Rebooting any franchise is difficult. The filmmakers have to decide how to deal with all that pesky history now that all the characters are played by new actors, each of whom wants to add their own bit to the character. And then you’ve got the writers, most of whom want to take the entire series in a new direction rather than be tied town by (in this case) the details built up by ten movies and four television series.
Director JJ Abrams took the only possible option: he took the Star Trek history and burned it.
It’s difficult to talk about how he did it without giving the movie away, but let’s just say that for once I’m not going to complain about time travel in a sci-fi movie. Let it suffice to say that it works, is reasonably scientifically plausible (well, not reall, but this is science FICTION, isn’t it?), and leaves open the possibility of new Star Trek movies completely unbeholden to the rest while still giving props to the other … universe … of Trek that we all know and love (or, in my case, both love and hate at the same time).
Yes, I’ve said I don’t like various aspects of Star Trek. But this movie seems to want to fix that. The Federation ships are not just mazes of clinically neat coridors that seem to lead nowhere. They are vibrant, active, physical and busy machines. Battles are not pitched standoffs, but crazy affairs where torpedoes and phasers rip through space in barrages verging on the insane. And for the first time (albeit briefly) we get to see some Federation citizens actually acting like humans rather than robots.
It’s a world far more engaging than anything that has appeared in Trek before, and for that I am grateful to Abrams. My most prominent irritation with Trek has always been its “clean-ness.” Everything is spotless. Medicine is done at a distance. It’s engineers never seem to get dirty. Its phasers leave no blood. Its cities seem to be without crime and all the other messy results of human nature. Abrams fixes that, and as a result finally makes a world I can actually believe in.
But the core of Trek remains. The ships, the characters, the people. And the story…
The story is simple and compelling. In the future, the Romulan homeworld is destroyed by a supernova, and Nero (a Romulan whose backstory is left, unfortunately, a little too vague) blames then-Ambassador Spock for its destruction. He comes back in time not to prevent it from happening in the future necessarily, but for revenge.
There are some problems here the movie doesn’t address, like why Nero’s mining ship (is that really what it is?) is so heavily armed. Then again, they are Romulans. But this doesn’t quite track. In any case, it’s a minor deficiency. Nero is played well enough by Eric Bana, though, as I said, the character is left little more than an outline. Perhaps that is best, because the story really centers around Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto).
Pine’s Kirk is a cocky, arrogant bastard who has the lucky habit of being right most of the time. We’re told he’s brilliant but dissolute (the implication is that the loss of his father, another departure from canon, is the primary cause of this), and needs direction. Spock is a young man (uh, Vulcan) who is troubled by the fact that he is half-human, a fact which makes him the target of bullying Vulcan youth and the mild bigotry of his Vulcan superiors.
The movie throws quite a few bones (ha, pun not originally intended, but I’ll take it) to fans, such as Kirk’s cheating his way through the Kobayashi Maru test, and a host of other small moments. Because it’s about to boldly go where few fans will want to go. Let’s just say that a beloved planet is about to be destroyed.
If the movie can be summed up in one line, it would be Kirk’s (I’ll paraphrase): if you know the future, the best tactic is to be unpredictable. We all know Trek’s future. We know what happens. And so Abrams has been very, very unpredictable. Characters do not act in ways untrue to their portrayal in other movies, but their world is changed. Their history is different, a fact which the movie comes right out and says.
Like Star Trek Generations, the point seems to be one of transition. The movie is all about the justificiation of its new direction, the change in history, the dramatic alterations it makes to the Star Trek universe. In that sense, it is the first reboot I’ve seen that is not only conscious of the fact that it is a reboot, but embraces it and makes it a part of the story. It manages to find a way of honoring the (now changed) future while promising to rewrite it.
Cool as that is, there is also an action packed movie and a decent story at the heart of it. There are no long expository sections explaining things. We’re dropped into the action from the first moment, and it doesn’t stop until the end.
That isn’t to say the movie doesn’t make some missteps. The relationship between Spock and Uhura being one of them. And the rather ridiculous notion of a bunch of Starfleet cadets taking over the Federation flagship… but I could nitpick any movie. These problems can’t stand in the way of the movie’s pacing, which gives you little time to sit back and think about what they’re doing. Abrams was too busy tearing up the Star Trek rulebook.
So, yes, as you can tell, I really liked the movie. It is definitely a nice change of pace from the past, and for the first time in a very, very long time, I can say I’m eagerly awaiting the next Star Trek movie.