Not sure if the opening ceremonies are universal, so I recommend seeing the movie at the Alamo to catch their pre-game: A Montage of Shatner, set to "Ain't No Other Man" by Christina Aguilera.
Spoilers, the final frontier...
I'm reminded of a tale my uncle told of walking past the waiting crowd, when he began to explain "no, you see, there were TWO Spocks...."
OK, it's a sci-fi flick, so lets start with the effects, which are effectively invisible. If there's an Uncanny Valley for reality itself, CGI is well on the far side of it by now (except for Kirk's uniform in the final shots, which was awful). Which means that you've got to get by on story and performance.
Biggest problem: this movie is Star Trek: Origins - story failure. You need to assemble the familiar crew into their accustomed positions on the bridge of Enterprise, and at the same time provide the origins of Kirk and Spock. You've got 155 minutes - Go! So necessarily all of the command experience that any reasonable navy would require gets pitched out the window. Doc Smith dealt with this dropping Kinnison into an experimental mission; Feintuch killed off all of the senior command staff. Abrams simply gives the senior cadet class the keys to the Federation flagship "have fun kids, and bring back both of the nacelles this time!"
The compressed timeline is explicitly called out during the movie - Pike challenges Kirk to enlist in Starfleet; with his aptitude, he should graduate in 4 years, take command in 8. Kirk boasts that he'll finish the academy in three years. You pessimist - you'll command the bridge before the popcorn gets cold.
Now, I will confess that I don't know Star Trek canon at all well; the bits that I did recognize, Abrams tattoos onto a wet fish and catches you right across the face with it. "See how clever I was working that in? huh? huh? Subtle? Never heard of it." Which is really two bad, because a lot of the remaining material holds up really well.
Not, of course, the entire action portion of the story line is attributed to red kryptonite fraying space-time. As Pete points out, in a Star Trek movie, this is obligatory. Having Nimoy then take the piss out of it...
The Kirk/McCoy interactions are really brilliant where they aren't re-enacting Kelley's greatest hits. Uhura/Kirk is likewise strong - but only when they are off the bridge. Uhura/Spock was a bit weak - "He is Spock. Vulcan. He cannot cry. So I cry for him."
The best that can be said for Spock/Kirk/Spock is that new threesome element licenses slash authors to boldly go where no one has gone before.
Unanswered Questions:
Why does Ben Cross remind me of Jeroen Krabbe?
Who's brilliant idea was it to cast Merriadoc Brandybuck as the engineering chief?
How the hell did Karl Urban make it to age 36 without dying of sexual exhaustion? Ladies?
May 8, 2009 8:48 PM
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