Cadet’s Log: Stardate 2009
Dammit, Jim–Star Trek is awesome!
Star Trek
Director: J.J. Abrams
Released: May 7, 2009
**** 4/5
Having never seen more than five consecutive minutes of Star Trek in all of my years on this big, blue marble, I had a strange kind of curiosity when I first saw the trailer for the latest filmic addition to the franchise. Everything looked like it was supposed to look from the quick-shots of Trek exposure I had in the past, surfing by the Sci-fi channel late at night with a bowl of ice cream and always something better to watch. It was all there, the flashes of tight red and blue shirts, the blasts of laser gun fire, the glimpses at pointy ears and the loud kind of heroism you only see in silver screened space. It all looked the same, but also somehow different. It looked new, and exciting, and kind of old and throwback, too. Then something crazy happened: I realized that part of me, somewhere deep and buried and aching to come out, actually cared.
A few months later I found myself sitting in a padded chair in a theater I expected to be way more crowded than it was, filled with costumes, and thick rimmed glasses held together in the middle with white tape, and people who looked and sounded like the pony-tailed comic book guy from The Simpsons, arguing about The Next Generation series and using phrases like “liquid smooth graphics.” I was looking to my left and right and playing excited. This was Star Trek, after all, the thing with words like “Clingon” and “Romulan,” the thing with space ships and phasers and William Shatner. Even if it was going to suck, I was determined to have a good time. So I parted my fingers in the middle, put my hands in the air and demanded “Live Long and Prosper” high-fives from each of my, until now, too-cool-for-Trek friends down the row.
This was going to be awesome. Bring on the interstellar adventure!
By the time the previews ended and the first line of film began rolling past the projector beam, my snarkiness was starting to fade. In the first scene, the not-yet-captain Jim Kirk was being born and his father’s ship was under attacked by an angry Romulan named Nero. And soon, Kirk (played by Chris Pine, who deserves all the credit in the world for his performance), in classic action flick fashion, was a grown-up outcast, too wild for his quaint little place on his quaint little world. Then a hardened veteran saw his potential, dared him to focus his energy. And so he did. And Jim Kirk officially became Starfleet’s token rebel cadet, nearly too big for his britches but good enough so it wouldn’t matter.
It took about as long for the film to dive into its plot as it did for me to really warm up it, both to the idea of jumping into a mythology so late in its life, but also to the fact that I wasn’t feeling alienated by it. I could tell there were nods being made to all the Trekkies in the house, but the film never punished me for not being one of them. If anything, that backdrop of history was starting to make the story feel more genuine, like I was even in on the legacy, myself. And contributing to, maybe even creating, that sense of comfort with the film’s world is its shining sense of humor. The movie gets you to laugh with it before you could at it, and then once your guard is down, you realize that the characters, no matter what their planetary race, are all human.
Unlike the newer Star Wars films, Star Trek acknowledges that it’s sci-fi and, okay, maybe a little laughable. So by making humor such a built-in part of the world, it takes everything down a notch. It humanizes it, wallows in the fun and light-heartedness on which action flicks were made. And how can you argue with that?
Director J.J. Abrams (Mission Impossible III) and co. don’t just remake the characters here, they play with them, play off of their defining traits in a way that, at the same time, mocks and loves them for their quirkiness. And the near-exaggeration, the fondness in which everyone is portrayed really starts to rub off. Everything becomes an inherent part of the world here, the humor, the sense of history, the unquestioned air of heroism and honor. It all comes together in a way that always feels like a certain kind of tribute but never like a caricature or simple mimic.
Maybe even more so than other recent origin stories, Batman Begins or Casino Royale, Star Trek takes its source material and truly makes it its own. Through a clever time travel device, the story starts you back at the beginning, before the shows and movies and Trek conventions of the last 40 years or so. It’s 100% accessible to newcomers but filled with enough hat tips to feel as though, even though it starts back at the beginning, it’s still building onto the end.
Through the whole of the story’s rescue mission, the movie becomes as much about Spock (Zachary Quinto) as it is about Kirk, and even though I never thought I’d say this, I almost can’t decide which character I love more. I love each of their conflicts and I love the world that Abrams and co. have created. The special effects are as good or better than anything else out there–everything looks larger than life and amazing–and even though some of the action scenes were definitely over-the-top and unnecessary, this is Star Trek, for crying out loud! Live a little. Strange new worlds, the final frontier, bravely go–all of that stuff.
Oh boy, and now I feel my ears getting pointy and my fingers parting. I think this means I’m officially a newly recruited Trekkie.
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under film, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
