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fajrdrakoI just got back from seeing the new Star Trek movie.
I've wandered far from Star Trek fandom in the past few decades. Never really liked any incarnation of the TV show after The Next Generation. I forgot all the Trek trivia and lore I once new so well.
And I didn't expect much of the movie. J.J. Abrams, the producer, hadn't impressed me in the long run with Lost and I never saw Alias. Couldn't imagine Star Trek with new actors - some of which I liked, some of which I didn't. I didn't believe they could recapture old magic.
But somehow they did. They managed to find a hit a lot of my old trigger points. They even managed to make me cry. Three times. Without being in the least sentimental.
- Seeing Zachary Quinto as Spock was just like seeing Spock again. It wasn't like seeing Leonard Nimoy - he's good, but not that good - but I never for a moment questioned his identity or found him lacking. The difference? There was a beauty and a charm to Nimoy's young Spock that I don't see in Quinto. But that's all right, because he's terrific.
- My brain had more trouble accepting Chris Pine as Jim Kirk, but that didn't matter because the script and plot are so interesting where Kirk is concerned that I could enjoy it without comparison. His Kirk is more extreme than Shatner's, more of a wild card, more of a maverick. (And the original Kirk was maverick enough.)
- I wasn't nearly as impressed by Sulu and Chekov. They were all right. Sulu has a great fight scene.
- The rewrite of the story, and the rationalization of it through time-travel and universe-divergence worked totally to my satisfaction. Except I wish we hadn't lost Amanda.
- I thought I didn't like Simon Pegg. I was so wrong. Two sentences of his Scotty and I was in love. And I was never much of a Scotty fan before - ! But he was absolutely delightful.
- Likewise Karl Urban as McCoy. I was definitely not a McCoy fan - thought him too crusty, too cute and cantankerous. But Urban raises the stakes and his McCoy is a delight - Kirk's recalcitrant accomplice in all sorts of mischief.
- So it's Spock who gets the girl KIrk wanted, and... Well, what they did with that ought to have been tacky and absurd, and if anyone had told me about it I'd have screamed and complained. But. It worked. It was, in fact, delighted. Against all the odds.
- A bit too much in the way of fisticuffs. Nice use of many dimensions. Since Russell T. Davies has talked about movement of characters up and down on the screen - not just across it, left to right - I've been paying more attention than I used to. Lots of dramatic falls, spectacular jumps.
- And Eric Bana as the evil Romulan captain Nero - wonderful. Totally wonderful.
- Set designs are nicely evocative of the past but have a good futuristic look - not remarkable, but a suitable setting and backdrop for the action. There's some excellent use of innovative technology, a few time paradoxes, and that old taboo of time-travel stories is broken: a character meets himself. And the scene is brilliant.
- Favourite bits:
- The first scenes, of Captain George Kirk and the Romulan attack.
- The high-speed chase between Kirk as a child in a car and the police. "Is there a problem, officer?" I cracked up - and loved Kirk.
- Spock says to Kirk, "I am and always will be your friend." That was one of the points where I got sniffly.
- Our first meeting with Scotty and his little non-verbal alien friend - a gimmick straight out of Star Wars. I didn't like it there. Why do I like it here?
- The first meeting of Kirk and Spock at the Academy - at a tribunal in which they are on opposite sides. Opposite temperaments, opposite philosophies. Perfect for each other.
- The first scenes, of Captain George Kirk and the Romulan attack.
A movie worth going back to see again.
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Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-02 09:17 pm (UTC)Because of the ENT connections, and Vulcan's role as a Great Power during the 22nd therein, I can't really buy the "10 thousand" figure they gave. Surely the off-world colonies and outposts they had before Federation must've survived intact?
Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-03 12:48 pm (UTC)I hope you do write your nitpick-detail essay. I'd love to see it, even though it will be total Greek to me. I like hearing these things anyway.
Surely the off-world colonies and outposts they had before Federation must've survived intact?
Perhaps they didn't exist in this version of reality?
Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-03 12:51 pm (UTC)Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-03 12:55 pm (UTC)Vulcan Off-World Holdings
Date: 2009-05-03 01:02 pm (UTC)This is something I'd want to confirm with one or more of the ENT and movie scriptwriters, but I'm reasonably certain of my logic here.
Re: Vulcan Off-World Holdings
Date: 2009-05-03 02:57 pm (UTC)I would dispute the premise. I think they took aspects of it for the movie, but the canon is new and not tied to anything in the past. At least, so I hope.
Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-11 02:18 pm (UTC)I have a huge issue with this, too. I mean, the Romulans left Vulcan to colonize TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO. This is a people who have been spacefaring and colonizing for that long, and only 10K of them were offworld? Seriously? I disbelieve.
Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-11 04:17 pm (UTC)There may be many who, like Romulans, no longer call themselves Vulcans.
Re: WAY spoiler-y comment.
Date: 2009-05-11 04:48 pm (UTC)Vulcans, as a species, are not meaningfully endangered by the end of the film.
As a culture, they may well be.
And I don't buy political units as an explanation -- any former Vulcan colonies still under Federation auspices would surely count as Vulcan for both genetic and cultural purposes, even if they now call themselves Corellians (you know, because their founding colonists were such big fans of Han Solo that they named the colony after his homeworld).