Star Trek Movie Review (2009)

In the age of the reboot, where Batman, Bond, Hulk, and even Knight Rider get creative implants to help wonderbra these saggy franchises, it was only a matter of time before the 40+ year-old Star Trek got the kick to the junk it needed. Either pulling the plug on some of its seemingly endless array of mediocre spin-off series (which I’ve never seen because I’ve never been a fan) or actually making a good, if not great movie that doesn’t feel like bloated episode. Easier said than done if the previous X Star Trek movies are any indication

Like the Bond films, I’ve always found myself watching the Star Trek movies at least once, despite not knowing or caring about the show or the arcane knowledge Trekkies can spew. But like most of you, I’ve always thought of the Star Trek movies as stupid...and not in a good way.

Out of the previous 10 films, only 3 are actually good. The consensus- of which I agree with since there really isn’t much of an alternative- being that Wrath of Kahn, First Contact, and Undiscovered Country are the only movies that don’t embarrass the franchise. I know there’s the ridiculous but fun one with whales...but it’s fucking WHALES!!!

Since the last Star Trek movies where the ghastly Insurrection and the anticlimactic Nemesis, I, as I’m sure many of you, wouldn’t bat a curved Vulcan eyelash if there were nary a Trek movie to be seen again. Instead of making yet another shitty movie along with the middling series...let the franchise Die Short and Degenerate

When writer/director/mogul JJ Abrams (who last directed the underrated and underperforming Mission Impossible III) announced he was doing yet another Star Trek, I’m sure I was not the only one who did a collective roll of the eyes and a whisper of “pull the plug”.

So of COURSE the reboot 7 years after the last movie fizzled and died turns out to be one of the (and only time will tell if it’s not THE) best movies of the summer. I know how much I liked this movie, so I can only imagine the blowbangs Trekkies are giving each other in the parking lots long after the credits roll.

We open on the USS Kelvin doing whatever it is Federation ships do. All of a sudden, a huge phantom-like menace of ship appears out of nowhere (the sequence actually looks like a deformed spiky-headed child being birthed- but in an FX-y way). The ship is bigger and has more girth and electronic toys than anything the Kelvin’s ever seen. Before long, the Kelvin is at its mercy and it’s up to Captain Robau (Faran Tahir- the non-Bridges bad guy from Iron Man) to go keep his crew from getting the shit kicked out of it any further.

Captain Robau leaves George Kirk in charge.

Sure, NOW he gets a promotion, right when pretty much everything’s fucked. On top of all that his wife’s pregnant...and it seems she’s about to give birth. What to do...

Because his wife’s the only beneficiary on his insurance, George decides to do the noble thing and sacrifice himself and the Kelvin, saving hundreds of lives in the process, and even managing to help name his infant son right before eating it. George Kirk has done more in 5 minutes than he ever did in his whole career in Starfleet. Too bad he never got to enjoy it because he was probably burning in flames, screaming for the safety of his wife and child, never ever knowing if he did the right thing.

George’s son’s name is Jim, by the way.

It turns out that despite the outer space carnage, our Romulan Bad Guy Nero (Eric Bana, in perpetual boo-whoo mode) didn’t find out what or who he was looking for, and plots a course for somewhere else before the opening title cards roll...

Forward some years later, and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is a 20-something perpetual underachiever. He’s smart, he’s cocky, he emotionally scarred because his father exploded in a space fight when he was born and all he’s had for male role models are the series of “uncles” his mom paraded in and out of the apartment they leased every 3 months before she died of a Klingon STD that human tongues can’t really pronounce but left green and blue legions all over her body that Kirk found oddly sexually appealing. His fondness for green and blue skin would serve him later, but what he could really use right now is a father figure...

He finds one in a bar fight after taking on a 4 Starfleet nerds (you know, the nameless ones that will die or be seen in the background of the bridge pushing multicolored but ultimately useless buttons...or welding something). Kirk got into the fight because he was pimpin’ his Kirkiness on a Foxxy Brown linguistics cadet singularly named Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and the other Nameless Wonders felt threatened and ganged up on him.

The Substitute Father: One Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood), in a monologue of psychological button pushing shortcuts, reminds Maverick of what a great man his father was and how he’s got to be the potential to be one of the best if he doesn’t blow it underachieving as a gigolo to the 50 & over Rich widow crowd and mourning Goose’s death.

I meant Kirk, not Maverick.

The Next morning Kirk rides his motorcycle over to Top Gun. I meant, Starfleet. He meets a nervous Nellie of a physician named Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban) and they spend the next three years being roomies.

Over the 3 years, Kirk shows potential, but he’s too much of a maverick, loose cannon, a cop on the edge, a danger to himself and others, which mean he’s perfect Captain material. He beats the no-win Kobayashi Maru (2 words that Trekkies have stroked to for the past 25 year) scenario while eating an apple. He also probably cheated.

Spock (Zachary Quinto), the Vulcan that wrote the Kobayashi Maru program is peeved, or at least as peeved as Vulcans can get. He accuses Kirk of cheatery and gets him in what looks like a Starfleet Academy court martial...

Things are just going to have to wait, because there appears to be a distress signal coming from the planet Vulcan. Everyone in Starfleet is sent to help, except for Kirk, who’s left stranded because he’s still under investigation.

Does this stop our future Captain? Not really...

With some help from McCoy, Kirk finds himself on Captain Pike’s ship, Starfleet’s new baby, the Enterprise. We’re also introduced to some familiar characters with spankin’ new bodies: 17-year old Chekov (Terminator Salvation and Charlie Bartlett’s Anton Yelchin) and Sulu (John “Harold” Cho).

The distress signal isn’t real, Kirk maintains. It’s an attack. An attack exactly like the one that occurred the fateful night when he was born and his dad got killed. He has the scar on his head to forever remind him.

Pike concurs.

Sure enough, the Enterprise is in battle with the same huge ship that was in the beginning of the movie, except it doesn’t look like it’s changed in 20 years. Our troubled Romulan Nero is back, and his Flux-Capacitor equipped spaceship is intent on destroying planets. But why is Nero so mopey that he has to travel back and forth in time to prove a point? And his obsession with Spock is bordering on stalkerish. Why so glum? Why so serious?

What works with Star Trek-

1) Rachel Nichols plays Scarlett in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie. She plays the requisite Green Bitch that Kirk can’t seem to get enough of in Star Trek. To complete her rainbow of roles, Nichols is considering Grimace in the upcoming Ronald McDonald biopic Under the Arches: The Hamburglar Murders.

2) I’ve never seen an episode of Heroes, so I have no other exposure to Zachary Quinto besides this movie, but darn if he isn’t a dead ringer for Spock, down to the Vulcan neck pinch and hilted delivery (“Fascinating”). It’s probably seconds after you’re introduced to the new Spock that you just accept Quinto as the character and all your comparisons to Leonard Nimoy dissipate.

3) Sticky Floor Moment #1- the Exxxotica in Miami may have to red-eye some extra jizz moppers and spunk buckets to theaters all over the country because Trekkies will beat themselves off skinless after seeing Kirk meet with “Prime” in the ice cave on...Hoth. (“I have and always will be...” You can finish the rest).

4) Simon Pegg as Scotty steals every scene he’s in along with his little alien friend. The audience I was with laughed pretty much through all his lines.

5) The closing Voice-over is a perfect way to close this great piece of entertainment. I have no idea how many audience members were Trekkies, but a great many of them were clapping.

6) Though the focus is (rightly) on Spock and Kirk, everyone in the Cast has a “character” moment.

7) Sticky Floor moment #2- A meeting of two VERY kindred souls near the end of the movie (“Good Luck”).

What doesn’t work-

1) A sequence involving Kirk’s puffy hands is forced and nowhere near as funny as it’s trying to be.

2) Winona Ryder has maybe 6 or 7 words in the movie as Spock’s earth mother. It’s always good to see her onscreen as she still is one of my favorite actresses, but it’s kinda sad to see her groping for parts beneath an actress of her caliber because she’s an a felon and an insurance risk. If she asked, I would have LOANED her the money for the fucking scarf.

3) Tyler Perry?????

4) It’s unusual that JJ Abrams cast a charismatic actor like Eric Bana as the villain...and then turned that villain into a bitch traveling across space and time because he’s so ass-hurt. It’s admirable to try to have a bad guy with character, but don’t make him so pitiful that you almost WANT him to destroy planets, simply to keep him from starting a shitty Emo band. Next movie, have a villain we hate.

5) The inevitable sequels that suck.

If you look at the other movies coming out this summer, does it realistically appear to you that there’ll be a better non-Pixar movie than Star Trek? I hope no, but it feels yes. That said, for better or worse, Star Trek the movie has resurrected Star Trek the franchise. You know that feeling you might have had walking out of Wolverine last week? Star Trek will leave you feeling the opposite of that.

Best movie of May, definitely...unless you’re REALLY expecting the PG-13 (????) Terminator will deliver. Of June, probably. Of July, perhaps (the only possibilities being the 6th Harry Potter and Public Enemies).

If you’re a Star Trek fan, you’ve already had this date circled ever since it got moved from last Christmas, but it’s to the non-fans (like me) who’ll find themselves surprised at what a great time they’ll have.