Star Trek 2009 Review
Figured I haven't posted about anything at all in so long. Maybe it might be useful to post a short review on the new Star Trek movie.
Before I get into more details about the movie, I'd like to point out what bothered me the most through many of the scenes in it. "Fire Everything" is not a strategy, it's a "I don't know what else to do, so I'll either a) Ram the other ship b) Set auto destruct or c) Fire all weapons and hope to hit something randomly. This might be a minor point, but I'm just used to the idea of actually building a strategy in battle. You know, pattern alpha 1 or something, not just shooting all your weapons. What if you found a weakness to a certain calibration of torpedo? Oops, wasted all of them already.
Characters:
Nero:
Bland bland bland. His motivations are bland. His appearance is bland. His character is bland. Sorry Eric Bana, but another movie I hate you in. I'm sorry, was he a Romulan? I couldn't tell if it was Romulan, Talaxian, Vulcan, or Harry Kim from Voyager. He's the main villain but takes a back seat to the Kirk and Spock show.
Kirk:
Most annoying character I've seen in a movie in a really long time. I realize that the character is built to be a bit of a ruffian, but his character in general bothered me. I can say this, I'm happy that the little kid version of him didn't last long. The kid's voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Adult version, you don't need every line to be a sarcastic mish-mosh. Maybe once in awhile you can shut up and let the other characters have a few lines. I get that he was supposed to balance Spock out, but it didn't change how I felt about the character in general. You didn't have to play up the cool angle so hard.
Spock:
Well played. It really felt like they were trying to keep with Spock's character (both old and young). They had him as a very moral character and I really believed the internal conflict between human emotion and Vulcan control. I think some of that character was lost in trying to constantly serve as a counterpoint to Kirk. Something weird I noticed about his character was how similar it was to Sylar from Heroes. I can't help but wonder if Zachary Quinto at some point decided "screw it, I'll just play them both as the same character."
George Kirk:
I'd love to call him the best character in the film. If we saw more of him, I would have called him such. He was the biggest part of the best scene of the film (the first one). I could feel the emotion as he set a collision course for the enemy vessel. You really get the sense that he's someone who wants a chance but is forced into the reality of what's going to happen to him. Could someone go back in time and give him a bigger role? Or better yet, just replace James T. Kirk's character with him? Or even just replace the actor with him?
"Bones" McCoy:
Quite easily the best and most believable character in the film. From the first words out of his mouth, I instantly knew who it was (I could have gone the whole movie without hearing the name, it didn't take any physical appearance to know who it was). He was very good as a support character, and I wish they'd given him a bigger role in general. I saw him as Spock's human conscience to Spock's father being the Vulcan conscience, but I don't think this was brought up as strongly as it could have been.
Chekov:
Where Bones was best character, Chekov easily wins worst character (I know I said Kirk is most annoying, but this one is just plain bad). He's supposed to be the brash young Russian ("Wait a second, I know how to do that!") who really knows what he's doing. Issues with his accent are so overplayed, that it's all I can think about during his scenes.
Scotty:
So much potential, so little done. I didn't have any real problems with him, but nothing seemed to stand out either. I just feel blah.
Uhura:
She's the smart slutty girl in the movie. I kind of remember that being her role in the original series as well. This was another one like Scotty, I think there was potential that wasn't fully explored. Pretty much her purpose in the movie is to be love interest for all male characters. Her second purpose is to take her shirt off in one scene to catch everyone's attention in the trailers. I'm sorry, that makes her an object, not a character. Someone can be both an object and a character in a movie, don't get me wrong. For instance, Marisa Tomei's role in the Wrestler was pretty much both. The difference being Tomei's character was actually developed. Zoe Saldana's was not.
Sulu:
Star Trek does not have sword fights. You're not a samurai just because you're Asian. Was he in the movie any other time besides the sword fight? I hadn't noticed. Am I supposed to care about his character at all?
There were probably more characters but nothing else significant I can remember.
Plot:
Here's the plot. Romulan's planet is accidentally destroyed by Supernova because Spock wasn't fast enough to collapse the Supernova into a quantum singularity. After getting pulled back through time by a quantum singularity, Romulan decides to collapse all planets in the Federation into quantum singularities. Star Trek crew must stop him.
I didn't think the plot was bad when I was watching it. That is, until I really thought about it. He went through time, he can create quantum singularities. Why isn't he just going to the star and collapsing it into a black hole? Even more important, he's got plenty of time to do it. He can have revenge on the Federation later. Why aren't we seeing him taking care of the important stuff? Also, if his entire race is gone, wouldn't he want to see them again now, maybe to warn them? The plot of Kirk versus Spock was more interesting. I feel like the main plot got lost in this (not that it was good anyway).
Effects:
Visual effects were amazing. Loved the look of it. Neat idea of the hand phasers being more like energy guns than death lasers. Nero's ship was huge. I liked the feeling that elicited of feeling like this guy was really foreboding, but wasn't it just a mining ship? Why is it so big? Torpedoes looked cool too. I must say I liked the transporters too. That swirling energy was way better looking than anything in any of the series I'd seen. Really, there wasn't anything visually that I didn't like, it was all really well thought out.
Overall Impressions:
Overall, it's a good movie if you take it as self contained and don't try to think too hard about comparing it to the series. If you do, you might start wondering if all the events of all the series we've seen are now moot or not. Thank you for not including William Shatner in this movie.
There's probably more I can say, and I may edit this if I think of them, but that's all I have for now.
Before I get into more details about the movie, I'd like to point out what bothered me the most through many of the scenes in it. "Fire Everything" is not a strategy, it's a "I don't know what else to do, so I'll either a) Ram the other ship b) Set auto destruct or c) Fire all weapons and hope to hit something randomly. This might be a minor point, but I'm just used to the idea of actually building a strategy in battle. You know, pattern alpha 1 or something, not just shooting all your weapons. What if you found a weakness to a certain calibration of torpedo? Oops, wasted all of them already.
Characters:
Nero:
Bland bland bland. His motivations are bland. His appearance is bland. His character is bland. Sorry Eric Bana, but another movie I hate you in. I'm sorry, was he a Romulan? I couldn't tell if it was Romulan, Talaxian, Vulcan, or Harry Kim from Voyager. He's the main villain but takes a back seat to the Kirk and Spock show.
Kirk:
Most annoying character I've seen in a movie in a really long time. I realize that the character is built to be a bit of a ruffian, but his character in general bothered me. I can say this, I'm happy that the little kid version of him didn't last long. The kid's voice was like nails on a chalkboard. Adult version, you don't need every line to be a sarcastic mish-mosh. Maybe once in awhile you can shut up and let the other characters have a few lines. I get that he was supposed to balance Spock out, but it didn't change how I felt about the character in general. You didn't have to play up the cool angle so hard.
Spock:
Well played. It really felt like they were trying to keep with Spock's character (both old and young). They had him as a very moral character and I really believed the internal conflict between human emotion and Vulcan control. I think some of that character was lost in trying to constantly serve as a counterpoint to Kirk. Something weird I noticed about his character was how similar it was to Sylar from Heroes. I can't help but wonder if Zachary Quinto at some point decided "screw it, I'll just play them both as the same character."
George Kirk:
I'd love to call him the best character in the film. If we saw more of him, I would have called him such. He was the biggest part of the best scene of the film (the first one). I could feel the emotion as he set a collision course for the enemy vessel. You really get the sense that he's someone who wants a chance but is forced into the reality of what's going to happen to him. Could someone go back in time and give him a bigger role? Or better yet, just replace James T. Kirk's character with him? Or even just replace the actor with him?
"Bones" McCoy:
Quite easily the best and most believable character in the film. From the first words out of his mouth, I instantly knew who it was (I could have gone the whole movie without hearing the name, it didn't take any physical appearance to know who it was). He was very good as a support character, and I wish they'd given him a bigger role in general. I saw him as Spock's human conscience to Spock's father being the Vulcan conscience, but I don't think this was brought up as strongly as it could have been.
Chekov:
Where Bones was best character, Chekov easily wins worst character (I know I said Kirk is most annoying, but this one is just plain bad). He's supposed to be the brash young Russian ("Wait a second, I know how to do that!") who really knows what he's doing. Issues with his accent are so overplayed, that it's all I can think about during his scenes.
Scotty:
So much potential, so little done. I didn't have any real problems with him, but nothing seemed to stand out either. I just feel blah.
Uhura:
She's the smart slutty girl in the movie. I kind of remember that being her role in the original series as well. This was another one like Scotty, I think there was potential that wasn't fully explored. Pretty much her purpose in the movie is to be love interest for all male characters. Her second purpose is to take her shirt off in one scene to catch everyone's attention in the trailers. I'm sorry, that makes her an object, not a character. Someone can be both an object and a character in a movie, don't get me wrong. For instance, Marisa Tomei's role in the Wrestler was pretty much both. The difference being Tomei's character was actually developed. Zoe Saldana's was not.
Sulu:
Star Trek does not have sword fights. You're not a samurai just because you're Asian. Was he in the movie any other time besides the sword fight? I hadn't noticed. Am I supposed to care about his character at all?
There were probably more characters but nothing else significant I can remember.
Plot:
Here's the plot. Romulan's planet is accidentally destroyed by Supernova because Spock wasn't fast enough to collapse the Supernova into a quantum singularity. After getting pulled back through time by a quantum singularity, Romulan decides to collapse all planets in the Federation into quantum singularities. Star Trek crew must stop him.
I didn't think the plot was bad when I was watching it. That is, until I really thought about it. He went through time, he can create quantum singularities. Why isn't he just going to the star and collapsing it into a black hole? Even more important, he's got plenty of time to do it. He can have revenge on the Federation later. Why aren't we seeing him taking care of the important stuff? Also, if his entire race is gone, wouldn't he want to see them again now, maybe to warn them? The plot of Kirk versus Spock was more interesting. I feel like the main plot got lost in this (not that it was good anyway).
Effects:
Visual effects were amazing. Loved the look of it. Neat idea of the hand phasers being more like energy guns than death lasers. Nero's ship was huge. I liked the feeling that elicited of feeling like this guy was really foreboding, but wasn't it just a mining ship? Why is it so big? Torpedoes looked cool too. I must say I liked the transporters too. That swirling energy was way better looking than anything in any of the series I'd seen. Really, there wasn't anything visually that I didn't like, it was all really well thought out.
Overall Impressions:
Overall, it's a good movie if you take it as self contained and don't try to think too hard about comparing it to the series. If you do, you might start wondering if all the events of all the series we've seen are now moot or not. Thank you for not including William Shatner in this movie.
There's probably more I can say, and I may edit this if I think of them, but that's all I have for now.