May 17, 2009
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My collected rants about JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek (Spoilers)
I *LOVE* The new star trek
movie. Yes. Destroying Vulcan *AND* Romulus was a brilliant move! Now they can
rewrite the series with as much freedom as they wish, maybe introduce a few
moon-sized bases with lasers, more cadets that get promoted to captains in one
mission, throw in a couple of giant monsters destroying New York… Maybe they could even
turn the Federation into an evil empire instead of a “humanitarian armada”, and have rebels from Starfleet fly little
fighters whilst Kirk fights Khan with an energy sword and discovers his twin
sister is a princess amidst the rubble that once was Vulcan! We never needed all those pesky Vulcan characters anyway. Ta heck with Saavik, Valeris, Selar, Tuvok, and that annoying Vulcan engineer Vorik from Voyager. Brilliant, J.J.!
Thank you for writing the BEST STAR TREK MOVIE EVER!
Of course the kicker would
be that on closer inspection, there is no moon-sized base at all – someone
injected a hypo of cordrazine into the new Enterprise’s hull and it got even
more puffy and bloated than it already was until it swelled into a perfectly round
sphere!
/me goes and spreads some
more thick juicy sarcasm on his toast as the J.J. fanboys continue their rave unexamined exhortations about the alleged glory of the new film.
Yup, I really don’t know how I can think a
movie is somewhat satisfactory and yet feel like I’ve been kicked in
the balls at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually middle-of-the-road when it comes to the new film. I appreciate that it has finally brought the production values ($$$) to a Star Trek film that the franchise truly deserves, that as a result it has the mind-blowing action sequences necessary to make a science fiction film exciting and successful in the market today. I also appreciate that they did the humour *right* in this film – many of the jokes came from character interactions, not ludicrous and cheesy stretches of those characters such as Data being a personal floatation device, or Data swearing, or silly joysticks rising from the Enterprise’s bridge. I always felt that was one of the worst injustices the old Trek producers did to Star Trek in their later days – beyond uninspired plotlines and rampant technobabble – that they added any unnecessary stone to the public impression that Trek was nothing but cheese and camp.
However, as much as I thank J.J. for
bringing people in droves back to star trek through the force of his hype alone, I think he’s an arrogant prick for
how he’s treated the star trek we’ve come to love over the course of 3
decades. Throwing in a few token
‘in-joke’ references doesn’t make right when you’ve got rampant sloppy writing
and dialogue, gaping plot holes, and a severe disrespect for what went
before.
Throughout both of my viewings of the new film, I simply couldn’t help shaking the feeling
that, as a Trek fan, token references were dropped into a film with
otherwise arrogant disregard for past incarnations of Trek simply to
appease the longtime fans… Just wasn’t feeling the love. It will
undubitably do well in the box office as a rollicking fun simple action
flick (and due to Abrams’ talent at hype), but as a truly great science
fiction film? On the other hand: Karl. Urban. BECOMES. Bones! O_O. Bruce Greenwood also blew away my expectations of him in this role and turns in a stellar performance as Captain Pike.
Now, it’s not that I didn’t enjoy the references, but the inattention
to detail and the callous way they treated the previous incarnations of
the franchise took away from the enjoyment of the references. When you
feel like a writer truly cares about what has come before, those little
references and in-jokes only serve to enhance your enjoyment of the
film. However, when you don’t get that feeling those references simply
feel like attempts at eliciting appeal from longtime fans.
Think of it this way: Say, you’re at a family party and someone brings
up a funny episode that occurred at your tenth birthday – furthermore,
perhaps they add something about that day that you did not previously
know. Since you know the family member was there at the time, you get a
feeling of familiarity from the reference. On the other hand, say
a complete and total stranger happens to be at your family party and
starts joking about that 10th birthday incident to your family simply
because he read it on your blog. Different feeling, right? You get the
sense that he’s trying in an insincere way to curry favour with you and
your friends, especially if he gets the details wrong (or just plain exaggerates and improvises) when retelling your story.
When you watch previous incarnations of Star Trek, you always got the
sense that they loved it and all of it that came before – they tried
very hard to maintain a realism and a sense of continuity across all
the series whether it be visually (graphics in the background, visuals,
things that you’d never notice on camera or give a second thought to without
an eye for detail), musically (composers would ‘quote’ themes from
previous movies/series by other composers at dramatic moments), and
through the plot and dialogue. They always tried exceptionally hard to
make it all ‘fit’ together. I didn’t get that sense in this film -
especially through the whole concept of ‘rebooting’. Doing it right,
making it work, being bold and new; these are all one thing. However,
in all the interviews, you never get the feeling that J.J. truly
respects and loves what fans have loved for 3 decades – and that’s
something entirely different altogether.
Another way of explaining my point: an ‘in-joke’ isn’t an in-joke
unless the party receiving the joke gets the sense that the party
telling the joke actually has the same understanding of what they’re
joking about, hence the ‘in’ part of it. You need to get the feeling that the party telling the joke feels the same way towards the joke’s subject matter as you do – in this case, genuine affection and reverence – for it to actually be an in-joke.
Instead, we get (a) sloppy writing, and (b) a genuine disrespect for all that came before – who cares as long as we make a commercially successful film? ‘It’s all in the interest of freeing ourselves to make a good film’ they tout as their excuse without caring about the slap in the face to 40 years of community – both behind the camera (especially so, what with all the painstaking work figures like Michael Westmore, Mike Okuda, Rich Sternbach, etc…) and in the theatres or living rooms – that kept this franchise alive.
What sloppy writing or blatant disregard, you say?
You get either careless or intentionally ignorant lines of dialogue like: “You understand what the Federation is, don’t you. It’s important. It’s a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada.” What the hell? What kind of universe are you hoisting on us, J.J., because that’s certainly not the Star Trek we’ve loved for 40 years. The Federation is a political union – an alliance – of over 50 worlds in the common interest of peace and cooperation. STARFLEET is a peacekeeping, humanitarian, *and* scientific “armada” (I scoff at their liberal use of the term). What happened to the “seek out new life and new civilizations” and “boldly go where no one has gone before”?
You get a dumbing down of iconic fixtures of Star Trek such as stardates: Stardates have always been a random number (governed in part by production seasons for the show) to indicate the level of scientific advancement and common reference across disparate societies. Now they’ve just been reduced to the Gregorian calendar year plus a metric decimal point. Not only that, but they’ve had the gall to mess around with not only the Original Series reboot, but change this for the portion of the film that supposedly takes place in our old Star Trek universe as well: the computer in Ambassador’s Spock’s ship (whom Fans call the ‘Jellyfish’ thanks to the Star Trek: Countdown film tie-in comic series) which is purportedly from our old Trek future also uses this silly Gregorian Stardate system!
You have scenes obviously ripped straight out of previous Star Trek movies: Doesn’t the scene on the bridge where Spock works out that the Narada is from the future remind you of the scene from Star Trek VI where Spock works out the existence of a cloaked Bird of Prey? Add in a few lines of dialogue, change a few words here and there, and *pouf*!
The next point is a very small one, and unimportant in the grand scheme; however one must realise it is symptomatic of the same problem I have heretofore been ranting about. You have fine-grained visual continuity errors that the old production crew would not have missed: Nero’s ship, the Narada, and Spock’s ship being from our old ‘Trek future, going to warp, they ought to have visuals consistent with what we expect from the Next Generation series. That is, they should appear to stretch and launch into some form of a brilliant flash of light. This is something the old production crew would have painstakingly gone out of their way to preserve – not so with the new staff. In the new movie, the NextGen era ships go to warp in *exactly* the same manner as Kirk-era ships. Granted, the old production crew made errors as well from time to time, but we forgave them because they were so brilliantly on the ball the rest of the time. My rant, again, is aimed not at the individual nits but at new producers’ seeming systematic lack of respect for the franchise that preceded them. Token dialogue references are not enough to convince longtime fans that the writer-producers of the new movie ‘love’ the material as much as the reverence with which old creators treated this show.
Finally, what plot holes do I refer to, you ask?
In no reality does a CADET who has not yet even graduated the Academy, not even James Tiberius Kirk himself, get promoted to Captain over the course of a single short mission. Since when does a cadet have the necessary familiarity with a ship’s systems, with regulations, with command situations, and whatnot to be promoted – over commissioned Officers I might add – to Captain of a Starship? It’s even less plausible than when they had a bunch of Red Squad cadets flying a Defiant-Class USS Valiant behind enemy lines in DS9: at least in that case they were doing it outside the orders of Command after their commanding officers were killed (they weren’t supposed to have stayed out there). Equally as implausible – Scotty has been chilling out on a planet for years, gets on the Enterprise, and within a course of minutes has not only become Chief Engineer, but also understands every minutiae of how the ship works.
Nero? A villain worthy of Khan? I think not. Nero is neither devious nor cunning, and beyond all the brooding and enraged screaming he’s simply just plain Emo. Where’s the philosophical speculation, the intelligent allegory, the metaphor and thought-provoking commentary in the new film? Gone in favour of action.
Don’t even get me started on Spock’s assertions that Scotty can beam people between planets and onto warping starships – they couldn’t even do that in NextGen.
Little details, yes, but indicative of a haphazard disrespect for the old franchise. If you’re going to reboot it, fine, but if part of your film purportedly takes place in the old continuity and has any connection with the old franchise, you should at the very least make an effort to be true to that old franchise in that very small portion of your film.
A large percentage of why this film is successful is the hype that J.J. Abrams generated. He marketed the film extremely well prior to its release, and followed it up with easy sells: mind-blowing action sequences combined with somewhat decent characterizations of iconic personalities. With the way he marketed the film, he could have gone in two directions and both would have been just as successful. He could have sold it as a Reboot, but sneak in a genuine prequel, or he could have gone the route that he did, and tease the fans with the prequel aspect to sneak in the reboot. I actually think he could even have used the old USS Enterprise NCC 1701, as it appeared in the original series (plus, perhaps a few extra details and a little extra lighting), dropped in a new bridge, and made just as stunning and visually intense a film as the one he ended up with. Instead, he decided to continue tinkering. The new Enterprise, imho, is bulbous, disproportionate, and grotesque! The old one had strong, clean, bold lines and still looks pretty futuristic even today (satellite dish aside). There’s just something disconcerting about the whole toy-like visual aesthetic of the technology in the new film, from the new ship to the cromed-plastic-looking phasers complete with coloured nibs on the barrels. I did, however, notice the NX-01 – style phase cannon-like phasers. I’ll acknowledge that that was a nice touch, and a decent nod to the continuity (on top of merely looking cool to modern audiences).
It’s really too late to hum and haw about J.J’s choice to Reboot, but at the very least, he could have made a concerted effort to show his reverence for the past while smacking the old fans in the face with his rewrite. He did not do that. Amidst the roar of applause from J.J.’s undiscerning fanboys and the desperation of fans a little too happy to see anything onscreen with the name Star Trek in it, he will never realise the disservice he did to a community four decades strong.
He brought something back. Is it Star Trek? I really don’t know.—————————
One more point: The second time I watched it – at Khan-Con this past Saturday May 16th – there were noticeable differences from the first time I saw it – last Monday 11th with Camille, Jenn, and Steve. During the first viewing, I noticed that there were scenes that were importantly inconsistent with the Star Trek Countdown tie-in comics meant to firm up the connection between the film and Next Gen. For example, during old Spock’s mind-meld sequence with Kirk, we see Nero introducing himself to Spock after the destruction of Romulus (while the comics indicate they knew one another prior to Romulus’ destruction). There is also dialogue in the film that indicates that the Jellyfish (Spock’s ship from the future) was “commissioned by the Vulcan High Council” rather than built by Geordi LaForge as was indicated in the comics. On second viewing, most of these inconsistencies are no longer in the film although they still have footage of Vulcans installing the Red Matter onto the Jellyfish. I’m not really sure what it means, whether they are suddenly starting to care more for inconsistencies, or they’re just cleaning out the errors that would have been inconsistent within the film.
