Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsget a load'a all that shinola they sprayed on that turd!
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2010
first off... I talk too much!:
Before the long wind begins, I will say I did enjoy this film. It did indeed entertain me. The problem always comes with the noisy ruminations of its enthusiastic appreciators.I think that I could get with the prevailing assessment of the "greatness" of this film if there was a modicum of respect for the art that came before it. Like battlestar galactica, like star wars, like the recent installments of superman and batman (the slightly older newer batman - being batman begins actually - coming less than a full decade after the old incarnation) the passionate contemporary blows the loudest horn. The words "Younger" and "better", the word "sexier", the ill gotten word "hipper" are thrown around as justifications of the product's existence altogether. It's the hip sexiness that makes this new such and such a thousand times better than the old so and so. As if there were any better reason for sprucing up and old car or an old house, than the time honored pursuit of long green! New Money making marketeer barons would have us believe the fairytale that this new re-imagination trend of updating the old was the obligation of the young. It is not, as a matter of fact, to anyone listening, it is not not not! But this is the parlance they use, and no one asks..., yeah but... WHY? Why did it HAVE to happen? It didn't. The suits just thought they could make a buck off something. Yes yes, a built in audience! Excellent marketing savvy there, gentlemen, although if you proceed to change everything in order to make it "digest-able" to the A.D.D. in you and me, then aren't they effectively alienating those same supposedly built in devotees? Tis indeed a conundrum!
Hubris:
And how does this attitude of better come into the equation. This is such a throw away society that we have television shows that are dedicated to mocking the times and styles of decades past with amusingly clever video blubs and pop up commentary atop stock footage of Wham or the Beatles or President Kennedy and everyone giggles about hair styles and artsy gimmickry. However they're clearly oblivious to the fact that in time the right now will be the back then, and brand new snotties in hipster gear of tomorrow year will be mocking them just as vehemently and thinking themselves just as clever. Comparing the old Battlestar Galactica or Star trek to the new is ridiculously naïve and downright stupid. Of course with the benefit of 20 to 30 years of advancement the look of one thing from now will out shine the lack of gloss of the one thing then. No one looks at photography and says that they're modern Polaroid of their dog, or the digital download of their children in a playground are "BETTER" than old picture candids of grandma from 1947, it's the substance of the photo, not the quality of the make of the picture. I mean, That argument would be friggin' stupid, wouldn't it?!!! The special effects are a thousand times better, the look is crisper, the visuals stunning. So let that be written down, we all agree. But sorry kids, I can still separate pretty from nourishing. Just a plain pretty look and nothing much in the story department is the equivalent of empty calories. Something to think about.
About the film itself:
For something so new and improved we sure did manage to roll out the Sci Fi cliché machine front and center when we were jotting this three act extravaganza down on paper, didn't we?
MR.BRAIN: Well... first we need a villain, he should be deep and brooding and virtually wordless so we don't have any of those clichéd cartoon mustache twisting villain moments.
MR. PINKY: How can we make him menacing if n' he don't talk, though, boss?
MR.BRAIN: Easy, we'll put sinister looking tattoos all over his face and give him nasty looking serrated edged weapons he can use to slay hapless Starfleet officers!
MR. PINKY: Brilliant, sir! What do we call him?
MR.BRAIN: Darth Maul!
MR. PINKY: Uhh, sir? Seriously?
MR.BRAIN: Yeah you're right, that's been taken. Alright well Roddenberry templated the Romulans against the Romans, roll out the list of roman emperors, drop your finger on a name and let's just move on, ANYTHING BUT CAESAR! That's too obvious.
MR. PINKY: Of course, sir.
MR.BRAIN: Now we don't want Darth Maul...
MR. PINKY: Sir?!
MR.BRAIN: I mean Nero, to be one dimensional, do we? So we'll have to give him purpose, alright, I say page two paragraph six of the vile motivations handbook?
MR. PINKY: Dead wife, sir?
MR.BRAIN: Yes! It worked for Mr. Freeze, didn't it? But lets up the anti_ his whole planet's destroyed and so now he wants to destroy the federation.
MR. PINKY: So the federation destroyed his planet?
MR.BRAIN: Nahh, but we'll come up with some convoluted plot point that'll wrap that all up.
MR. PINKY: How's he try to destroy the federation, sir, Sabotage? Political intrigue?
MR.BRAIN: Are you nuts, that would take whole minutes to establish, and mostly done through dialog! Go to chapter one in the Vile Implementations handbook.
MR. PINKY: Oh sir, you don't mean....?
MR.BRAIN: Yes my friend, the vaunted planet destroying weapon!
MR. PINKY: Didn't we do that with V-Ger in the first film Kahn and the genesis device, or the hunchback whale probe, or with that weirdo nexus ribbon that required the destruction or worlds to be moved, or when that guy who killed Mozart needed a face lift and was willing to use some solar collector thingie on a planet, or that OTHER Romulan dude, Shinzon or whatever, didn't he have a super baddie weapon he planned to use against the federation? And didn't Vader have like two of those types of things?
MR.BRAIN: Your point? It works, don't it?
MR. PINKY: Alright, so we got the federation against a rogue madman with his very own planet destroying weapon and an axe to grind?
MR.BRAIN: Sounds like Gold, don't it?
MR. PINKY: But neither Romulos nor Vulcan were destroyed in Kirks time of star trek, sir, how do we fit this in?
MR.BRAIN: C'mon, use you head willya, Mirror mirror on the wall!
MR. PINKY: Ohh of course sir, an alternate universe! Meaning Nero's a time traveler! The sci Fi trifecta, you are an absolute genius of modern celluloid story crafting, sir.
MR.BRAIN: Yes, yes, you're quite right! Alright my nephew'll be getting home from high school any minute; I get him working on the script as soon as he puts the key in the door!
Get you-self an edu-ma-cation, son:
Sadly I must admit to a prejudice myself, toward these greasy new executive hipsters whom blow in, un-time-tested, with one or two hits under their belt and now suddenly their some prodigy that knows better than everyone. I mean, at first I sort of buy into it cause I saw the flick and didn't vomit so I ran out and snatched up the DVD. Then suddenly you hear it, you hear it right there on the special features. "I really wanted to make star trek more like star wars! Fast paced and not so heady." Fair enough, you wanted one classic space opera to be more like another classic space opera more so than you wanted it to be like itself. Alright, knowing you boys the way I do that almost makes some sense. But then they keep talking and you hear things from their own lips like, "we took this out because it was too Set-up-ee." And allowing the vocab felony just committed by the word `Set-up-ee', you think; alright, the hipster's panicked that his excuse for dialog is going on too long between explosions. So out comes potentially pertinent information for the sake expediency. (them film jockeys call this "pacing") You keep moving. Then you get like a twelve and a half minute featurette showing you how the crafty crafters stationed a man just within camera shot so he could shine a flashlight into the lens and give everything a glaring effect. And you go. Well alright, this is sorta like movie magic, I guess, and it...is...worthy of a....full...featurette...........Right? then they talk about the director and the praise his wisdom and how good he is at turning water to wine and making the sick well and the blind see and all that, and then he comes on the scene and claims absolute stupidity, saying he was never a fan of the original trek, he never watched the show, but he had some GREAT IDEAS when they handed the project to him! So now you're like, alright, well.... So the guy's not a fan and... WAIT, WHY THE HELL IS HE MAKING THIS DAMNED MOVIE THEN? And why does an obviously smart man whom makes A-list movies feel compelled to completely downplay his wit in order to put butts in the seats? Has this society become so cynical and paranoid and functionally illiterate that we are dismayed by even the indication of a higher intellect behind our entertainment, or running our COUNTRY?! Are we at a point where a smart man has to play dumb or keep his street credibility and be taken semi seriously on the internet machine? All be told, allowing for Abrams to come out and claim a willful lack of education for himself and also of the genre he's just reinvented, harkens to the new trend of the hapless hero whom is seemingly brilliant by divine intervention and never had to work for his wit or his talents like everyone else. This new Kirk in the movie is a snot nosed kid, subversive and compulsive and reckless, yet someone sees potential in him and urges him to sign up. He even cheats, breaks all the rules and though Spock is a commander while he's still a cadet he is suddenly elevated to captain on his first mission, rising past Spock and a host of others whom I must assume have all been in Starfleet longer and whom presumably did so without faking out the system. I know the original Kirk cheated at the Kobyashi test, but you never get the impression that this was anything more than just an adherence to his own personal ideology that he didn't believe in the no win scenario. The way this is depicted, without any example of otherwise academic achievement on Chris Pines' (his character, not him, I think the dudes a whip ;)) part, we imply that he just got there on the merits of being ballsy and cheating his way through it. Someone should really have a problem with their heroes being depicted this way, but I don't think people were compelled to pay that much attention to the light lunch of characterization they were being spoon fed with sugary visuals! Hmmmmm, wait a minute.... was this Kirk quark a little autobiographical license there by the young upstart in the director's chair? Coincidence? Nahhh!
All put together I began to think to yourself, DID REALLY I JUST FRICKEN SEE AND HEAR WHAT I THOUGHT I SAW AND HEARD? And thus the intellect crusades begin. And there I go off wondering, is it not more important to inspire those still un-jaded and inspirables to CREATING something new?!
Technicality peeves:
Oh and Warp Nacelles are not thrusters, guys. The point is that they WARP space and propel the ship faster than light. They're not Jet afterburners! FYI. There have been literally a zillion tech manuals written on the Trek science, whereas you might think that these details are ridiculous, remember you're making a star trek movie! Don't talk to me about being a geek, you're the head geek in charge now, Mister mister! Can we get a guy that knows a guy to work on getting a guy to work on that? Also, who jettisons a cadet from their ship to a Hoth just because there's a slight disagreement? Doesn't the new flag ship have a brig? Oh, what? Oh, they needed to do that so young Kirk could meet old Spock and Scotty so that act 2 could begin? I see, uhhh.... Alright.... I guess. ;) BUT I DIGRESS!
Wrap it up!:
My point is for this film and its fans; it could not have been without the original. Mr. Abrams, for all his genuine brilliance, could not have done this without firmly standing on the shoulders of Mr. Roddenberry, without taking from a wealth of pre-established minutia that allowed him the luxury of picking and choosing and then casting the aforementioned "New Spin". What I fail to understand in this great society of ours is, why does anything new that happens to also be good, have to be good at the expense of what came before? Why does this have to be BETTER? Why would we mock he original actors and what they did and what they left us? I mean, remember acting, folks. True the Shat-inator was over-exuberant from time to time...to time, but there was genuine conveyance of wit and both intellect and emotion from these highly capable people. We're mocking that against modern characteristic development? Are you serious? I think it would be easier to agree that it was a fast paced, enjoyable film that allowed new perspectives and new directions to be taken with old favorites if there wasn't automatically this seeming inescapable negative slant against the old for the exaltation of the new. The new is pretty, the new is newer, stylized and kinetically meeting the manic short attention span standards of the eyes of today. It has not been proven, it has not been weighed or time tested at the moment, it should be given a chance, but exaltation waits until exaltation is earned. As we have clearly learned with the original trek movies, and the new star wars, and even the new dune novels, NOTHING IS AN ABSOLUTE WIN.
I liked the film, I liked it a lot. I want more of this, but I want substance with it too, and I am harsh because I can see the trend trending away from weight and further and further towards fluff, toward "easy". Visuals are easy. I can think of a visual: a giant octopus wrapped tight around the empire state building, swatting battle ships out of the river while whistling the star spangled banner!: doesn't make that visual compelling or intriguing, (well kinda...) it's just a visual! It's not the film; it's the new ideological hubris I feel it represents.
And.....................breath...
