The reason I brought up the whole idea of this franchise
being more than entertainment is that, for me, that is the biggest sticking point in
all of this. Having entertainment is of
course important. You can have a deep
concept, but if you don’t present it a way that’s interesting to an audience
people won’t care. Star Trek:
The Motion Picture certainly has this issue. The film has a high concept, and it’s less
interesting than watching paint dry.
However, making something entertaining is, in my opinion, the surface
layer of a project. You can make a fun
ride of a movie and then you make a fun ride of a movie that means
something. That a viewer can see
multiple times and keep finding new things to think about, or different ways to
view characters. This film does not do
that, the creators don’t even seem to consider that they should do that, and no
where is that more noticeable than in the special features on the DVD of this
film. I’m talking specifically about the “A New Vision” featurette.
You take a look at that DVD extra and one of the first
things anybody said was that we have to make the movie big, that it has to be a
spectacle. We have to make it big and
loud, and in doing so they zoomed past the entire point of this franchise at
warp 10. I mean trekkies can get into
fights about whether the re-mastered versions of the TOS episodes are better,
or if they take away the charm of the series by having updated effects. So simply having better explosions and more
shots of the ships and things flying around does not a perfect Trek film make.
JJ Abrams talks in the extras about how he wishes the
original show had more resources because they seemed so restricted by time and
money. That is true, but what seems to
have been forgotten is that the show succeeded in spite of those obstacles. Simply having more money and more time for
this film does not guarantee success. Star
Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: The Final Frontier
had the largest budgets of the original six movies and look how well they
turned out!
Then they talk about how the movies have to have a faster
pace, to be accepted by a modern audience, to be like Star Wars. Umm hate to remind you guys but Star Wars
came out in 1977. You aren’t making a
strong case for making this for a modern audience if that’s your reference
point. Then Abrams says he loves the
pacing of Empire and Jedi. Again those came out in 1980 and 1983,
classics certainly, but not modern. Also
the pacing for Empire especially is certainly not the shake
the camera, running through the halls, pacing that this film has. In fact the clip they showed at the point, of
the reaction shot of Kirk dropping his phaser on the drill, was something that
the Star Wars prequels used constantly.
I must say Mr. Abrams drawing inspiration from those films is a bad, bad
idea. But I will give them credit,
pacing is the only thing saving this film.
Because everything goes by so fast your brain takes a while to process
what actually happened and it’s not until the ‘ice box moment’ if you will that
things become clear. The first time I
watched this film I thought it was okay.
Nothing to write home about, but not horrible either. It’s only upon reflection and re-watching
that all the cracks started appearing.
To sum it by someone more well-spoken than I am:
“Because the appeal was so superficial it didn’t really
last…With this film the most glaring problems with it are something that you
really need to kind of think about, they’re not obvious on first viewing. Instead you walk away with: okay silly little
flick with a bit of action and romance, not what you wouldn’t expect. It’s not until you start to see the problems
that it all unravels. And as it does the
jokes seem more stale, until it can feel like the whole movie is just crashing
and burning.”
And that’s the way it really feels for me. I mean not everything in this movie is a
horrible abomination. As I said in my
first review changing it to a new universe was not necessarily bad, lazy I
think, but not bad. You can explore old
events in new ways. You can have
different characters interact with each other in ways they didn’t get to in the older
show and movies. But this movie has none
of that. We have a romance between Spock
and Uhura merely to titillate the viewing audience. We have Scotty there as a comic relief
character, with a useless sidekick no less.
Sulu and Chekov are fun to watch, but that’s about what they do not
themselves as characters. And I’ve already
ranted about Kirk enough. There is no
real attempt to explore how this universe is different from what has come
before. There is no attempt to explore
themes that the other movies didn’t.
To be frank there is nothing new here, and there could be. We could have explored how Kirk looks at
problems differently than Kirk Prime did, because of their different upbringings. There could have been a good mining on the
theme of loss and how we should handle it.
We could have even had commentary on how society responds to a terrorist
attack, because that’s what Nero’s attack on the Kelvin basically was *hint
hint*. In short there was a chance to have something besides just a joy ride here, and it was all ignored for action and having
money for effects. There was apparently no real attempt that I can see to reach
all the other layers that can be offered when making a film.
When the production staff talk about this film they all
seemed focused on the superficial aspects of what makes a movie, and about what
makes a great star trek movie. All the
talk about the vision is about pacing and look and effects. There is no talk about theme, character
exploration, or plot. Nimoy mentions
that JJ Abrams does big stuff and character stuff well, but I’m sorry I don’t
see that here. I haven’t seen any of his
other projects so I don’t know if Abrams does better character stuff elsewhere,
but so far I’m not impressed.
However, since I have said that I don’t like a lot of focus
on effects in movies, especially CGI, let me say that I do admire Abrams for
putting in quite a few practical effects here; for using locations, and actual
working sets. They get that it's
important to have tangible things on the screen to give ‘weight’ to what the
audience is looking at. If I didn’t find
the lens flare and the shaky camera so debilitating to that idea I’d appreciate
it even more.
Then we get talk of how the deliberately made more lens
flares, why?! Lens flare everywhere do
not add to the realism of the movie! Why did you take so much pride in making
your film look like crap?
“Star Trek in its best form was always a submarine warfare.”
If we’re talking action sure, but Star Trek is not about action. It’s about talking about society and the
human condition. You don’t need more
‘rock and roll’ in Star Trek you just have to have that rock and roll be
meaningful and it isn’t. We have to
connect to a modern audience! No you have to
connect to an audience, and you don’t need to make the franchise so lopsided in
its goals to do that. If you want to make a
Star Trek for a whole new generation fine, but then really push it! Take risks and show the consequences of it. Don’t just put a sloppy story on the screen,
with under developed characters, and count on nostalgia to carry you the rest of
the way. I mean it’s really telling that
the character I connect with the most is Spock Prime, because we actually take
a moment to feel what the character is feeling and he gets to be proactive.
Now since I praised the character let me take a moment to
mention his actor. Now Leonard Nimoy is
a wonderful actor and knows the importance of having a strong story to make a
project work. So why did he agree to
this project? He said he liked the
script and I was totally at a loss as to why, but then I remembered he would
have been looking at an earlier version of it and in my opinion that earlier
version, from the example we have of deleted and cut scenes, was a much better
movie than we what was presented to us as the movie going public in May
2009.
One of the best deleted scenes was Kirk and Sam arguing with Frank
before Kirk steals the car. We get to
see that yes Kirk is reckless, because taking the car on impulse is a boneheaded
move in hindsight, but that he also has good motives behind what he does. That the car was his father’s and that he’d
rather see it at the bottom of a quarry than sold off. We get to hear from Frank that Jim Kirk is no
one and thus get his desire later to want to captain the Enterprise. In the bar later we would get that Pike has
told Kirk that he is not no one that he can be someone special, not just as the
son of George Kirk, but as someone even better than he was. We get to see that stealing the car was also
his first real act of rebellion, and perhaps he started to live down to
people’s expectations from then on. If
he didn’t follow ever order and do nothing but get good grades maybe his mother
would be around more often, maybe Sam would come back. That makes Kirk so relatable, so sympathetic,
everything he should be. Instead a scene
that’s less than a minute long, but explains so much was left on the cutting
room floor.
I think this is also true of the cut scene of Kirk
apologizing to not-Gaila. It shows that
he is actually thinking about others and wants to apologize for his hurtful
behaviour towards her. We get to see
that Kirk isn’t just a hothead, but that he does reflect on his actions, and
feels remorseful if they hurt someone.
This is what we needed to see more of with Kirk. Yes, a hero should certainly have flaws, but
for Kirk we see only flaws and no good qualities, and thus I don’t want to
watch him.
There are other scenes that allow for growth for other
characters too. The argument between
Sarek and Amanda after Spock fights the bullies continues the idea of Spock’s
struggle with his duality. With that in
place we get resolution in the transporter room scene later and see that Sarek
now agrees with his wife that Spock will always be half-human; that Sarek loves
him for that; and that those human desires can indeed find expression.
And obviously the scene with the Klingons capturing Nero
makes him not look like a brooding idiot for sitting around doing nothing for a
quarter of a century. So why every scene
that gave anyone, especially Kirk, some character growth and development was
cut, and people thought the movie would be better for it is anyone’s guess. Yes, we’re still missing a real theme for
this movie, but at least that story layer for this film would have been much
stronger; and I would have been willing to give the creators much more slack,
and say, they had to get a lot accomplished in this movie to set up a proper
universe and they’ll go more in depth with the characters and events in the
following films.
The only scene that does work okay being cut is Spock’s
birth. Yes, we lose a parallel with the
building Kirk and Spock story, but it would have been jarring pacing wise to
have that be the opening scene and I can see why it wasn’t included.
That leaves one other well-known deletion: the Shatner
scene. Now yes in the name of TOS fan
Easter Eggs having him there would have been very cool, but that scene also
gave the movie a capstone to the whole idea of it being a Kirk and Spock
story. Where Spock sees that hologram of
Kirk Prime, and hears his words, he knows that to deny himself that journey,
that home with Kirk, is to deny himself all the growth that they’ve had and
could continue to have. Have that with a
scene or two of Kirk and Spock connecting over their shared sense of loss and
we might have had an epic movie on our hands, but we don’t.
What I think we have is a generic blockbuster. It has some action, it has effects, it has characters
we’re supposed to recognize and cheer for.
But there’s no theme here.
There’s no push to have something really new for the franchise. There is no focus on society or the human
condition. In short there is no Star
Trek here, and there could have been. The
film is supposed to be Kirk and Spock’s story and both these characters suffer
loss in the story, as does the villain. Right there is a theme to be explored in
how each character deals with that, and perhaps what we as audience might take
away from their actions. Some of the
things brought up in deleted scenes about how the characters are different, how
this universe is different hold amazing possibilities, and they’re all just left
there. There is a nugget of good stuff
buried under all the dreck, and that just makes it all the more frustrating to
see it wasted for a roller coaster action movie made in the name of the all
mighty dollar.
Now the sequel still has the chance to turn this runaway
train of fail around. But since they
already had to extend the release date because they couldn’t get a script done, and
getting all defensive about how they had to break from continuity to make the
first film work. So, good luck dealing
with the continuity you now set up for yourselves guys. And, after holding out on using a lot of
digital camera work in the first film, to possibly converting it to 3D for the
next release I’m not holding out hope that Star Trek 2 is going to be
successful at that.
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