As anyone who knows me longer than 30 seconds can attest, I am a huge Star Trek fan. So I’m afraid that I am cheating a bit here with the format that I’ve established for my ‘Way Too Late’ movie reviews in that I saw this one in the theater when it first came out. But I didn’t have a blog back then, so cut me some slack. With the movie’s release on DVD however, I did recently get to experience the next best thing to seeing it for the first time. Showing it to my father, and fellow Star Trek fan, and my brother-in-law last weekend. You see, my father loved the original series and he always hated William Shatner, so this movie was a win/win for him. Competing with the movie for attention was my two-month-old nephew Jackson. His cuteness made for a close battle, but I’m proud to say that the movie held it’s own. Also in attendance for this viewing: My sister, who hates Star Trek and took the opportunity to tease me about my obsession as well as my nerdly observations (Look, Kirk’s motorcycle doesn’t have an axle!) and my five-year-old daughter, who sat with rapt attention throughout most of the movie. Never have I been more proud of her. Seriously, it almost brought a tear to my eye. *sniff*Anyway, on with the show. The movie largely centers on Kirk and Spock, on their lives, on their extremely contentious relationship and their burgeoning friendship. Spock is born into conflict, the child of the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth and his human wife. He doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere, certainly not on Vulcan where his mixed heritage is treated like a handicap. But his mother encourages him and supports him. One of the best things about Zachary Quinto’s performance as a young Spock is the vulnerability he shows, the subtle just-under-the-surface conflict between his Vulcan and human halves. Speaking of, Kirk is born into conflict as well, literally. Aboard his father’s ship as it’s being attacked by the crazed Romulan commander Nero. George Kirk sacrifices his life for his wife and his child, for his crew. We’re shown little of Kirk’s childhood, but enough to tell us that it wasn’t an easy one. He’s gifted, but rebellious. Talented, but reckless. And when we see him as a young man it’s clear that growing up without his father has made him very different from the Kirk that we’re all used to, but at the same time we can still see confident swagger that Shatner originally brought to the role so many years ago. He carries with him a lot of pain and anger, but he’s still our Kirk.
Once aboard ship the movie really gets moving. The look of the Enterprise is just modernized enough so as not to look silly, but enough of the original style is kept to remind us where we are. Our heroes finally come face to face (or ship to ship) with our antagonist Nero and Pike is taken prisoner. We get a great action scene on the drill, complete with a redshirt death. It’s around this time that the average viewer may be thinking ‘This is fun and all, but there’s no real sense of danger. We know how it all turns out, everybody lives, etc.’ And then Vulcan is destroyed. Spock spells it out for the slow kids in the class. Whatever happened in the original history, it doesn’t apply now. Nero changed all that, it’s a whole new ballgame. This is a brilliant move on the part of the filmmakers I think. Every huge movie like this, whether it’s a remake or an adaptation, always has to face the challenge of making changes to the source to suit the movie or to appeal to non-fans, and yet somehow still try to please the hardcores. Very few are able to accomplish it. But by starting the story over again, and by giving the big fans a legitimate reason for doing so (with references to the original timeline to tie it all together), everybody wins.
So Spock loses his mother and decides to tuck tail and run. Back to Starfleet to regroup what’s left of the fleet. Kirk thinks this is a horrible idea, he thinks that they should go after Nero. The disagreement ends with Spock putting Kirk in an escape pod and leaving him behind on some ice planet. An extreme reaction perhaps, he could have just put him in the brig, but Spock’s not having a good day, he just watched his entire planet get sucked into a black hole. Kirk wakes up, runs from some CGI monsters, and ends up in a cave where he runs into…Spock. Leonard Nimoy, that is. And that’s when he fills us in on the rest of the back story. Future Spock, on a mission to prevent a star from going nova, fails and Romulus is destroyed. Nero blames Spock and attacks him, both get sucked into a black hole and appear at different points in the past. Nero waits 25 years to get his revenge (Romulans age pretty well apparently). And now Vulcan is destroyed and he’s going after Earth next.
Kirk and Future Spock hike to the nearest Starfleet outpost where they meet Scotty, played by Simon Pegg. Kirk and Scotty transwarp-beam back to the Enterprise, Spock beats up Kirk, Kirk takes command, they track down Nero, Kirk and Spock beam over to his ship, Kirk gets beat up again, they rescue Captain Pike, Spock flies Future Spock’s ship into Nero’s ship, blowing up all the red matter and creating a black hole in the middle of the ship, and the Enterprise escapes. Back on Earth Kirk, and the rest of the cadets presumably, graduate and Kirk is promoted directly to Captain and given command of the Enterprise, where he chooses Spock as his First Officer. Pretty cool, huh?
In short, this movie is awesome. From the performances to the special effects, and the rebooting of a classic story and classic characters making them new and fresh to a whole new audience while still keeping their core audience on board. I can’t wait to see what the next movie brings.
My Netflix Rating: Five out of Five Stars
Random Observations:
-Kirk gets beat up a lot in this movie. I think he might have broken Captain Archer’s record for sheer number of ass-kickings in a two hour time period.
-Speaking of Archer, I loved the shout out Scotty gives. Poor Porthos.
-Karl Urban is awesome as Bones. From his first scene on the shuttle to his scene with Spock (Are you out of your Vulcan mind!), he hit it perfectly.
-Simon Pegg is awesome as Scotty. Everything he said made me laugh.
-Was that…Tyler Perry? …the hell?
Possible Sequel Ideas:
“Sulu and Chekov go to White Castle”
Along the way they run into Neil Patrick Harris who’s trying to get to Risa for some alien poon.
“Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Starfleet Academy”
A Tyler Perry Production, directed by and starring Tyler Perry.
“Shaun of the Enterprise”
Klingons invade, boarding the Enterprise where Scotty fights them off with a cricket bat.
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