Bad Reboots: The Final Frontier.
Jun. 10th, 2009 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logomancerI went to see Star Trek today with a friend. Full review below the cut, but the tl;dr, spoiler-free version: This is not Star Trek. It's a mediocre space action film with better special effects pretending to be Star Trek. Those of you who like the movie may not like me by the time I'm done with this.
They've changed a lot, and most of it stinks. The Vulcans are one example. In the original, they were unemotional arrogant bastards who nevertheless had flawless logic. In the new version, they are this close to being emo, and they are much quicker to mind-meld unceremoniously with anyone. Even Old Spock seems to be affected by this, speaking less like Spock and more like Gandalf -- an absentminded, lovable old man with the wisdom of his years. Old Spock in this did not feel right at all.
As for New Spock, I cannot respect him as a character. He's a barely-restrained mad dog who gets into fights much easier than his previous iteration, going to far as to beat Kirk and almost strangle him to death at the mention of his mother. He maroons Kirk on Delta Vega without a second thought, again not really respectable. In the climax, he waves off Kirk from offering to save Nero's life! A far cry from the thoughtful, intelligent, logical being of his predecessor.
Kirk is also a shadow of his former self, having become the Bad Boy of Iowa (wow, what an accomplishment) in the rebooted series after the death of his father. After a bar fight between him and some Starfleet cadets being broken up by Captain Pike, Pike persuades Kirk to join Starfleet. In this movie, he acts less like the hero and more like the overprivileged frat boy. And yes, he seduces every woman he comes across (or makes a good effort to, anyway). Can't say I'm a fan of New Kirk very much.
Not a fan of Uhura or Sulu, either. Neither of them seems particularly strong as a character in the reboot. Contrast this with, say, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov, who did make the crossover quite favorably. Sarek was also a bit weak, IMO.
They made the same mistake with the Romulans that they made with them in N*m*s*s; instead of making them the cunning, crafty, manipulative adversaries as in the original, they shaved their heads and made them look like they would take your kid, kill him by sucking his blood dry, and then feast on his necrotizing flesh while they kicked a puppy for good measure. OK, they're supposed to be the bad guys, but they're supposed to be the sneaky bad guys, not a bunch of Strangers from Dark City who use a green motif instead of blue.
Speaking of the sets, they are relatively uninspiring; the bridge of the Enterprise looks like an Apple Store with the lights turned up, and Engineering looks like a cross between the boiler of a coal plant and the set of Double Dare. Why do you need an emergency release door the size of a person on a water pipe, anyway?
As for the plot, it stinks worst of all. The rebooted movie employs three tropes that have been done to death -- time travel, the particle-of-the-week, and, highest of crimes in my book, trying to emulate Wrath of Khan. We've done two of these before. It was called N*m*s*s, it sucked donkey balls, and the only reason J. J. Abrams is getting away with pulling the same trick now is because of the whole reboot aspect, I suspect. I know Wrath of Khan is the best of the Star Trek movies and that Paramount wants to repeat that success, but they keep failing badly, and it's starting to show. The writing was also really bad, with Spock getting into a simplistic debate with Kirk over the Kobayashi Maru, the villain not being well defined at all, the rather contrived circumstances in which Kirk and crew get together, and so on.
I suppose my biggest problem with the rebooted movie is this: The original world had a story to tell, a message to send, and an optimistic vision of the future to show us. In the midst of all that, it speculated about what we might find out there. We explored inside ourselves and out. The new world, the world that Paramount will undoubtedly be promoting from now on, has a much simpler message: "Humans rock! Let's go shoot things!" The intellect, the philosophy, the speculation and wonder and exploration...all of that is gone, traded in for CG explosions and scantily clad Orion women. The reboot has turned a cornerstone of American sci-fi into a cookie-cutter space shoot-'em-up, and if this is what will be the shape of things to come, I must say something that I have avoided saying for years: Star Trek is dead.
With all of that finally said, I'm gonna watch some of the original series.
They've changed a lot, and most of it stinks. The Vulcans are one example. In the original, they were unemotional arrogant bastards who nevertheless had flawless logic. In the new version, they are this close to being emo, and they are much quicker to mind-meld unceremoniously with anyone. Even Old Spock seems to be affected by this, speaking less like Spock and more like Gandalf -- an absentminded, lovable old man with the wisdom of his years. Old Spock in this did not feel right at all.
As for New Spock, I cannot respect him as a character. He's a barely-restrained mad dog who gets into fights much easier than his previous iteration, going to far as to beat Kirk and almost strangle him to death at the mention of his mother. He maroons Kirk on Delta Vega without a second thought, again not really respectable. In the climax, he waves off Kirk from offering to save Nero's life! A far cry from the thoughtful, intelligent, logical being of his predecessor.
Kirk is also a shadow of his former self, having become the Bad Boy of Iowa (wow, what an accomplishment) in the rebooted series after the death of his father. After a bar fight between him and some Starfleet cadets being broken up by Captain Pike, Pike persuades Kirk to join Starfleet. In this movie, he acts less like the hero and more like the overprivileged frat boy. And yes, he seduces every woman he comes across (or makes a good effort to, anyway). Can't say I'm a fan of New Kirk very much.
Not a fan of Uhura or Sulu, either. Neither of them seems particularly strong as a character in the reboot. Contrast this with, say, McCoy, Scotty, and Chekov, who did make the crossover quite favorably. Sarek was also a bit weak, IMO.
They made the same mistake with the Romulans that they made with them in N*m*s*s; instead of making them the cunning, crafty, manipulative adversaries as in the original, they shaved their heads and made them look like they would take your kid, kill him by sucking his blood dry, and then feast on his necrotizing flesh while they kicked a puppy for good measure. OK, they're supposed to be the bad guys, but they're supposed to be the sneaky bad guys, not a bunch of Strangers from Dark City who use a green motif instead of blue.
Speaking of the sets, they are relatively uninspiring; the bridge of the Enterprise looks like an Apple Store with the lights turned up, and Engineering looks like a cross between the boiler of a coal plant and the set of Double Dare. Why do you need an emergency release door the size of a person on a water pipe, anyway?
As for the plot, it stinks worst of all. The rebooted movie employs three tropes that have been done to death -- time travel, the particle-of-the-week, and, highest of crimes in my book, trying to emulate Wrath of Khan. We've done two of these before. It was called N*m*s*s, it sucked donkey balls, and the only reason J. J. Abrams is getting away with pulling the same trick now is because of the whole reboot aspect, I suspect. I know Wrath of Khan is the best of the Star Trek movies and that Paramount wants to repeat that success, but they keep failing badly, and it's starting to show. The writing was also really bad, with Spock getting into a simplistic debate with Kirk over the Kobayashi Maru, the villain not being well defined at all, the rather contrived circumstances in which Kirk and crew get together, and so on.
I suppose my biggest problem with the rebooted movie is this: The original world had a story to tell, a message to send, and an optimistic vision of the future to show us. In the midst of all that, it speculated about what we might find out there. We explored inside ourselves and out. The new world, the world that Paramount will undoubtedly be promoting from now on, has a much simpler message: "Humans rock! Let's go shoot things!" The intellect, the philosophy, the speculation and wonder and exploration...all of that is gone, traded in for CG explosions and scantily clad Orion women. The reboot has turned a cornerstone of American sci-fi into a cookie-cutter space shoot-'em-up, and if this is what will be the shape of things to come, I must say something that I have avoided saying for years: Star Trek is dead.
With all of that finally said, I'm gonna watch some of the original series.
