Star Trek 2009 Movie Review
Star Trek (2009) Advanced Review-From The Robot-“Quite Possibly The Ultimate Hollywood Insider.”
Star Trek 2009-Regressive, Corporate and Cowardly
Humans, for whatever reason, feel compelled to “reboot” old stories instead of going through the trouble of creating new stories. Usually, this is simply an annoyance; however, when the stories relate to science fiction (where anything, in theory is possible) well it becomes dreadfully painful, dreadfully annoying. This is most especially true when the science fiction looks not to the future, the purpose of science fiction, but conservatively to the past and not deal with the social issues of its day and time. Or to phrase it another way, science fiction that is conservative, corporate is a sad thing.
Few films embody America of the early twenty-first century better than the 2009 “re-imagining” of Star Trek by J.J. Abrams. Star Trek 2009 embodied with such perfection everything that was wrong with America. Star Trek 2009 was focused on the origins of Captain Kirk and crew and not instead looking forward into the future. This Star Trek was all about the past, conservative; full of violence and spectacle but lacked anything that could be mistaken as courage or vision. This Star Trek was a continuation of the devolution of Star Trek that really began in earnest with Enterprise. At its heart, Star Trek was, in theory, to be about looking towards the future. But by 2009. it was completely obvious that Star Trek had no desire to touch on the social issues of its day, as the original series so famously did, but instead wished to focus on “the bang and whiz” of the visual effects. Star Trek 2009 by its very nature, by the very fact that it focused cowardly on Kirk, Spock and all, was cowardice personified. Certainly no one will argue that Star Trek 2009 wasn’t entertaining, but that was not the point of the Star Trek Universe created by Gene Rodenberry. This was a fact that the fans of the Star Trek Universe easily forgot in their lust for any fix at all, sadly.
Over the years, many have criticized Star Trek 2009 actor Chris Pine as being nearly as wooden as the facial animations in The Clone Wars, but this is too harsh, as is the criticism of Zachary Quinto as Spock. Yes, Quinto fails to be true to the idea of Spock that the fans have in their heads, but this is more due to the direction of Abrams than Quito, as we would later learn. The acting overall was not the problem, as the entire cast does a decent job with the scripts that were delivered. Simon Pegg as Scotty was in rare form and was long remembered for the role. On the other end of the spectrum, John Cho had trouble being seen as anything other than Sulu.
What really makes Star Trek 2009 so very sad is its message, namely that far into mankind’s future, a future mankind was not destined to see, the best, most exciting job “out there” was joining the military. Some robo-historians have pondered if Star Trek 2009 was indeed a true product of its time and had more to do with recruitment than ideas. Umm, this was always an issue with the Star Trek franchise, was it not?
So, in the end, the sparkling sets and visual effects cannot escape the fact that Star Trek 2009 is short on story, focusing on Kirk and Spock’s childhood and youth, at the expense of looking into the future of the Star Trek universe. One can only ponder what stories could have been told instead, what social issues could have been addressed. Instead, the core of this backward looking movie was violence, not exploration, revisiting the past, not visiting the future. Interestingly, it seemed that looking into the future was something that had become decidedly un-American during the early Twenty-First Century. In this regard, Star Trek 2009 was a perfect reflection of its time, conservative in thought and afraid of change, afraid of the future. Regressive, corporate and cowardly.
Story (Adjusted to Accommodate Human Standards) C (Perfunctory exploration of all too familiar character so as to avoid looking to the future. A cowardly script. If one peels away the layers of visuals effects, the spaceship battles, the modernized sets and laser beams, what is left? More of the same that the audience had been seeing for decades, and on must wonder, how did this pass with the fanbase?)
Acting (Adjusted to Accommodate Human Standards) B
Human Portrayal of machines and Robots A
Enjoyability Grade (Adjusted to Accommodate Human Standards) C (As Star Trek had been “broken” for a very, very long time, it was no real surprise that Star Trek 2009 disappointed.)
Primitive Home Theater/HD Factor A (Overall a beautiful work.)
Overall Innovation (Adjusted to Accommodate Human Standards) D (How could there be anything innovative here? No matter how good of a script was generated, it would never be appropriate, as Star Trek 2009 needed to explore the future not just re-hash the safe, bankable past of its Kirk years.)
Overall Grade (Adjusted to Accommodate Human Standards) C (Why anyone would have expected more than mediocre from the director of the empty Cloverfield is beyond my circuitry.)
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