When Jimmy Met Spocky
Star Trek, the new prequel written by two guys who wrote the Transformers movie and directed by J.J. Abrams, goes to the very beginning of one of pop culture’s most enduring relationships: James T. Kirk and Spock. Kirk the juvenile delinquent turned Starfleet Academy bad boy genius is played by someone who could be a cast member of High School Musical (Chris Pine), but he makes up for it by getting beaten the crap out of on a regular basis. And for not doing a William Shatner impression, which must’ve been a constant temptation. Spock (Zachary Quinto) has issues because Vulcans look down on him for being half-human and therefore emotional so he overcompensates on the rationality department.
Harold (John Cho) from Harold and Kumar plays Sulu with combat skills, pretty Beyonce lite (Zoe Saldana) is Uhura with an unexpected romantic life, and a little boy with an exaggerated Russian accent is Chekov. For comic relief they turn to Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as ‘Bones’ McCoy. How lovely to see Karl as a character with a personality—irritable and paranoid, yes, but a bit more demanding than his usual looking-great-while-killing-people roles.
Eric Bana’s villain is supposed to be a tragic figure but the filmmakers give him nothing to work with. He’s not even particularly scary, and when he tortures someone you really miss Ricardo Montalban in The Wrath of Khan.
The special effects area thousand light years ahead of the pathetic attempts on the old TV series—remember the one where Kirk fights a monster on a rocky alien landscape? The rocks were obviously cardboard and the monster some guy in a costume. Here the effects are impressive, but what does that mean in this day and age?
The 1960s TV series looked clunky, but it made up for the cheap sets by having clever storylines. In this retooling the writers feed us a space-time paradox parallel universe twist whose science is wonky at best (as is my understanding of Special Relativity, which may not qualify as ‘understanding’) but which will allow them to completely rewrite Star Trek history and create an infinity of Star Treks. (Bernard-Henri’s simple interpretation: After the success of Lost, J.J. Abrams feels no great need to be coherent.)
But Star Trek is zippy and enjoyable; see it on the biggest screen you can find.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 9th, 2009 at 00:24
Eric Bana’s Nero not scary?
How about having a (spoiler deleted)…talk about a toe-curling moment.
Thankfully, Bana didn’t have to resort to OA for this one.
May 9th, 2009 at 19:37
Speaking of special effects,there was a movie back in the 90’s that parodied Star Wars and Star Trek ( I can’t remember the title). Everytime someone enters or exits the command center,there’s a hissing sound to simulate hydraulic -vaccum doors. It turns out the characters themselves are doing the sound effect. That was shallow,but hilarious.
May 10th, 2009 at 00:36
^Franzi…are you talking about Spaceballs?
The last good Mel Brooks film.
Di lang Star Trek & Star Wars ang pina-parody rito, pati nga ang Planet of the Apes, Transformers (noong cartoon pa ito) and even The Godfather!!!
Btw, RIP Dom De Luise (aka Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs)
May 10th, 2009 at 09:49
Franzi: Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs?
[spoiler warning]
He did do a subtle Shatner impression in the end.
May 11th, 2009 at 01:21
emperorbananaketchup and jeg, Yes I think Spaceballs it is. It’s one of those hilarious Mel Brooks spoof movies. I enjoyed that one. See,I have trouble remembering movie titles.