Well, last night I saw
ST:TFB, and after a day for the experience to settle, feel up to commenting.
The good:
To its credit, both I and my less geek-trekish wife enjoyed and were engaged by it. It was fun to watch. We
got the characters, both their familiar, tie-in-to-
ST:TOS parts, the altered-timeline differences, and a strength of characterization I think someone who had never head of STrek would get. Spock, was, I think, the strongest character, as, I think, it should be – according to
Roddenberry, Spock is, essentially, the main character, inspiration, and
reason for the existence of STrek. (In Yvonne Fern’s
Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation, Roddenberry describes his vision of STrek as largely his love letter to the character)
In terms of story planning, or strategy, I believe Orci, Abrams, and whoever else was involved in it were audacious and right to erase the entire STrek cannon (except
ST:E, which story chronologically precedes ST:TFB). A pure prequel would, I think, have been a terrible mistake and continued flogging of the nearly dead horse that is the STrek franchise. “rebooting the timeline” was, IMNSHO, the best direction to take.
The story gets many of the “rules” of STrek right. It’s
optimistic – every character shares the conviction that the future will be better, and better because of their efforts. Poverty, terrorism, and injustices appear to be nearly gone and forgotten. Bureaucracy is still a problem, but is overcome in the end by ubiquitous personal integrity. Even villains are not inevitable or innately, irredeemably evil, but troubled beyond some breaking point, and ultimately understandable characters with which we can sympathise. Even in the heat of battle, the good folk remain good, as in the near penultimate scene where Kirk offers to rescue Nero and his crew from the destruction he and his crew have just deal them. This
gets the key “Roddenberry” rules, something that many of the Berman-guided, post
ST:TNG series failed to do.
The bad:
The movie jarred me with a plethora of annoyances, many of which have been discussed previously in the thread.
Technically, I though the cinematography spoiled the movie's obviously ample video processing and special effects with an overload of images and sounds, and frequently, simple camera shaking more appropriate to guerilla cinema than shiny space sci-fi, so much so that, for a substantial fraction of the screen time, the audience was left wondering what was actually happening. Fight choreography was, for the most part, simply goofy, in many cases to the point of being boring.
Various gadgets appeared not simply improbable, but annoying – eg: phaser pistols which someone appears to have been determined to have resemble semiautomatic handguns. I share Moontanman’s chagrin at
big physical windows on starship bridges, and worse, Spock prime’s super-speedy whirly-gig ship, which had a cockpit reminiscent of the glazed nose of a WWII bomber, and appeared to rely on eyeball dead-reckoning, seat-of-your-pants hands-on-the-stick(s) piloting, a feat only barely feasible in WWII. Despite my effort to have fun and not take things too seriously, this pretty much dragged my suspension of disbelief into the aisle, stomped its poor ass, and tossed it out of the theatre, just when I needed it the most, to endure the climactic antimatter ejecting and detonating surf’s up escape from the Saturn black hole and subsequent triumphal what-me-worry return to Earth with not a care in the world for the consequences suddenly being 3-planets-over neighbors with a super-powerful x-ray source.
And I was so proud of myself for making it through the space-sky-diving scene with no more than a moments doubt that even given the thinner atmosphere of planet Vulcan and 23rd century clothing could allow someone to painlessly renter the atmosphere wearing no more than a tight-fitting vinyl suit – which somehow isn’t effective protection against swords.
For all these faults, I disagree with the criticism that
Quote:
Originally Posted by Moontanman
As I have read from another forum, this movies was an action adventure story set in space and using the names and places of the Star Trek universe but it was not Star Trek.
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STrek, especially TOS,
is space opera, and
dramatic action adventure story set in space. As Moontan later notes, The Original Series had its share of cheesy, technically numb-brained moments, yet if it's not Star Trek, I don't know what is. I wish TOS had been more scientifically informed. I wish the new movies had been. But I feel more strongly than since ST:TNG aired that the franchise has returned to its roots, and hope the poor, abused franchise can struggle to its feet and have a positive influence on yet another generation of 20th/21st century humans.
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My 2 cents on the new movie
