, instead of maintaining a steady profit stream for the franchise. Is it any wonder that people got sick of the same old? I do think that this particular reinvention might wind up to be problematic, but I didn't really get up in arms about this particular movie. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
Nice piece.
Kind of a strange way to write off Tolkien, though, towards the end. Almost like dismissing the entire Star Trek universe based on a quote from one of the (many) "technical manuals".
"J.J. Abrams, the director, and Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the writers, have found ingeniously oafish ways of crowbarring every single aspect of common Trek lore into the film"
You must hate the opening of The Last Crusade. I agree with you conceptually- you don't need to shove every little tidbit in there just because you can. But I think that the movie is actually generally rather low-key about it. It doesn't land with a thud.
I personally think the movie gets past a lot of its flaws by sheer giddy enthusiasm. It not the best example of craftsmanship, composition and editing...but I didn't feel like it was cynical, either. There was something about it that made it feel modest, and sincere. I felt kinda bad for buying into something that in many ways is pretty indefensible for a few days...until I saw Angels & Demons, and inexplicably had a blast. Now THAT I feel like a sucker for enjoying.
The scene is set with the birth of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), whose father sacrifices his life to save that of his pregnant wife and soon-to-be son, by locking himself onto a Federation starship to free the others.
Great review, Ali.
The I-Pod line is brilliant, and is exactly the problem I have with Abrams and his cult of 40-something fanboys. He's not a major motion picture director (MI 3was awful) as he has yet to learn the value of an establishing shot...I read somewhere (I can't remember which blog, though) that Abrams films on the big screen like he does on TV...he needs to learn that the screen in a movie theater is much larger...it's okay to pull back every now and then.
I'm not a Trekkie (I've only seen a few of the movies, although I remember thinking that Part VI was pretty good as a kid) or an Abrams fan (obviously) so I think I'll be skipping this one until it hits Premium Cable.
Great review thoughts as always, and thanks for mentioning lens flares...the only device more played out than Dutch angles; two things that are always overused that show a directors inability to film a scene competently.
Something I find weird about the hype on this movie (which I haven't seen yet): the whole idea that it's the "First Star Trek movie for EVERYONE!"
The other Star Trek movies weren't for everyone? I mean, I seem to remember as a kid going to see those movies, most of which were massive hits, with audiences that were largely made up of working class folks who couldn't give a shit about the deeper intricacies of Trek lore. (Well...Except for Generations, which I ended up seeing with an audience of hardcore trek-fans who fake-laughed, loudly, at anything that was mildly funny - it was like stumbling into some weird cult meeting; I once read a David Mamet essay where he suggested that we had moved away from enjoying pop culture and had now actually started to worship it, and that had the effect of making pop culture less fun (that might explain The Dark Knight) and I thought, "Oh yeah, like those people at Generations!")
Thank you for writing what I thought / felt as I watched this perversion.
Abrams is a derivative director, and this film captures that perfectly. The 'cold planet' scene seemed ripped straight from the planet Hoth.
Scene after scene, plot device after plot device seemed cobbled together into some kind of amp'd Frankensteinian Bizarro Star Trek.
Totally agree with the 'wink wink' thing. But there is something soulless about it.
The film was still enjoyable at points, but I was amazed at how they could waste what should be a thrill for any self-respecting Trek fan - Spoke Prime's appearance never really had much of an emotional impact. It felt almost stale as soon as he appeared on the screen.
Now that the saccharine sweet taste of the film has worn off, it becomes even less appealing in hind sight.
SRP - I actually love the opening sequence of The Last Crusade, because it is so whimsical and has such gusto. Indiana Jones was already an icon in 1989, sure, but he wasn't an institution like he (and Star Trek) is now. At least, not in my 11-year-old estimation. The whole sequence has a Portait of the Adventurer as a Young Man feel to it.
Lev - I never quite got into Deep Space Nine. I hear it improved immensely in the latter seasons.
Kevin H. - I know it was sort of a cheap dig at Tolkien. I have only read The Hobbit, which I loved, and The Lord of the Rings, which I detested. He has a laborious style, his prose is enervating, and his stories overly earnest. And don't get me started on all the names.
BUT, I think it is just me. I think there is a personal disconnect. Besides, I like Jar Jar, so what do I know?
Everyone - I know this is going to sound like those first-time users on ye olde Star Wars newsgroups, whose first posts invariably pointed out that "the stormtrooper hits his head," but Babylon 5 producer J. Michael Straczynski pitched a Star Trek reboot a while back, too. I remember reading it somewhere - some parts were bolder than the JJ Abrams film, others not so much.
"It’s all piff-paff, whack-bang, etc, packed with heaps of post-modernist “irony” or whatever it is they call this bollocks. Nudge nudge, wink wink ahoy. We are all wallowing in a never-ending adolescence these days. So, instead of making us laugh, J.J. Abrams just wants to make us feel clever, and the whole thing becomes a big ego-massage."
Pot, meet Kettle.
Hello, nice to meet you.
Great review Ali. Even though we ultimately disagree, I can't take issue with many or most of the points you raise. BTW, am I the only one who thought the lens flares worked? (I'll answer that: yes)
We even get to laugh at ChekovIt recently occurred to me that the premise for the bit where Chekov has problems using the voice recogntion system is lamer than Scotty getting sucked through the water pipe. Why should poor Pavel HAVE to speak in English on a "Federation of Planets" ship?
Scott said...Maybe I'm dense, but I didn't see anything homoerotic between Kirk and Spock.A sub group (cult?) of Trekkies actually view the Kirk/Spock relationship from that perspective. I personally don't agree. But this theory has been out there for years.
My personal title for it is STAR TREK: THE PEPSI GENERATION.
Bravo for saying that The Emperor has no clothes, sir.
Some emperors need no clothes (e.g., Iron Man last year), and some emperors wear more clothes than they ought (any November-December Oscar-baiting weeper), and some emperors wear other emperors' clothes (Tarantino, Rodriguez).
We see exactly how Kirk cheated the Kobayashi Maru, a part of Trek lore since The Wrath of Khan, considered by many—but not me—to be the pinnacle of the Trek movies.“WRATH OF KHAN” is the pinnacle of the TREK movies? “WRATH OF KHAN”???
Because despite the assertions of Star Trek’s countless producers and myriad fans, the entire franchise (but mainly the original series) has always been about underlining 20th century prejudices, but on a cosmic scale. The only species not defined by an overarching, stereotypical character trait is the humans. All others can be described with one word, and one word only: Vulcans are soulless, Klingons are aggressive, Ferengi are sly, etc. The arrogance on display is palpable: Only Homo Sapiens have the right answers, the rest of the races littering the galaxy are somewhat primitive, despite their mastery of space and time well in advance of us. The ones that are slightly more well adjusted, like Spock or Worf, have all adapted to our ways: this is not integration, it’s assimilation.At last, at last, at last!!! Someone has finally pointed out the main flaw of TREK.
Three words, man: Deep Space Nine. I'll admit that the other shows and movies left a lot of the aliens as rather thin creations, but DS9 did an awfully good job of enriching the Star Trek universe. The Ferengi, for example, became a plausible and dynamic culture. But otherwise the point is correct.I don’t agree. Even DS9 indulged in that crap. This is the series that openly claimed that Earth was Paradise. I’m still wincing from that.
In its Season 7, two of the characters had exposed an attempt by the Federation to commit genocide against their enemy (the Dominion). Yet, in the same season, one of the Starfleet characters had the nerve to declare that the Klingon Empire was dying. I guess she forgot the mess that her own organization was knee deep in. One of the flaws of DS9 (and probably Trek) was that it exposed some of Humanity's (or the Federation's) flaws and then completely ignored these flaws to concentrate on the dark side of other alien cultures.
Jim Moore wins the thread.
I know, I know, it's not a competition. But stuff like this? Yeah, it's what keeps me from hanging around here on a regular basis.
Abrams' ST was frothy and fun, and underneath it all, had something to say about the influence that fathers have in our lives. Its central time-travel macguffin made no sense and its villain was incomprehensible, but it managed to bring the core team together, believably intact.
I gave up on Enterprise early in its run, but I watched all the rest of the Trek series, even Voyager. Classifying Vulcans as soulless demonstrates how little you know about the universe the series created. Yeah, you can throw around the polysyllabic vocabulary, but you dismiss Tolkien and you admit to liking Jar-Jar. You've outed yourself as a dilettante. Bet you had a blast writing this, though.
This is less an actual review than it is the obligatory duty of the terminally hip: to churn out a disdainful, glib takedown of the flavor of the moment, for very little other justification than that it IS the flavor of the moment, and therefore must be scorned, lest the writer's hipster credentials suffer shipwreck.
Yeah, the movie is a little shallow, a little surface and a little more than derivative. But it's also a hell of a lot of fun, enormously good-natured, and respectful of its source material almost to a fault. It is, at least, whatever its shortcomings, about as sincere as a megabudget blockbuster can possibly be... a quality no doubt utterly lost on our correspondent, for whom sincerity seems little more than an excuse for a snarky putdown.
Something popped into my head on my evening commute (all 10 minutes of it): imitating Galaxy Quest? Wait a minute. The entirety of Galaxy Quest was an extended homage to Star Trek.
I think someone missed that point.
Carry on.
I simply loved hating it. It gave "derivative" an entirely new cosmological density of meaning. Like having a flashback of a deja vu. Check out my "recycled recycling of recyclables" commentary...
http://culturalcapitol.com/2009/05/27/on-star-trek-the-dumbest-movie-you’ll-enjoy-this-summer/
xx
I saw the movie for a second time. And ended up spotting a whole mess of plot holes.
It's amazing that the most highly acclaimed movie of this summer is also one of the most badly written I have come across.
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