Now that J. J. Abrams’ successful relaunch of the venerable sci-fi franchise has come to home video, let’s take a quick look at both its achievement and where it fell short. During last year’s theatrical release I posted two times on my reaction to the film. The first was a long and passionate diatribe how the film’s narrative itself was a seeming disposal of everything we knew about Captain Kirk and his crew–by having the antagonist change history at the moment of Kirk’s birth, it created a new timeline effectively changing the galactic status quo, and, to my mind, nullifying the great stories we loved about the series. The second took into account one of the screenwriter’s statements that they weren’t eliminating the original series’ history, simply using concepts from quantum physics to create an alternate reality where the events of the movie and the original timeline exist in separate universes. I understood that this is simply a means for the revived concept to not be obligated to tiptoe around sacred moments in continuity thus freeing future screenplays to tell new stories on a blank canvas. I can live with that–it’s letting us have our Vulcan and blowing it up too.
That event alone changes the dynamic of the Vulcan civilization, creating new possibilities for storytelling with the remnant displaced population. But the film stayed true enough to the familiar world created by Gene Roddenberry so that we can enjoy the best of both universes. Looking back on the movie’s plot, it’s clear that the film got right what it needed to–the core characters of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the crew. The first theatrical film of the franchise, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, showed us the dismal results when characters are not true to themselves–forced dramatics and unbelievable behavior. Abrams’ young new cast did the more difficult deed of making us believe these are the same characters we knew only from the original actors’ performances, surely a praiseworthy achievement.
The special effects and production design are worthy of the bright shiny future the series always held before us, but which Paramount rarely funded adequately, keeping most of the the films mid-range in budget. The new film’s scope and scale fit the soap operatic nature of Star Trek.
Michael Giacchino’s rousing score reminds me again how much this young composer (Lost, The Incredibles, Up, etc.) is filling the movie score space left by John Williams’ reduced work load. It’s just as merrily bombastic and poignant in places as the original series’ and the Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner’s classic film scores
Now, what still doesn’t work in my estimation: The plot is basically a device to re-launch a next generation of the original crew, with villain Nero, a poor man’s Khan, or any other of the cinematic adversaries who have sat in a captain’s chair plotting against Kirk. His revenge motive seems forced and his time travel conceit allows him to be wherever and whenever he needs to be to force the newly acquainted crew members to work together. I hope future movies find a way to avoid having a single snarling baddie in a ship, which, though it makes for great space battles, already looks hackneyed. Many of the best Trek stories usually were about something other than Kirk ordering “fire!” at his opponent’s vessel.
I still have problems believing that the new Kirk bounced from cadet to captain in about three days of the movie’s story time. I know there was the goal of swiftly getting him in the chair, but realistically, Starfleet has sown the seeds of dismay and discontent amongst their command level officers who see this early twenty-something bouncing in barely paying his dues and getting a genius grant for his potential. At least it wasn’t the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaking of production design, the director bragged about getting the use of a brewery to serve as the engine room set that allowed the filmmakers to finally demonstrate the scale of the ship. The problem is, by announcing this, I’ve never been able to see it as anything other than what it is, a factory full of pipes and big tanks of beer–it really doesn’t seem to fit into a star ship. But I’ll bet Scotty likes it.
I got the Blu-Ray disc of Star Trek on its Tuesday release date but have been saving it for Thanksgiving Day when my family and I will have time to watch it after the feast. I’m looking forward to going through the special features and hopefully I’ll have a part 2 of this report next week.
