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5/13/09 12:15 am
Star Trek: Abercrombie and Fitch (spoilers)
So my aunt, the other geek in the family, came to town over the weekend. (For future reference, let's call her Aunt Mae.) She's a Star Trek:TOS fan. I prefer DS9 and some TNG, but I can dig the 60's retro-future thing. Of course, we had to go see the new Trek movie. Despite some of the snark below, I enjoyed it.
(I'm too tired to dig up links for this stuff. It's either this, or back to blogging all Youtube links, all the time.)
1) I hope the next movie brings back real treknobabble. Red Matter? Did this script come from Wikipedia in Simple English? (Example: "Star Trek is a science fiction television show... It has a lot of fans who love the show, but it is not loved as much by other people.")
2) I hope the next Star Trek movie gives Uhura more of a chance to prove herself on-camera. There are good discussions going on elsewhere about how much better the roles for women, particularly Uhura, could have been.
3) Although I agree with some of the comments elsewhere that Spock's mother was treated poorly in the script, as merely a button for the bullies and Kirk to push, at least I won't have to keep wondering why they cast Winona Ryder. She'll turn 38 this year; Zachary Quinto will turn 32. (This must be ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ellen_fremedon's revenge on me, for not caring that Alan Rickman was a generation too old to play Snape.)
4) Mark my words: that bullying scene in the Vulcan skateboard park/classroom will lead to Spock-at-Hogwarts crossover fanfic. If it hasn't already.
5) I'm still not sure exactly why Kirk wrecked that Corvette, or why Spock let Uhura on the crew of the Enterprise. (I don't believe they were already romantically involved.) Not having answers to those sorts of questions doesn't keep me from enjoying most movies. You're welcome to consider this one of my character flaws.
6) Spock to the Vulcan Science Academy admissions board, or whoever they were -- nicely played. It reminds me of a TNG scene with Tasha Yar's half-Romulan daughter, Spock, and Data, with one of the best lines Brent Spiner ever delivered. (You'd need to see it; I think the episode was a two-parter called "Unification.") Or of a scene, late in the run of DS9, between Kira and Kai Winn, when Kira thinks the kai will obviously be giving up her position, and you can almost hear the cracking of thin ice. Sometimes Trek gets the tension and the humor right. I'm glad there were a few moments like that in this movie.
7) I'm glad that, when it came to the trademarks from the old series, the filmmaker hit his marks. "I'm a doctor, not a physicist." "I'm givin' her all she's got, cap'n!" "Fascinating." The dead redshirt. Even a shout out to an off-camera Nurse Chapel by Bones during one scene. (Yes, another female character that could have been given a better role. Or a role at all.) The only one I think I/they missed was "He's dead, Jim."
8) I'm glad they made an effort to acknowledge and own the reboot, rather than Darrening (as in "Bewitched") the whole series. I was actually worried they would ignore the elephant in the cargo bay. More on the terms of the reboot later.
9) I'm glad Majel Barrett got to record the Computer voice one last time. I'm very sad she's gone.
10) The exterior shots of Nero's ship looked cool. The ship deserved a better villain, as did the whole movie.
11) Why are some people still complaining that Trek spaceships make a whooshing sound in the near-vacuum of space? Why aren't these same people freaked out that there's also, apparently, second-rate film score music in space?
12) I shouldn't complain about the music, as long as no one sings the theme song.
13) The torture scene was completely wrong. The filmmaker should have been made to watch the TNG episode with Picard, the Cardassian torturer, and the four lights. (Or was it five?)
14) The casting for Kirk and Spock could have easily broken the movie, and it didn't, for me at least. Chris Pine may have overplayed Kirk in places -- e.g., eating that apple in the Kobayashi Maru scene -- but overall it worked. After seeing Quinto as Sylar, I expected him only to be able to play villains, but I liked his Spock, even with Nimoy in the same movie.
15) The actor playing Bones should have toned it down, IMO, based on how much screen time he got. If he had had two minutes in a two-hour movie, he could have gotten away with it. (See Scotty, for instance.) But it started to feel like he was doing an impression.
16) I'm amused at the suggestion elsewhere that Chekov could have been brought back as female. If this whole reboot was a work of alternate history (as well as fanfic), doesn't changing a character's gender, without tying that change back into the original point of departure, violate some sort of rule of alternate history as a genre? You break too many rules of a genre, the work stops being part of that genre, and you have to figure out some other way to in-clue people as to what they should expect. That said, I'd be tempted to do it anyway and handwave it however I had to -- it's an idea good enough that I'm still smiling when I think about it.
17) Chekov as the new Wesley Crusher: Do Not Want.
18) Sulu pulling out the expandable katana on an airshipa floating platform felt like the whole thing had turned into an XKCD strip. Glad to see he saved Kirk's life during that fight, without it being a big deal. Still, not much screen time or character development for him, much less than even the second-tier crew characters (Bones and Uhura). Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty got about the same, even with Scotty coming in so late. Unlike TV shows, movie franchises don't often throw the minor characters their own episode/installment.
19) Destroying Vulcan. Hmmm. While I was in the theater, I kept thinking they'd have to undo it, because of the changes to the series continuity. That they didn't seemed like a big deal before the credits rolled. After a few days thinking about it, I see it more and more as the horror movie trope of Black Dude Dies First. (See tvtropes.org for that trope and a handy sorting algorithm of mortality.)
The braver, darker way of making the movie -- the way I'd like to think DS9 would have handled it -- would have been for the villain (a more dangerous, complex villain, like Gul Dukat) to destroy Earth, not Vulcan, and for the movie, the Federation, and the series to live with the terrible gravity of that choice.
Think about it.
20) Scalzi has made a good point: this movie was an attempt to bring back the franchise by making a movie that would have mainstream success. I think it'll do that. There are reasons why the theaters never saw a DS9 movie.
2009-05-13 07:39 am (UTC)
I still haven't seen it! But I might try to squeeze it in today.
Thanks for the review. Nicely done.
2009-05-13 11:47 am (UTC)
Thanks! Hope you find the movie enjoyable and/or thought-provoking.
2009-05-13 10:25 am (UTC)
Kirk didn't have agency when he wreck the Corvette. The whole point of that scene was for JJ Abrams to show us how without a Strong Father Figure, he has become A Rebel Without A Clue. I would have cut that scene.
As for why Spock let Uhura onto the crew for the Enterprise, there are two possible reasons:
1. The Enterprise is the plum assignment that only the best receive. She pointed out that she is the best cadet xeno-linguist in the academy. Logically then, she ought to be assigned to the Enterprise along with all of the other of the best.
2. She is so totally going to blackmail his ass if she doesn't get on the Enterprise. Of course they were already romantically involved. (You just didn't know about it yet.) Spock says he assigned her to the Farragut to avoid charges of favoritism.
As for Winona Ryder, the word is that they'd filmed Spock's birth so they needed someone of the right age to do that scene. Since they then cut it, we're left only seeing the scenes where she's in age makeup.
I think they actually made too much of an effort to acknowledge the reboot. Yes, we get that they've entered an alternate timeline. No need to belabor this point. (Of course, I'm known for not belaboring points enough. YMMV.)
Destroying Earth would have totally been the more daring choice. I'm still wondering what it is with destroying planets on reboots though. What is it about restarting the continuity that causes writers to blow up a planet? The most daring choice, IMHO, would have been not to destroy a planet at all.
BTW, I heard that in an early draft, they used the transporter to beam JT Krik out of the womb. This would explain why his mother apparently plays no part in his life post partum. In that scenario, they probably killed her off in a shuttle explosion. Delivery by transporter though is the sort of sparkly shiny that would have vaulted me completely out of the story. I'm so glad they didn't go there.
Incidentally, I've read several very fine analyses that explain why the villain of the piece is not Nero, but Spock. Certainly, Spock is much more effective at obstructing Kirk than anyone else in the movie.
While we're talking about Nero, am I the only one who think the Romulans look like they've stepped out of an '80s leather bar? Granted, it would be a tough '80s leather bar and I'd be disinclined to make fun of them. However, they weren't evoking the right notes of danger in my head.
I'll admit that the jumping from platform to platform within the ship was gratuitously cool. Your first days on board must suck though, especially since they keep the ship so dimly lit. One has to wonder if they simply turn on the lights, if the bad guys would suddenly become good. ("They're not bad guys. They have seasonal affective disorder!")
Oh yeah, I think the torture scene, such as it was, is a shout out to ST II:TWOK. Then again, most of the movie is a shout out to ST II:TWOK. (Since it's usually acknowledged as the best of ST movies starring the original cast, this is not a bad thing.)
On the whole, I enjoyed it a lot. I'm definitely looking forward to what they do next.
2009-05-13 11:20 am (UTC)
"SPOOOOOOOOOCK!"
Yeah, Eric Bana is no Ricardo Montalban.
2009-05-13 11:32 am (UTC)
Where is our generation's Ricardo Montalban? And when can he start doing commercials for the new Fiat Cordoba?
2009-05-13 11:35 am (UTC)
We don't train actors to chew on scenery like that anymore, alas. So our generation's Montalban is probably singing in a rock band. Ugh, he's probably Scott Stapp. Or Fred Durst. We're doooooooooomed!
2009-05-13 11:47 am (UTC)
>> What is it about restarting the continuity that causes writers to blow up a planet?
Other than killing off one of the previously main characters, it's the strongest way to say to the viewer, "Everything you know may turn out to be wrong, so you'd better watch closely." The writer is disallowing a whole bunch of the furniture and plot bits from the previous continuity, or admitting he will have to work much harder and be much more thoughtful to bring them in. It's burning the ships when you land in America; it's crossing the Rubicon.
Or at least, it is if you pick the right planet.
>> The most daring choice, IMHO, would have been not to destroy a planet at all.
IMHO, that would be the more skillful choice, were it to have been pulled off while still making everything else work as well as it did. Then again, Kirk was usually more daring than skillful. If you want skillful, that may require a different captain.
Someone's LJ mentioned that a FOAF was working on something about how reboots are fundamentally dystopian. I'd really like to read that.
2009-05-13 12:17 pm (UTC)
> Other than killing off one of the previously main characters, it's the strongest way to say to the viewer,
Oh, I would have so gone to see the Star Trek where they kill off JT Kirk early in the movie just to see everybody's head explode.
2009-05-14 11:17 am (UTC)
It might kill the mainstream success of the franchise, but I'd have to see it too.
This is why I probably shouldn't be trusted with franchises.
2009-05-13 01:26 pm (UTC)
Someone's LJ mentioned that a FOAF was working on something about how reboots are fundamentally dystopian. I'd really like to read that.
That was me; it's a chapter in my friend Erica's film studies diss. I'll point you to it when she publishes that part-- I'm looking forward to it, too.
2009-05-14 11:18 am (UTC)
Oh, thank you. Yes, I'll be looking for that pointer.
Nice piece of fiction you posted, by the way.
2009-05-14 02:05 pm (UTC)
2009-05-13 01:05 pm (UTC)
10) The exterior shots of Nero's ship looked cool. The ship deserved a better villain, as did the whole movie.
Yeah, I chose not to worry my little head over the lame-o villain. Where are the Lex Luthors of villainy? Everyone has a backstory! I want an evil, maniacal monster not some poor sap who watched his planet and all those he loved blow apart!
Yeah, I know--those make for flat villains. There would have been as much of a nit over that one. However, I'd have much preferred to have the evil maniac in THIS one, and find out some of his backstory in the next...and the next...building it so that by the end of the series (sometime in the next 20 years) we're wondering just WHO the bad guy is? Starfleet? Or the villain.
Now THAT is story.
I'm going with the whole fam tonight. Last week, I saw it with Cal and another friend in VAB. Stoked.
2009-05-14 11:45 am (UTC)
Hope the family enjoys it!
I too miss supervillains. One problem with carrying a villain along for many movies is that people wonder why you didn't kill him when you had a chance, because eventually you *will* have the chance.
2009-05-14 12:34 pm (UTC)
They did! And I did too, even the second time around.
Supervillains need a reboot. Gone are the days of pure evil; but all these villains with sorrowful pasts and backstories as to WHY they turned evil are becoming cliche. A multilayered villain has always (for me) been the most interesting character in a book or a movie. Maybe, at least in movies, we tend to get the 'big reveal' all at once, explaining his/her twisted psyche.
I'm thinking Darth Vader is a good example of what I want to see in a movie villain--at first, he's a super villain. The dark side of the force. In movie two, we get a little more--holy shit! He's Luke's father!--this combined with what Ben told Luke about his father implies a backstory that doesn't spell it all out. We're left guessing. Even after Jedi, we know only that he was pulled into the dark side and couldn't get out, but now he's redeemed. It's not until the horrific prequels that we find the whole story, and even then it's still in dribs and drabs. I have little good to say about the prequels, but the storyline in THEORY is pretty damn great as far as Vader is concerned, at least.
2009-05-13 01:29 pm (UTC)
5.) Oh they were so totally involved before that.
2009-05-13 03:13 pm (UTC)
Yup. Seemed pretty clear to me.
2009-05-13 04:29 pm (UTC)
Oh! So you did see it. I was beginning to wonder...:)
2009-05-14 11:46 am (UTC)
Once again, I'm the last to know.
2009-05-13 03:12 pm (UTC)
Red Matter -- I can't decide if I like that or hate it. What it has going for it is that it sounds a little like "Dark Matter".
The torture scene -- the "four lights / five lights" episode took... an entire episode! I think a short scene (with bonus shout-out to Wrath of Khan) worked fine here.
2009-05-14 11:49 am (UTC)
Maybe Red Matter is Dark Matter with less Gray Matter.
One point of the torture episode in TNG was that torture will eventually get most people to say or believe whatever the torturer wants. Why was this movie saying that torture yields whatever information you really need, on a schedule? Should that be read as a political statement, or just what was needed for a plot point?
2009-05-14 02:18 pm (UTC)
Sure. The purpose of torture is to have the subject repeat back to you what you'd like to hear, rather than tell you the truth. The problem is, Pike *did* know the subspace frequencies, and Nero knew that Pike knew them. So this is one of those cases where torture almost certainly would have worked, eventually.
And like most SF universes, in the Star Trek universe torture does work on a schedule, thanks to magical mind-control bugs, evil mind-probe chairs, and other fantastical technologies. Think what Jack Bauer could do if he got sent on a zoological mission to Ceti Alpha V.
2009-05-14 02:24 pm (UTC)
Although *why* Nero needed Earth's subspace frequencies when his Borg tech upgraded, super-advanced ship is able to easily dispatch any warship from the 2230s...
I think the whole point was to:
A) remove Pike from the board so that the other pieces could play out the game
B) efficiently move Pike to the endstate, "guy in a wheelchair"
2009-05-13 04:32 pm (UTC)
Excellent write-up. I'm glad I'm not the only one surprised Winona Ryder was Spock's mother and that she looked so young age-wise, despite make-up.
I mean not young like Bram Stoker's Dracula young but still pretty young...
I'm going on about Winona Ryder again, aren't I?
Bana's ship was awesome. He was okay. I think they leveraged time off his character to give us more Spock and Kirk. (I wish people would understand we'd be okay seeing a 2 1/2 movie if it was GOOD. Then again, since they wanted to make a slick, cool Star Trek reboot and gain a whole new generation of fans, I'm probably not the target audience.
2009-05-14 11:51 am (UTC)
>> I'm going on about Winona Ryder again, aren't I?
No more than normal. :)
>> I think they leveraged time off his character to give us more Spock and Kirk.
Maybe that's it. I know there are always choices and that we don't get to see how the script got cut, but I agree with you -- I wouldn't have minded a 2.5 hour movie instead. But no, I also was not their target audience. They knew if I paid to see Nemesis, I'd pay to see this.
2009-05-14 04:05 pm (UTC)
(Was Nemesis really *that* bad? I never did see the last two TNG movies...although right now I'm more tempted to watch I-IV and VI.)
2009-05-13 04:34 pm (UTC)
11) I so much fangirl you for this.
2009-05-13 04:44 pm (UTC)
Heh. I actually really liked the music. I listened to it most of the last two days!
2009-05-14 11:52 am (UTC)
2009-05-14 11:55 am (UTC)
2009-05-14 02:08 pm (UTC)
Snerk. He's not wrong. Thank you for linking that.
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