Dave’s Star Trek Review (No Spoilers)

First, let me start my review with a bit of full-disclosure:  I’m not a Star Trek fan.  Never have been — Star Wars was always a vastly more interesting world and story for me.  The characters were more interesting to me, and so was the action.  Thus, I do not come to this film with two things many die-hard Trek fans would ask of me:  1) extensive knowledge of the Trek universe, 2) a deep love of Gene Roddenberry’s original universe.  I can offer no commentary whatsoever about the quality of J.J. Abrams’s faithfulness to the original creation.  I’ve seen many of the movies, though not all.  I’ve seen some of the original television series, but I never did watch any of the more recent TV series from the 1990s and 2000s.

For now, I’ll just be clear up front:  the movie grabs hold of you in the first five minutes, throws you in a seat, and sends you off on a fun and funny journey for the next two hours.  If there is a cinematic equivalent of a theme park thrillride, Star Trek is it.  And, it works magnificently.

Reboots are a tricky thing.  They either have to do some weird and quirky plot maneuvers to graft the new story onto the old, or they simply ignore the older one.  Either way can be good, but filmmakers often take the wrong route, or at the very least they make a stupid detour.  Batman Begins restarts the Batman story from ground zero as if none of the other films exist — which works because fans were so disgusted with the 1990s franchise after Tim Burton quit the series that most simply gave up on it.  Two phrases set Batman fans off like no other:  “nipple suit” and “Joel Schumacher.”  Superman Returns met with mixed reviews because the movie relied too heavily on a film franchise that died its own painful death more than twenty years beforehand.  And I won’t even go into what George Lucas has done to Star Wars — if only there were a way for fans to legally divorce Lucas from the franchise…

But, Star Trek accomplishes this with a deft set of choices.  Abrams is smart enough to realize what he should keep from the established franchise and what he can change, I think.  While the characters are still tremendously endearing to Trek fans, most Trekkies I know have hated the last two or three films, and think the last TV series or two were nothing more than shallow cash-ins.  Thus, the new film’s take on the characters retains much of their personality while injecting a ton of humor.  That cheeky humor pays homage to the established Trek universe and helps to subtly (and quickly) redesign the characters for the inevitable sequels.  Aside from the Enterprise, much of the trodden (some would say “trampled”) Star Trek universe is largely reimagined.

While it’s difficult to argue there is a ton of character development in Star Trek, J.J. Abrams seems supremely aware that he can rely on some well established characterizations.  For Trek fans, they’ll see the characters they love.  Karl Urban seems to channel Bones McCoy, and once Simon Pegg enters the story as Scotty, he steals every scene that he’s in.  Others will notice character types they have become accustomed to in big, heroic action flicks — enough to make them care, anyway.  And most summer audiences don’t go to a movie like this for long character studies, anyway.  Kirk and Spock only get cursory treatments concerning their reasons for joining the Starfleet Academy.  And Spock gets the lion’s share of attention.  In one way I want to argue that this is a narrative flaw, and it certainly would be for most movies.  Pretty much anything by Michael Bay would be a good example.  But, Abrams does something far smarter than a director like Bay could ever think of.  For Kirk, Abrams sets up an emotional ploy in the first five minutes and dispenses the rest into the audience’s lap to supply on their own.  By tugging on the audience’s heart strings, he can allow them to supply the emotional tug that would lead a character like James T. Kirk into intergalactic service.  I imagine it’s a trick that Abrams pulled from his experience on a TV series like Alias.  Audiences strapped into the ride are willing to pull all kinds of mental gymnastics to make sense out of something if they enjoy the thrills.  Somehow, what would be a cheap trick in most other films becomes a nifty device here.

The other choice is relying on a fairly cliche plot device — time travel — to accomplish the reboot.  I won’t go into particulars so as to save the experience.  But, the choice manages to provide solid reason for the reboot of the franchise without doing so in hokey and confusing ways.  Abrams breathes a bit of new life into the concept by tackling it from an angle that many audience members won’t expect — and the filmmakers leave the consequences of the actions here intact.

The movie is action intense.  The audience does not have very long to rest between set-pieces.  But, I didn’t want to.  I don’t know how many Trek fans will feel about this.  One of the proud distinctions Trek has always drawn between itself and Star Wars was the willingness to sometimes privilege character and humanity over explosions and fighting.  After all, Starfleet is a peacekeeping force.  Yet, to survive in the blitz of current summer popcorn, Abrams realized that Star Trek had to amp up its action quotient, but seems to reject the humanity-versus-action debate as a false dichotomy.  Why not have both a Michael Bay-style thrillride and Stephen Spielberg-level character development?  Yet, he never falls into the trap of either.  Bay would simply make the whole thing about big explosions that come together to make a thoroughly illogical ending.  Spielberg would sacrifice humanity in the name of a happy ending.  But Abrams avoids both traps.

Retained, quite proudly, from the original series is the undying optimism that characterized the adventures of the Enterprise and her crew.  Venturing forth “to seek out new life” always struck me as a thoroughly enthusiastic vision of the universe and humankind’s place in it.  The sense of duty and responsibility that Kirk engendered in both crew and audience is one thing that made the original series and characters so time-worn and compelling for many fans.  Of all things, J.J. Abrams was smartest in retaining this and trusting that this sort of optimism could find an audience, even in a painful moment in world history.

So, while I cannot claim the mantle of Trekkie, and I will still privilege Empire Strikes Back as a far better space battle bonanza, Star Trek has hooked me into the Abrams’s vision of Gene Roddenberry’s world.  I will joyfully go watch the sequel that is sure to come.

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