The Writer’s Cut (1,500 words):
Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born in, of course, the middle of an interstellar fire-fight.
The original Star Trek telly programme has always been a bit of an oddity. Almost uniquely among SF TV (at least until quite recently) it’s a show that has always attracted female fans. By which I don’t mean beer-swilling would-be-boys with breasts or timid, transparent teenagers with no friends … I mean women with lives and families and, presumably, lots of better things to do.
I’ve seen them at Star Trek conventions, dressed in Star Fleet uniforms, with their normal looking families in tow. I’ve been to many different types of cons … Eastercons, Comic Cons, Anime Cons, Dr Who cons, a Worldcon … and I’ve never seen noticeable numbers of families anywhere … except Star Trek cons.
In-keeping with that, the release of the new Star Trek movie has generated a palpable buzz of excitement among civilian women and among people who, ordinarily, don’t get excited about films. There’s just something about Star Trek that has got under the skin of normal, healthy, well-balanced people.
I suspect this isn’t because J.J. Abrams has promised to thoroughly ‘re-boot’ the franchise, it isn’t because they all went to see MI:III (2006) and so are expecting something equally kinetic, it isn’t because of the vast sums that Paramount has spent on marketing the movie … it’s purely because it’s Star Trek.
So, what has Jeff served up for us? Well, not inappropriately, Star Trek starts right at the beginning of something big … an anomaly is opening up, a giant multi-coloured storm-cloud in space. Now, you’d think Star Fleet would recognise a worm-hole when they see one, but no, and out of this gaping hole in space-time heaves a gigantic spaceship, one part V’Ger to two parts Babylon 5 Shadow Ship.
It seemingly doesn’t come in peace as there promptly ensues a lot of explosions and the sort of crash-zoom wobbly-camera-work that has been the signature of Battlestar Galactica’s space-born battles.
Meanwhile, as with any canny film-maker, Abrams contrasts this story of rending steel and flashing phasers with a human story. Within the spiralling innards of the USS Kelvin, George Kirk has to take command of the ship during its death-throes while his wife, Winona, is giving birth to their son who will, surprisingly, be named James. The adult Kirk is very much his son’s father, he makes the decision his son will make sixty-odd years in the future (at the beginning of the film Generations – 1994 - confused yet? I am. But then prequels do that to me …) he opts to put his navy’s interests before his own.
So, typically for protagonists in films like this, young James grows up without a father. We see this in just one scene – the one featured in the trailer with him stealing a car. An extraordinary moment, designed to give Star Trek ‘cred’ in its opening moments with high-octane editing all set to the pounding guitars of The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage.
Where Kirk’s mother is called Winona, half a universe away on Vulcan, Spock’s mother is played by Winona. Winona Ryder. An odd choice to play Spock’s mum since she is only six years older than Zachary Quinto. Not sure if that was just one of the in-jokes that pepper the film. The ones that definitely are in-jokes are all dealt with with a very light touch throughout the film. For example, when the crew of the Enterprise make planet-fall, the first person to die is wearing red. This isn’t dwelled upon, it’s just there for you to notice or not. And, if you don’t know why that’s a Trek in-joke, that’s fine, you don’t need to.
Then we fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it - the first of several he'll lose during the film - on his way to picking up the Rick Deckard belt for film's finest fumbling fist-fighter) and bumping in to Commander Pike who points out that his reckless, rudderless lifestyle is a waste of potential: “You like being the only genius-level repeat offender!” Pike then dares Kirk to join Star Fleet and be a better officer than his father was, knowing full well that, like his father, Jim couldn’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.
Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Quinto, can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.
So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana), reappears and wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.
Ignoring the cheap, nasty product-placement. Ignoring the fact that the music eschews all the themes that we know and love in favour of a score which just rumbles along largely unnoticed. Ignoring the fact that no one thinks to ask “So where exactly has Nero been hiding for the last twenty-five years?” Ignoring the fact that Spock having Kirk ejected from the ship, rather than throwing him into the brig, is just flat-out illogical. Ignoring all that - this film barrels along at break-neck pace. Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat.
The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan Noonien Singh are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!
As can the audience. We get slapstick, snogging, melodrama, swearing, chaotic action sequences, over-lapping dialogue, loads of wobbly camerawork, tasteful lens-flare, terrible hair-cuts and no time to think about anything we’ve just seen.
The major action set-pieces are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight all inter-cut with earthquakes, explosions and rescues. And it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.
This hysterical sense of pace carries you through the experience with your disbelief duly suspended. Only in the plot-line involving a major figure from the past/future and a pretty sizeable bright red maguffin (which no one troubles to explain) does the film lose it’s way. But only for a few moments. Otherwise, what great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.
There has been much debate among the fans, during the years of pre-release hype, about whether or not this film would conform to the ‘rules’ already known; whether it would, in other words, be cannon. Well, it isn’t. Not really. But the characters openly discuss the multi-verse theory and state that they appear to have branched off onto an alternate path. So this film is set up to launch a whole new alternative universe cannon wherein … well, literally anything goes! No foregone conclusions now, no sacred cows. It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.
Dir: Jeffrey J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg.
Dur: 126 mins
Cert: 12A
The Short Cut (500 words):
Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born, in the middle of a fire-fight.
Fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it) and bumping in to Commander Pike who dares Kirk to join Star Fleet, knowing full well that he can’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.
Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Zachary Quinto can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.
So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana) wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.
The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!
Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat. The major action set-pieces here are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight and it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.
What great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.
It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.
Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born in, of course, the middle of an interstellar fire-fight.
The original Star Trek telly programme has always been a bit of an oddity. Almost uniquely among SF TV (at least until quite recently) it’s a show that has always attracted female fans. By which I don’t mean beer-swilling would-be-boys with breasts or timid, transparent teenagers with no friends … I mean women with lives and families and, presumably, lots of better things to do.
I’ve seen them at Star Trek conventions, dressed in Star Fleet uniforms, with their normal looking families in tow. I’ve been to many different types of cons … Eastercons, Comic Cons, Anime Cons, Dr Who cons, a Worldcon … and I’ve never seen noticeable numbers of families anywhere … except Star Trek cons.
In-keeping with that, the release of the new Star Trek movie has generated a palpable buzz of excitement among civilian women and among people who, ordinarily, don’t get excited about films. There’s just something about Star Trek that has got under the skin of normal, healthy, well-balanced people.
I suspect this isn’t because J.J. Abrams has promised to thoroughly ‘re-boot’ the franchise, it isn’t because they all went to see MI:III (2006) and so are expecting something equally kinetic, it isn’t because of the vast sums that Paramount has spent on marketing the movie … it’s purely because it’s Star Trek.
So, what has Jeff served up for us? Well, not inappropriately, Star Trek starts right at the beginning of something big … an anomaly is opening up, a giant multi-coloured storm-cloud in space. Now, you’d think Star Fleet would recognise a worm-hole when they see one, but no, and out of this gaping hole in space-time heaves a gigantic spaceship, one part V’Ger to two parts Babylon 5 Shadow Ship.
It seemingly doesn’t come in peace as there promptly ensues a lot of explosions and the sort of crash-zoom wobbly-camera-work that has been the signature of Battlestar Galactica’s space-born battles.
Meanwhile, as with any canny film-maker, Abrams contrasts this story of rending steel and flashing phasers with a human story. Within the spiralling innards of the USS Kelvin, George Kirk has to take command of the ship during its death-throes while his wife, Winona, is giving birth to their son who will, surprisingly, be named James. The adult Kirk is very much his son’s father, he makes the decision his son will make sixty-odd years in the future (at the beginning of the film Generations – 1994 - confused yet? I am. But then prequels do that to me …) he opts to put his navy’s interests before his own.
So, typically for protagonists in films like this, young James grows up without a father. We see this in just one scene – the one featured in the trailer with him stealing a car. An extraordinary moment, designed to give Star Trek ‘cred’ in its opening moments with high-octane editing all set to the pounding guitars of The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage.
Where Kirk’s mother is called Winona, half a universe away on Vulcan, Spock’s mother is played by Winona. Winona Ryder. An odd choice to play Spock’s mum since she is only six years older than Zachary Quinto. Not sure if that was just one of the in-jokes that pepper the film. The ones that definitely are in-jokes are all dealt with with a very light touch throughout the film. For example, when the crew of the Enterprise make planet-fall, the first person to die is wearing red. This isn’t dwelled upon, it’s just there for you to notice or not. And, if you don’t know why that’s a Trek in-joke, that’s fine, you don’t need to.
Then we fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it - the first of several he'll lose during the film - on his way to picking up the Rick Deckard belt for film's finest fumbling fist-fighter) and bumping in to Commander Pike who points out that his reckless, rudderless lifestyle is a waste of potential: “You like being the only genius-level repeat offender!” Pike then dares Kirk to join Star Fleet and be a better officer than his father was, knowing full well that, like his father, Jim couldn’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.
Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Quinto, can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.
So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana), reappears and wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.
Ignoring the cheap, nasty product-placement. Ignoring the fact that the music eschews all the themes that we know and love in favour of a score which just rumbles along largely unnoticed. Ignoring the fact that no one thinks to ask “So where exactly has Nero been hiding for the last twenty-five years?” Ignoring the fact that Spock having Kirk ejected from the ship, rather than throwing him into the brig, is just flat-out illogical. Ignoring all that - this film barrels along at break-neck pace. Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat.
The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan Noonien Singh are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!
As can the audience. We get slapstick, snogging, melodrama, swearing, chaotic action sequences, over-lapping dialogue, loads of wobbly camerawork, tasteful lens-flare, terrible hair-cuts and no time to think about anything we’ve just seen.
The major action set-pieces are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight all inter-cut with earthquakes, explosions and rescues. And it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.
This hysterical sense of pace carries you through the experience with your disbelief duly suspended. Only in the plot-line involving a major figure from the past/future and a pretty sizeable bright red maguffin (which no one troubles to explain) does the film lose it’s way. But only for a few moments. Otherwise, what great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.
There has been much debate among the fans, during the years of pre-release hype, about whether or not this film would conform to the ‘rules’ already known; whether it would, in other words, be cannon. Well, it isn’t. Not really. But the characters openly discuss the multi-verse theory and state that they appear to have branched off onto an alternate path. So this film is set up to launch a whole new alternative universe cannon wherein … well, literally anything goes! No foregone conclusions now, no sacred cows. It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.
Dir: Jeffrey J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg.
Dur: 126 mins
Cert: 12A
The Short Cut (500 words):
Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born, in the middle of a fire-fight.
Fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it) and bumping in to Commander Pike who dares Kirk to join Star Fleet, knowing full well that he can’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.
Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Zachary Quinto can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.
So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana) wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.
The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!
Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat. The major action set-pieces here are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight and it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.
What great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.
It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.
hmmm .. interesting, i have to say that i also sat up in my seat when the good ol' NCC - 1701 came up out of the dust like some sort of bottom feeder, favourite line for me was "ive got your gun" and there were plenty of moments when i started laughing to myself, in a sort of cheeky "i know what there getting at" way.
ReplyDeletegoing to see this film as i did with my girlfriend was rather strange, as it's the first sci fi movie she has actively wanted to see without me having to see something like "marley and me" in return (she even put up a fight for Wolverine!)
anyway .. overall i got to enjoy a fast paced romp through space, in a sort of, fast and the furious for nerds, kind of way!
though yes .. what the hell DID Eric Bana do for like 25 years? he definately didnt istall handrails around his ships command area! where are the health and safety Romulans when you need 'em
"Seen things you people wouldn't believe"???? I think so - a decent Trek movie. Decent because it's a good film, not because we're loyal to Trek. we get Kirk for the next generation - ta-dah. And with JJA moving all the toys to another snad box of a differnet colour, maybe we'll finally find out why Klingons look like they do but not like they did. Good to see the joy is back and reflected in what could have been a very cynical review. I've seen the film and you give nothing away. A film with no plot holes is a very rare thing and I think the audience allows for this these days and besides - JJA's hole-filling is as glorious as the orignal material it is pasting across the screen. Revel, for we Live Like Kings and the Fictions are Our Armies! Neat.
ReplyDeleteThanks, An. A comment that waxes lyrical at the end! Cool : )
ReplyDelete