Star Trek – A Slightly Different Opinion
May 12, 2009 by Maura Reilly
Filed under Reviews
I too saw J.J. Abrams Star Trek this weekend. I was really looking forward to it. Some of my absolute favorite actors are in this film: Karl Urban, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood and Eric “The Banana” Bana. I fear my expectations were probably too high. Two days later, I find myself increasingly disillusioned at what I saw.
To be fair, I was entertained while watching it. Urban and Pegg in particular were a lot of fun to watch. I laughed at the shout outs to the TV show and earlier films. But even at the time, especially during the first 30 minutes of the movie, I was struck with the feeling of “boy these guys are trying way too hard to be cool.”
I have a few specific issues I’d like to get off my chest. Warning: spoilers to follow!
- Star Trek the series prided itself on being an equal opportunity universe: people of all creeds, all nationalities were represented and women held positions of authority, at least in the later series. We had one woman on the crew, Uhura, and despite protestations to how intelligent she was she was basically relegated to a sexual object. I’m not even going to go into the whole Spock/Uhura relationship uncomfortableness.
- The creation of their “alternative reality” means all of the mythology of the TV series and films is gone. This wipes the slate clean and frees up the sequels to do whatever they want. It’s a clever plot device but I have to imagine that hard-core Trekkers are losing their minds over this. To me it feels a bit dismissive of all that came before: “Oh sure, we loved the series but we’re going to forget all that and just make up our own.”
- I don’t know about the rest of you but I am sick and tired of the “Michael Bay Moving Camera” School of film making. It’s a movie guys, not a TV show. Put the damn camera down. You may think of it as dynamic and exciting but I think it’s annoying and unnecessary. The production design team spent hours putting together that set, let me see it!
I know I’m in the minority when it comes to my opinion on this movie and I welcome a lively debate. But if there are sequels (and judging by the opening weekend numbers there will be) I’ll line up to see them. The advertising tag-line for this film was “this is not your Father’s Star Trek”. To be honest, it wasn’t mine either.
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*Spoilers*
I understand what you’re saying. When the whole Spock and Uhura thing popped up the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘WTF?! Did I miss something in the original series? I’m sure I’ve seen every single episode at least three times.’ That was nothing compared to the irritation brought on by the Spock on Spock scenario (I thought one shouldn’t communicate with one’s alternate Bizarro world self but apparently Vulcans do).
As far as the moving camera viewpoint goes it was decent compared to some movies and (especially) TV shows I’ve seen. I realize the effect gives it a constant action environment, but this fad is now passe. The only thing disturbing to me were the light reflections streaming through the screen at times (didn’t anyone check this during filming?).
All in all the film was definitely entertaining, and it showcased my new favorite star, Chris Pine. The casting was superb I look forward to seeing them again in future sequels (or is it more prequels?). For all of its storyline faults or misguidances, the thing to do with this film is take it all in perspective: no matter what happens with the future films, they all must lead back to the scenario of the original series, otherwise they wouldn’t be prequels but simply parallel universes of Star Trek. What a mind – scramble.