Star Trek

I watched the latest Star Trek last night and naturally had to give my review, as there just aren’t enough reviews of it on the Internet.

Good Things:

The plot was decent and easy to follow, I was kind of worried about that after seeing “Lost” and “Brisco County Jr” but it was less convoluted than some of the other Trek movies.

Action scenes, lots of them. Some of the Trek movies seem to forget that Star Trek is a Sci-Fi Action series and try to be a Sci-Fi Drama. This one did not make that mistake.

The Villain: Nero had a legitimate reason for being a prick, and going after young Kirk and Spock. Star Trek needs dramatic Villains in order for the heroes to “give it their all” with Nero you could see the reason for him being an evil bastard unlike some of the Star Trek villains whose reasons for being a villain were pretty lame. See my post on the 10 lamest Star Trek villains.

Eric Bana played it a lot lower key than any other Star Trek villain, I’m not sure if I like that, on the one hand it made it more believable like someone whose rage has so overwhelmed them that they dare not voice it out loud, but I have to wonder if it would have made it more Star Trekish if he played it all out over-dramatic like Malcolm McDowell, or if it would have made it cartoonish. I guess we’ll never know.

How it fits in the Trek Continuum; it doesn’t. They made sure to say over and over time travel destroyed the old Trek Continuum (It was Trek and JJ Abrams, it had to have time travel).

Casting: When I read who the cast was my first reaction was, “You’re kidding me right?” Then I read in some review how the cast really tried to imitate the originals and I thought “Oh no, I don’t want to see them do bad imitations of the originals.” So my expectations on the cast was pretty low.

Luckily the actors really tried to make the characters they were playing their own, with only a couple points of reference to the originals. The only exception was Kirk who had absolutely no Shat what so ever, but that was sort of explained in the plot.

What I didn’t like about it.

Camera Work from Hell: If done right a moving camera with quick edits can really add to the feeling of action. Abrams decided that he would get the crew from MTV Jams to film and put in more edits than an entire episode of “Lost” into a 30 second scene. And that was just when crewmembers were walking down the corridor, when heavy action scenes came up it really got confusing.

Nostalgia (Present Day) to cover lack of imagination:
The scene of Kirk racing in the Corvette was better than Picard four wheeling on an alien planet (That was just totally out of place) but still a more futurish way of showing that young Kirk was a trouble-maker wouldn’t be hard to pull off.

Characters talking over each other:
It was meant to show conflict, but it really made all of them seem ruder than I would stand for in real life, and in Star Trek I’ve gotten used to everyone being more polite than the present. They will destroy the galaxy to get what they want, but they won’t be impolite about it.

Overall, I liked the newest addition to Star Trek and hope they make a few sequels based on it. It wasn’t “Wrath of Khan” or “First Contact” but at least it wasn’t “TMP” or “Insurrection”.

The 5 Worst Star Trek Villains (so far).

The Star Trek Universe is known for the Grand Shakespearian style of larger than life heroes, and in order to have larger than life heroes you need great villains. And sometimes you don’t get them.

#5 V’ger


The Voyager Probe traveled to the other side of the Galaxy, became Super-powerful returned to Earth to meet its creator and kills anything that gets in its way, then plugged its electronic ears and said “1000101010101010” which translated from binary means. “La-La-La-La I can’t hear you.”

A computer that will kill anything that gets in the way of its mission and develops a religion about its creator? Wasn’t that the plot of 2001? It didn’t translate to the big screen very well either so this Star Trek rip-off was even worse.

Most fans don’t notice how incredibly lame the villain was due to the incredibly bad direction and pacing. (I don’t mean the slow pace of the movie, I mean their own pacing back and forth waiting for something to happen).

#4 Ad'har


F. Murray Abraham's acting almost made fans forget how lame his character was. His motivation was to kill his mommy because she let him leave home to see the universe.

It would be like spending your entire working life plotting to kill your mom because you wanted to move back in to your old room after college, but were too proud to ask.

I moved back into my mom’s house once. I didn’t have to raise a fleet of Space ships, create a weapon that would destroy that part of the Galaxy or make an elaborate plan to have the Government turn its back on its most sacred principals. Good thing too, I had to borrow the money from her (I still haven’t paid her back).

This doesn’t really make me a bad enough villain to make an entire movie about.


#3 Japanese Fishing Boat


Star Trek 4 gave us the most mismatched battle ever, a fishing boat vs. a Klingon Bird of Prey.

The original movies went counter to how most series go with the villains getting bigger and bader as the series went on. With Star Trek they got smaller. In The Motion Picture V’ger was the size of Jupiter, then Khan stole a Federation Ship smaller than the Enterprise but newer to make it an even match, In ST3 Enterprise took on a Klingon Scout Ship, then in ST4 the Klingon Scout Ship took on a fishing boat. To keep up with this pattern they would have to have the Enterprise-A take on a guy who wanders around in the desert.

#2 Sybok

Spock’s half-brother wandered around in the desert then takes over the Enterprise-A in search of God. Takes them to a guy and gets killed.

#1 Praetor Shinzon


Great concept for a villain Picard’s clone but the real villain was the casting director. Shinzon didn’t look like Picard was 6 inches shorter and 20 lbs lighter. I tried to suspend my disbelief but couldn’t.

If they had done a Van Damn and had Patrick Stewart play both roles it could have been cool. That would have made the overacting by Brett Spiner tolerable.

Honorable Mention

Soran


Soran could have been the end to the franchise, his motivation was to get his drug called the Nexus.

Malcolm McDowell pulled it off and made it watchable, but imagine Keanu Reeve in that role.

“Like I need to get back to the Nexus, Dude. Bummer that I need to like totally blow up a planet to do it.”