With this summer looking crammed with blockbusters, it will be interesting to see who will sink or swim. One film I have my doubts about is Star Trek, a prequel to the original TV series. Even with JJ Abrams, creator of Lost and Cloverfield, directing the project, the brand of Star Trek just feels too stale to really make a comeback. The lack of success of the last series, Enterprise, was a testament to the lack of interest in the franchise.
However, UK film mag Empire managed to nab an early viewing and have posted a review on their website. And the reaction is very positive. On the pros it seems that JJ Abrams has completely revitalised the Star Trek world. Rather than stick to the old pace of debate and contemplation, with the occasional battle or deadline, Abrams has created an assault on the eyeball, full of action, thrills, and even laughs.
On the negative, however, in losing this contemplative nature the film may indeed alienate all of the fans of the original series. According to the review, the breakneck speed of the film leaves little for character (a strange choice, considering the plot follows the origins of the original characters), and apparently the actor playing Kirk (Karl Urban Chris Pine!) isn’t particularly strong.
The world will find out how the film fares next month, but right now it seems to be a question of whether new fans of a franchise they know little of will outnumber the hard-core trekkies who will see this film as sacrilege.
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Anonymous said
April 10 2009 @ 4:46 pm
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Kenna McHugh said
April 10 2009 @ 6:38 pm
J.J. Abrams talent of working with ensemble casts will prove out with Star Trek. Please note Chris Pine plays Kirk. Urban plays McCoy, a fine job too.
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DeMoy said
April 11 2009 @ 12:46 pm
Well, to add something not spam here for a change – let me post my own more interesting thoughts about the new film taken from another one of my blogs. And to pick up on the ’sacrilege’ word, I’d say it is just that. Here’s why.
They simply made this more contemporary and stylish looking, action-packed ‘SF’ film giving it the plain title of ‘Star Trek’, and therefore obliterated the other ten movies’ existence outright purely to attract newbies, bluntly saying, ‘you don’t even need to watch any of the other series or films to like it’, or rather not. Because it’s an entity of it’s own it therefore has no space in the real Star Trek universe, and is in fact a kick in the face of the entire Star Trek franchise and true fanbase, since re/awoken interest in watching the old reruns has no direct cultural meanings to this much younger audience in any form. All they say is ‘awesome’ to anything new and shiny anyway without any concept or reference to the superior mothership to compare it.
Could it ‘revive’ interest in Star Trek per se? No real need, since the ‘real’ fans of either shows never left, but are still being ignored by the studios as the new film proves now even openly, who don’t want another hyped up prequel. So all we need to do is wait for the ‘real’ fans’ (like me) to watch it down under next and then some, and be honest in their more mature re/views, who cannot simply be won over that easily by a shiny new cast and youthful crew.
Who now however will no doubt go and buy and watch all of these old shows again or for the first time ever, love or loath them, again, become fans or not, and the new ones can finally see how the famous franchise actually had evolved, their parents or even grandparents have talked about, and will notice how out/dated TOS really is now as a prototype in contrast to the later shows simply for the times it was created in with TOS more than dead now. Which is a simple fact and inevitable to occur to all of them at one point and no insult is intended. I’m a fan with a critical eye.
But instead of letting the old Star Trek space pioneer rest, they created this hypermodern SF prequel flick (with another stereotype Khan/Shinzon style villain) looking posher and brighter than even TNG or Voyager, deliberately made to appeal to the general audience ONLY and NOT true Star Trek fans at all, which in fact makes TOS look even more cardboard and dated now just to make some money and sell more action figures to the ‘new generation’.
All they however will see are these ‘sexy’ young actors they can better relate to suddenly and NOT the great Star Trek legacy in any form or shape it supposedly is based on utterly ‘alien’ to them. Bad thing? Sign of the currently more shallow times? Greed to feed only the dumb youth-oriented celebrity fashionistas again? You bet.
So much for the hailed Star Trek reboot from Mr Abrams, who would exaggerate his preference for any show but Star Trek with statements like, “I’m not a Star Trek fan” (!) and “this movie is not (!) made for Star Trek fans”, or, ‘‘Star Trek’ is pretty low on my ‘to-do’ list’. Thanks a lot J J for being another Paramount style ignoramus to a t, and that’s why they chose him anyway. I for one won’t even regard his hyped up product as a ‘Star Trek’ film at all, made by someone who was born just about when Kirk appeared on the screen and keeps recycling his own fave actors, only trying to cash in on the now apparently ‘mainstream’ directed franchise big time he doesn’t even ‘really’ like.
Just like Baird was a total non-Star Trekkie mistake choice for Nemesis with ‘fan’ writer Logan thinking it’s fun to kill off the main character, which exactly failed for Data’s shock demise the real fans simply rejected outright and the film flopped big time, I wonder why, and NOT because they were tired of TNG or Trek per se. I consider Nemesis on any other TNG film way superior to ‘XI’ in the serious Star Trek storytelling and better acting departments and XI is simply cashing in on that ‘mega villain’ concept again, since TOS films nowadays look rather dated too. But at least have the ‘original’ crew.
One could say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t bother. But why should I swim with the currently ‘amazed’ audience having seen it in Texas – that doesn’t work in regards to the serious diehard Star Trek fans, freedom of speech and see it for yourself first and all. But why slam the new film, when it’s a good piece of SF cinema per se and many people worked on it hard, equipped with fair talents resulting in a refined end product as such with good FX, bar the crappy accents and rehashed plot? Well, then simply don’t call it ‘Star Trek’ at all or use the popular characters.
I compare it to superior Nemesis again they all hated for all sorts of ridiculous reasons, because the devastated fans couldn’t face the fact that it was Data’s death that had messed it all up finally and blamed anything and anyone possible, other than Paramount wanting to kill off Star Trek in general unlike the fans still hoping for something TNG and to fix Nemesis, before they suddenly changed their minds and gave us drab Enterprise no one asked for.
So I definitely reject this new film for the very same reason, and to round it all up with thoughts from an old Star Trekkie who actually saw it (as a quality pirate weeks ago, yes I did) all I could think of was: over-chewed pink bubblegum cinema, nothing for the serious (old) Star Trek fan, no competition at all. TOS universe or not. It’s for the impressionable (mainly female) youngsters only who will squeal their heads off when they see a newly hailed group of ‘celebrities’ on screen. As usual.
In fact, (spoilers!!!) there is a brand-new comic series out, which is actually a prequel to XI, called St: Countdown, and however starts with the end of Nemesis – confused? Hang on – it first resurrects us good Data through B-4’s, which of course was heavily hinted on at the end of Nemesis, plus they made him (finally!) captain of the Enterprise since he’s Starfleet’s most capable strategist and superior officer (of course!) after successfully imprinting his memories into his simpler bro B-4, and Picard is fed up finally with getting ‘spaced out’. Or rather becomes ambassador to Vulcan – don’t ask why, but it’s a very good idea.
The comic is set eight years after the last film with Spock official Federation ambassador to the Romulans, of course, Geordi has retired to develop his own ships, of course, and Worf is a General in the Klingon Empire, of course. All very nice in fact. Love it and the 4-part comic looks really well made coming up with a clever new ‘old’ plotline. Not that I’m a comic fan at all – except with that one. Of course.
Now, with that (obviously needed extra-character-to-become-villain) ‘Nero’ helping Spock to prevent some star going supernova not to destroy the galaxy, again, of course, (and it’s got Remans again too, of course) everything however goes pear-shaped at one point and the man goes bananas à la Shinzon, of course – trying to kill our Federation folks again now outfitted with Borg technology beginning a rampage against his ‘enemies’ destroying and assimilating Federation ships left right and centre, of course.
With the supernova expanding, the nutter goes about near killing Worf, damaging the Enterprise in the process, and when Spock successfully eliminates the threat by some clever means, Nero seems to attack and the black hole flings him and Spock back in time, leaving Picard and Data’s crew witnessing Spock’s ‘sacrifice’. The ‘second’ one, why not – ONLY to end up in that very past where young Kirk & Co now have to fight that very Nero nutter, with Spock ‘young again’ and the film picks up from there.
THAT is not a bad idea at all. I love it in fact, but only in that ‘order’.
WHAT I hate about it is the fact, that they never made that comic into the actual prologue of XI, or epilogue/sequel to Nemesis, as only went straight into the past with the new film, (like they had done it with Generations in reverse). THAT would have been sooo much cooler. For one, it would have given us back Data, which is all we wanted ‘old’ or not, and the chance for a sequel to Nemesis with Capt Data ready for a new mission, tada! It’s very positive acclaim in fact helped to spurn some interest in the new film, but most of the targeted audience never read or saw this very important comic part, and all we can hope for now is, that they actually will make that ‘future bit’ into a film to re/connect it to XI in reverse – and for TNG to go from there. THEN I’d said, yeah, bring on XI and then some, no matter it’s still intended more for Star Trek novices, who then however would be more directly become introduced into the entire Star Trek universe.
But now it’s just sitting there as this, ‘not a Star Trek film’ entity in space and we still ain’t got Data back. Only in an unknown comic which was even officially requested by Paramount. Ergo, they DO have renewed interest in TNG, or Star Trek per se, but just copped out again on the real issues of returning us Data first and then go from there. Into the future! – NOT past with these baby faced newbies and fast paced hightech action outdoing the actual characters again.
But what do I know, I’m just an old diehard Trek fan who’s been there from the glorious start who grew up with TOS, which was great and visionary fun ‘then’, they now suddenly want to exploit and even predate TOS with an even younger Kirk crew. Which isn’t going back to the ‘roots’ at all, but back in time, again. As usual.
Half the original cast passed on in real life making it very difficult to do a complete future set TOS, they simply shelved the few old guards left for these uninteresting newcomers literally replacing the popular characters. Bar Takei or Nimoy, fine. But give me the good old camp and pompous skirt-hunting Kirk any day, (or much classier Picard and Janeway in fact) but not that green stuff making him look like an indecisive space hero, no matter he’s obviously still younger and on a sharp learning curve. But I resent this entire backstory turning Kirk into this glorified hero for one, when Kirk was very shallow as character in contrast to the others, and the new film is very low on deeper character developments the same, purely aimed at the just as shallow ‘MySpace’ generation. (Not to insult MySpacers per se, I’m one of them.)
Who however never even saw any Star Trek film or episodes and have no clues about these famous characters and/or their (cultural) importance and very extensive following, brought up on brain-numbing violent video games and silly big-eyed Anime, and not any hardcore Star Trek fans at all who actually grew up with any of these great series.
Which gave us colourful multi-racial and strong women characters for one, cool bad guys, lovely Tribbles and ‘good’ androids like Data for a change, who was superior to the lot. (Or even B-4. And I simply assume ‘evil’ Lore was ‘malfunctioning’ as per popular fanon poor daddy couldn’t fix. My idea too. Why always keep to the bad guy scenario.)
So yeah, the shiny-new bubblegum film is definitely NOT for me at all, either, no matter how I really tried to stay objective and watched it set to neutral mode. But still, I failed and I will reject it to the day I die. Unless they come up with the actual prequel to the thing and re/connect it to Nemesis to open the gates for more TNG, my fave.
Till then, live long and prosper! Oh yeah, and a very Happy Easter to ALL Star Trek fans of all species everywhere, old and new! And in case you ‘really’ need to retweet me on that, follow me on Twitter! Now go and watch some cool old ‘real’ Star Trek stuff!
Kathryn Janeway said
April 11 2009 @ 2:13 pm
For the record, in this movie Kirk was played by Chris Pine, not Karl Urban. Urban plays McCoy and apparently he knocks it out of the ballpark. It would be nice if you could correct that mistake in your article because it reflects badly on Karl Urban for no reason.
eoin ofaolain said
April 12 2009 @ 7:57 am
Thanks for the correction, Kenna.
And Demoy, thank you for your long but very interesting argument regarding the fans’ feelings about this reboot.