FILM REVIEW
– STAR TREK 2009
Spoiler warnings may be advisable in this review for those yet to see this movie.
J J Abraham’s boldly goes where other directors have feared to tread and completely changed Star Trek history. A staple lot from the series was the crew of the Enterprise, Voyager & Deep Space Nine having to go back in time to stop someone interfering with the past to change the future. Here, that is allowed to happen - it’s the ultimate reset button, allowing for the stories to begin from a fresh beginning.
And it goes right to the beginning, with Kirk’s birth, taking place during a desperate evacuation when a Starship is attacked by a colossal ship (resembling a Babylon 5 Shadow ship). Kirk’s dad sacrifices himself to save everyone, including his son, who grows into a juvenile delinquent with a tendency to steal cars and get into bar-room brawls. The car chase, with Kirk pursued by a Judge Dredd minded speed-cop droid is excellent, and finishes with Kirk almost doing a Thelma & Louise Canyon drop, ending up hanging precariously from the cliff by his fingertips.
Captain Pike saves Kirk from a life of crime by encouraging him to join Star Fleet academy, where he quickly upsets a young half-Vulcan half human, Spock, by cheating on an impossible test to make it possible. He is suspended from school pending an investigation into this. He also makes abortive passes at the young vivacious Uhuru, spoiling his chances by bedding her green skinned room-mate. Her growing love for Spock furthers the tension between the men.
When Vulcan is attacked by the same spaceship that killed his father, and the academy students are sent along on the mission to save the planet, K irk smuggles himself on board, aided and abetted by medical student Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy.
Most of the familier crew appear now, with one exception saved for later. As the beautifully re-designed Enterprise, making its ‘maiden voyage’ (therefore erasing the dreadful Enterprise TV series from the canon) faces off on the anomaly, Kirk & Sulu are sent off with a party to try to sabotage a colossal drilling rig that the enemy (renegade Romulans from the future, led by one Captain Nero). Kirk is sent casually by Pike as being expendible for effectively being a stowaway. The other crew-man sent is a red-shirted extra, and few in the audience will be surprised that he is killed off quickly. Kirk ends up once more dangling by his fingertips over a vast drop to certain death.
Spock makes a desperate attempt to save his people on Vulcan as it becomes apparent that Nero plans to turn their world into a black hole. Te drill is being used to inject red matter maguffin juice into Vulcan’s core to achieve this. The film’s great shock moment is that the plan succeeds – Vulcan was seen and referenced through the TV series and films, so its passing confirms irrefutably how revisionist Abrams is being here. Spock saves his father and other leading Vulcans, but his human mother, played by Winona Ryder, dies.
Pike goes to the Romulan ship to negotiate and he is quickly taken prisoner, leaving Spock as acting captain, much to Kirk’s resentment. Kirk challenges Spock’s decisions and Spock has him kicked off the Enterprise altogether, dumping him in exile on a desolate snowscape planet, with instructions to stay on board the shuttle-craft for safety. Kirk naturally ignores this and goes walkabout, getting chased by giant monsters, one being bright red & rather lacking camoflage in such a landscape. Kirk again ends up briefly dangling over a precipice. Taking refuge in a cave, Kirk is rescued by Spock – the original Spock, a now elderly & distinguished Leonard Nimoy, the only actor from the original series to appear. He mind-melds with Kirk to make it easier for him to get the story that we are only told in words and pictures. In the future, the Romulan homeworld is threatened by a super-nova, and Spock is single handedly sent with red matter to save the, but he arrives just too late, and Romulus is turned into a black hole. The ship captained by Nero, and Spock’s tiny rescue ship, have gone through the black hole and back in time. Nero has exiled Spock where he can watch helplessly as he destroys Vulcan in revenge for Spock’s failure to save Romulus.
Kirk & Spock head to a star-fleet outpost science station nearby, which as Spock knowing about makes his skulking around in a cave surrounded by monsters rather odd. At the station, they meet the one Star Trek familier yet to be re-introduced, Montgomery Scott, played by Simon Pegg with a dubious Scottish accent but lots of charm. He leaves his strange alien or robot (a sure fire Xmas toy) assistant behind and beams himself & Kirk to the Enterprise, with himself going into a water-tube, for a comic relief rush scene for his rescue – a sequence bordering on Laurel & Hardy.
Kirk knows that Nero is planning on attacking Earth as he did Valcan, and plans a mutinous challenge to Spock, proving that he has enough human emotional anger and resentment to adversely affect his ability to command objectively, and that he, Kirk, is a better captain – the challenge works, and Spock goes ballistic, before willingly relieving himself of command to let Kirk take his place as captain.
As The Earth is approached, due to information gleamed from Pike using brain-bugs similar to those seen in The Wrath Of Khan movie, Kirk & Spock beam onto the Romula mining vessel to rescue Pike, and Kirk again ends up hanging from ledges, this time with people trying to stomp on his fingers. Spock liberates his own ship (that which carried the red-matter, and flies off, causing Nero and the Romulans to give pursuit, - the Enterprise has trashed their drill, and saved the Earth. Spock launches a direct assault on the Romulan ship, while Kirk, still on board it, saes Pike, and Scotty beams them all back to the Enterprise as the Romulan ship becomes a new black hole.
Star Fleet give Kirk and the crew great rewards and they all set on the Enterprise for the beginning of their true adventures, after a touching meeting between old and new Spock. Hopefully new films and even a fresh TV series will follow.
There are lots of fan-references to the classic Treks, the green skinned lover for Kirk (resembling She-Hulk), Captain (later Admiral) Pike, was Spock’s first commander in the Classic Trek pilot episode, a role later reprised in flashbacks in the main series episodes for The Menagerie. The time travel concept has been used before, even in the films, The Voyage Home, and First Contact.
The special effects are superb, especially in the meltdown of the planet Vulcan. The plot is action packed, - possibly the fastest moving of all Trek stories to date, and the acting is excellent in all cases, especially from Nimoy and Zachary Quinto as Spock. Quinto is best known for his role as Sylar in the TV series Heroes. Karl Urban is uncanny in his capturing of DeForrest Kely’s McCoy’s mannerisms.
There are a few omissions, notably Yeoman Rand & Nurse Chappell. (Majjel Barrett Roddenberry’’s character – Majel Barrett does make it into the film as a computer voice, recording only shortly before her death last year. . The film is rightly dedicated to the Roddenberrys.
Uhuru’s first name is given on screen for the first time ever, as Nyota, though it has occurred in books, comics and fan-studies before.
A great fan-joke has Eric Bana’s Nero missing an ear tip – a homage to his role as Chopper Reed in Chopper, who had severed one of his ear lobes in an act of defiance against the prison system.
A Tribble can be seen in one shot of the film, apparently just as Pegg’s Scotty first appears. I missed this on first viewing.
The 11th film, which makes it an odd numbered one and therefore cursed with failure, though it promises to break that curse – It’s also the first film with no real sub-title, - even Star Trek One got the sub-title The Motion Picture.
LINKS
STAR TREK ON THE INTERNATIONAL MOVIE DATABASE http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/ & WIKIPEDIA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(film)
Arthur Chappell
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