Star TrekA few months ago I caught a 20-minute non-screening of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, where the most memorable thing that happened was me falling down a third of a long flight of stairs, injuring my shoulders in a way that still hasn’t fully healed.
The scenes were disconnected, 12-year-old Kirk announcing himself as “James Tiberious Kirk!” was still stupid, and the time travel device driving the plot looked sketchy. The film was written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orchi, who typically favour setpieces over plot and quirks over character development. But the actors were effective and during the rapid-fire action sequences I could actually tell what was going on. I’m glad I saw it; when the lights came down on the full-length movie, I knew what to expect.

Make no mistake: this is not science fiction. It does not utilize a technology-driven society to explore an issue in the present. It is not Star Trek as defined by The Next Generation onward; there are no Big Ideas, no debates over man’s place in the universe. It is, in short, no Battlestar Galactica. But I underestimated Abrams and company; this is an exhilirating, slam-bang space opera, one of the best I’ve seen, that happens to star the characters from the original Star Trek. That also means it has one of the most memorable casts ever to grace a screen, and while most of them are drawn in broad strokes, that’s long been the fate of supporting characters: Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) do have actual character arcs.

This must be what watching Star Wars was like thirty-two years ago. It didn’t present anything new, but came across with a credibility and vitality audiences had never seen before. Abrams understands, like few modern directors seem to, that it’s not just about the budget. Granted, Star Trek’s $150 million investment was considerable, but it could have easily gone to waste (as it did in the excreable Wolverine) without a properly fleshed-out setting, plot and characters.

This version of Star Trek looks lived in. The future Earth that gave rise to the Federation looks tangible and welcoming. The planet Vulcan feels like it has its own history. Suddenly it isn’t surprising that monitoring stations of the type manned by Scotty (Simon Pegg), which appeared to be there simply so Kirk could stumble across it in the preview, would be set up in the middle of nowhere, staffed by a mechanic who was sent there as punishment. As in the various series, aliens of the Deep Space Nine variety are all over the place like intergalactic immigrants, in all levels of society, with their otherness never commented on.
As in the preview, Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy (Karl Urban), Sulu (John Cho), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) feel like the characters of pop-culture lore, and the players inhabit them wonderfully. The screenplay is peppered with beats (such as the “red shirt”) from the original series, and while Urban perhaps overdoes his character a bit, it’s hard to argue with the way he says “dammit.”

More than anything, Star Trek reminds me of the animated epics Titan A.E. and Treasure Planet, in that every 20 minutes something spectacular happens, but it actually has a solid plot, unlike Titan A.E., and doesn’t feel neutered, unlike Treasure Planet. Incidentally, that time travel device is still ludicrous. But it lets the future Spock (Leonard Nimoy) come onto the scene, and gives the nasty Romulan villain (Eric Bana, of all people) some real depth. Also, the plot is internally consistent: once it establishes the rules, it doesn’t break them, unlike every other science fiction epic from the past ten or so years.
After the debacle that was the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the Matrix sequels (not to mention Titan A.E. and Treasure Planet), I’d forgotten what a good space opera was like. Movies like Abrams’ Star Trek remind us why they’re still bankrolled however – when they work, they’re amazing.

andPOP Rating - 4 Stars






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