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I went and watched Star Trek the other day. The movie is just flat-out great; provided you go in expecting a Star Trekian plot (now with more Red Matter to fill in the plot holes!). This is Star Trek with the budget and acting it was always meant to have, with a real commitment to the spirit of the original.

Spoilers Below the Fold

First and foremost, this is an alternate timeline movie, so while the characters are still themselves character-wise, some of the events of “history” have been changed, and has slightly effected who they are. It starts with the USS Kalvin* investigating a strange space anomaly (cause what else would you do but go poke the funny looking space thing with a sensor probe?) that looks “like a lightening storm”. Suddenly, a huge ship pops out of the anomaly and starts attacking the poor Kalvin. Captain Rabou is sent over to the ship and killed, and George Kirk is left as the Captain of the ship while everyone else evacuates. Kirk’s very pregnant wife is sent to a shuttle, just as the autopilot fails and Kirk realizes he has to stay aboard to distract the giant ship, and tragically dies in the process just as young “Don’t name him after my father, Tiberius is a horrible name, let’s call him Jim” is born. Cue the moving music as everything explodes.

Fast forward a few years, and we meet a young Spock at school, with racist bullies trying to illicit an emotional response from him, and end up getting the beating of their life when they succeed (note- insulting someone’s mother rarely garners good results). Then we cut to a young James Tiberius Kirk destroying his stepfather’s “antique” car (I nearly cried; it’d be the equivalent of destroying the Kitty Hawk)

Eventually, we get to Starfleet, where the Spock finally meets Kirk after he cheats on a supposedly “un-winable” program that Spock designed. The academic meeting is interrupted when we discover Vulcan is under attack, and they need the fresh cadets to go and help. Bones, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and Spock all end up on the deck of the Enterprise, with Captain Pike as the leader, and Kirk on because of Bones doing a little bit of medical trickery. They get to the Vulcan party a little late (Sulu left the parking break on), which gives Kirk just enough time to realize that it’s the scary ship again, which is currently drilling a hole into Vulcan. Sulu and Kirk (and poor redshirt Olson, who dies almost immediately) manage to sabotage the drill and get a message out to Vulcan to evacuate; but only about 10,000 people get out. On the plus side, the Vulcan cultural people are saved (less Spock’s mom). Captain Pike is sent over to the ship, which is captained by Remo, and Pike leaves Spock and Kirk in charge. Spock, as acting captain, wants to regroup with the rest of the Federation, and Kirk wants to go to Earth to protect it. Spock decides that the logical course of action is to send Kirk to an abandoned M Class planet.

There, after out-running some pretty fantastical ice-planet creatures, he meets up with Ambassador Spock, and we find out 129 years into the “future” (I had a horrible time trying to parse timelines into this one, so we’ll just say about a century after the original series), Ambassador Spock and some Vulcans try to save Romulus after a star goes supernova. (Though he said “The galaxy”- but, hey, this is Star Trek; consistency is not really their strong point). Ambassador Spock’s plan is to explode some “red matter” (think, “tachyon particles” or applied phelbotinum) and create a black hole to suck the supernova into it. Well, this plan works, but just too late to save Romulus. Capt. Remo was a miner, and was off-planet when it happened, but blames Spock for his planet (and his family) getting destroyed. Both Remo and Amb. Spock are sucked into the created black hole, but Remo gets sent back 25 years earlier than Amb. Spock, plenty of time to get ready and capture him, so he can watch his own planet be destroyed. Amb. Spock decides Kirk needs to get back on the Enterprise and usurp Spock’s authority. How is Kirk to accomplish this? Easy- just get Spock to show emotion.

On the Hothian M-Class planet, they find the Federation outpost, and luckily for them, the only person in the galaxy who could actually beam them aboard a ship traveling at warp- Scotty. After getting back on the ship, Kirk gets Spock to be emotionally compromised, and the whole crew of the Enterprise come up with a plan to save the day that sounds (and is) incredibly implausible, but pulls it off, saves the earth, rescues Captain Pike, kisses Uhura, and Kirk gets his Captaincy fresh out of Starfleet Academy and a special award. Sequels guaranteed.

A few things I liked about the movie:

I have to repeat this; it really did stay true to the spirit of the original. Though the movie focused mainly on Spock and Kirk, it did give enough highlights to show what kind of people Chekov, Uhura, Sulu, Scotty, and Bones were, and gave us a reason to be interested in who they are. I also dug the subtle and not-so-subtle nods to the original: some of the female cadets are in the ridiculously short-skirts that are apparently Starfleet issued (but not required), Kirk gets it on with a green-skinned alien girl at school, and the red-shirt dies. Bones at one point calls Spock a “green-blooded hobgoblin”, which I’m sure original fans can appreciate, and I may be wrong about this, but I think they even linked the Enterprise movie in (Scotty said he transported “Admiral Archer’s prized Beagle”). This movie actually had some pretty good diversity in terms of aliens as well, which was pretty cool.

The visuals were AWESOME. Star Trek was always meant to have this budget, seriously. The music was good, and I thought the acting was tight. Most of the actor’s practiced with the originals, or their families to get the parts just right, and it shows. I really like Scotty; he was just perfect. I thought Sulu could have had more of an accent, but really, that’s just nitpicky.

I didn’t like that it didn’t pass the Bencheal test, and seriously, there were plot holes galore (both deviation from cannon and just general “Really?” plot holes). Also, while there was some alien diversity, the movie is still full of white people.

But, all in all, a really great movie, and one I’m looking forward to watching the Riff Trax of.

*This has always bugged me; if it’s the Federation, why are the ships still called USS? United States Ships don’t make much sense when there is no United States. “United Starships” are what it supposedly stands for, but that makes pretty little sense- it’d be “FSS” for “Federation Starship”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Punkass!, Entertainment, Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.