Terran77
Captain Tightpants
That's right, Star Trek 2009 sucked. It was an absolutely terrible movie, and everyone who thinks that it was great is actually wrong. How so, you ask? How can a movie that made millions be terrible? Trickery and manipulation, that's how. Put your feet up, grab a snack, and I'll explain how millions of people have been sold a bill of goods by a con artist.
First, I should make it quite clear that I don't think any Star Trek is an exceptionally brilliant masterpiece of writing. Many of the Trek series and movies were fully injected with ham and technobabble, not to mention overacting and sometimes pure camp. So this isn't any kind of an attempt to say that the original Treks were perfect by any means. But the few things Trek was known for, its positive outlook for humanity, the wonder of space exploration, and fun stories that were often uplifting morality plays, those elements are utterly absent in this movie.
JJ Abrams has become a master in the arts of pulling the wool over peoples' eyes, simultaneously making them think that he's a brilliant artist. Before you scoff too loudly, let's do a little mini-review of his prior works. Abrams gave us Cloverfield, Armageddon, and of course Lost. Mix in some Roberto Orci, known for gems like Transformers and the Island, and you get Trek '09. Each and every one of these offerings were visually confusing, low on plot, and mainly a showcase of effects. Lost was a triumph for Abrams, particularly in learning how best to trick and misdirect an audience; because at the end of the day, did he actually succeed with an ending that was as satisfying or clever as people expected it to be? No, because the "wow" for his Lost audience was largely accomplished by weeks of spinning camera work right at the moment when things got interesting, speeding through dialogue that seemed critical, and rapid transitions through things you could barely make out. Lost didn't end on a good note because ultimately it just confused the audience from week to week. It wasn't actually good writing or direction, it was just confusing. Honestly, though, that was his goal. When a viewer becomes confused by dialogue or visuals, their puzzled brain concludes that what they're seeing must be complex, dramatic and interesting. After all, very little on TV catches you off-guard with complexity.
Raggedly fast, Trek '09 has a very dark tone but retains that flashy camerawork of Lost. It also has extremely little in terms of plot, but was flooded with rapid, confusing action. Think of the sheer number of distractions: the incredibly attractive and young cast, the regularly shaky camera work, lens flares galore, nearly everything blowing up, multiple near-death escapes, entire planets exploding, and an extremely violent villain with minimal backstory. It's constant, unrelenting threat delivered at a pace so extreme that no one really has the opportunity to think: not the viewer, not the characters, and apparently not even the writers. It's all just super-charged emotional reaction to multiple dangerous events, one right after the other. And in that way, exactly like Stargate: Universe, Trek '09 is really just a clumsy "dark-n-gritty" transformation of a well-known family-oriented sci-fi franchise (*cough* Battlestar Galactica *cough*).
Even the effects were dark and confusing. Because there was no screen time devoted to making the villain deep or convincing, beyond the yelling, anger, and stabbing someone with a spear, they had to make his ship look menacing. For some reason, this "mining" ship was loaded with spikes. Generally, spikes say "danger" but in this case it just looks like an overly large and amorphous blob with spikes. Explosions rock the ship, and battles involve people running or being ejected through the air from smoke and shaky cameras with lots of lens flare. There's a giant monster, which would take away from the main villain if there were anything to take away from him. It has a confusing head-mouth thing that alternates between looking like a flower and a deformed fish. Just because it's confusing and runs fast doesn't make it cool. And despite everything else, you'd think with a multi-million dollar budget you'd get to see some really cool new sets and interesting scenery. But practically everything is obscured by constant lens flare and extreme closeups.
The plot, what there is of it, is mainly structured around the desire to wipe most of Trek canon away so they can have a clean slate for future movies or TV offerings. Romulus, in the future, is destroyed when its star goes supernova. Spock and the Federation were trying to help but didn't quite make it. The Romulan mining ship captain Nero hears of this, learns that his wife was killed along with most of his race, and yet he decides that it must have been entirely the fault of Spock and the Federation. We get an instant evil villain a la George Lucas or the old Spiderman villains on the Electric Company. They killed his wife, so he wants genocide! Anyway, Nero somehow finds himself a black hole and goes back in time to plot his revenge. He even tells captain Pike that he's destroying the Federation to save Romulus. Nero makes good on his threat, and Vulcan implodes in a display of impressive effects. Spock, a Vulcan known for emotional control, goes from being angry with Kirk to marooning him on Delta Vega. There's a monster chase, Kirk meets future Spock for a bit of expository dialogue, and Kirk is convinced that he must now take command from young Spock and yet become best friends with him. Nevermind that Nero could be going after Earth, Kirk and Spock need to be pals. Kirk attempts to regain buddy status by telling young Spock he never loved his mother, triggering a rage attack... whoops! Then Kirk takes command despite having been under arrest earlier and exiled from the ship. Young Spock then incomprehensibly decides to follow Kirk (what? why?) and go after Nero rather than following orders to rejoin the fleet. They catch Nero, avoid getting sucked into a black hole "lightning storm" and gloat (yes, gloat) over Nero's death.
As for the acting, it wasn't too horrible although there was very little chemistry between the actors. Chris Pine's Kirk was portrayed as a sort of snotty college fraternity jackass, and yet somehow becomes captain for this crew. Quinto's Spock was filled with anger, lust or rage most of the time, making it the worst portrayal of Spock I've ever seen. Saldana's Uhura was not bad, except for her incomprehensible relationship with Spock. Urban's McCoy made no sense, until I realized that he was using every single McCoy catchphrase possible. Pegg's Scotty did not come off as Scotty, but rather as some kind of failed technician. Yelchin's accent for Chekov was overdone to the point of being distracting, and he was far too young.
Where were the core themes and values of Star Trek in this movie? Kirk is portrayed as a bad boy, a cheat, and a simple action man ("GET THEM!"). There's no trace of the clever strategist Kirk created by Roddenberry in any of this, but we are still meant to approve of this Kirk. Where is the complexity of Spock, his hidden emotional depth, intelligence and logic? Not here, but we are apparently meant to value his emotional outbursts and murderous rage against Kirk, and then accept Spock's bipolar switch to passive acceptance of him as captain. This is the antithesis of Spock. The other characters similarly have no character development, mainly because there's no time devoted for that.
It also effectively wiped out all of the Trek canon except for Enterprise (ENT), which many fans considered the weakest of the Treks. And it did this solely for a commercial reason, not to tell a good, complex story with humanity and depth. Not only is Vulcan destroyed, the entirety of the original series (TOS), the Next Generation (TNG), Voyager (VOY), and Deep Space Nine (DS9) are wiped clean. How then does one explain that VOY was essential to the 1990s development of computer technology? What of "first contact" and the Borg, given that the TNG crew was not there to stop them? What of Kirk saving the whales to prevent Earth's destruction? Oh you might say, "but all of that is still in Trek's primary timeline and this is just an alternative version!" But honestly, there's so much time travel intricately wired into Trek canon, even pre-ENT canon, that nothing makes much sense now.
So at the end of the day, what we have in Trek '09 is a plot driven completely by commercial interests, horrible cinematography, overdone effects, and an incredible amount of misdirection and distraction. It's full of action, to be sure. And it made a lot of money. But are those things derived from the spirit of Trek, what it's known for and loved for originally? Somehow, I don't think Roddenberry would be very happy with this "product" full of drek.
First, I should make it quite clear that I don't think any Star Trek is an exceptionally brilliant masterpiece of writing. Many of the Trek series and movies were fully injected with ham and technobabble, not to mention overacting and sometimes pure camp. So this isn't any kind of an attempt to say that the original Treks were perfect by any means. But the few things Trek was known for, its positive outlook for humanity, the wonder of space exploration, and fun stories that were often uplifting morality plays, those elements are utterly absent in this movie.
JJ Abrams has become a master in the arts of pulling the wool over peoples' eyes, simultaneously making them think that he's a brilliant artist. Before you scoff too loudly, let's do a little mini-review of his prior works. Abrams gave us Cloverfield, Armageddon, and of course Lost. Mix in some Roberto Orci, known for gems like Transformers and the Island, and you get Trek '09. Each and every one of these offerings were visually confusing, low on plot, and mainly a showcase of effects. Lost was a triumph for Abrams, particularly in learning how best to trick and misdirect an audience; because at the end of the day, did he actually succeed with an ending that was as satisfying or clever as people expected it to be? No, because the "wow" for his Lost audience was largely accomplished by weeks of spinning camera work right at the moment when things got interesting, speeding through dialogue that seemed critical, and rapid transitions through things you could barely make out. Lost didn't end on a good note because ultimately it just confused the audience from week to week. It wasn't actually good writing or direction, it was just confusing. Honestly, though, that was his goal. When a viewer becomes confused by dialogue or visuals, their puzzled brain concludes that what they're seeing must be complex, dramatic and interesting. After all, very little on TV catches you off-guard with complexity.
Raggedly fast, Trek '09 has a very dark tone but retains that flashy camerawork of Lost. It also has extremely little in terms of plot, but was flooded with rapid, confusing action. Think of the sheer number of distractions: the incredibly attractive and young cast, the regularly shaky camera work, lens flares galore, nearly everything blowing up, multiple near-death escapes, entire planets exploding, and an extremely violent villain with minimal backstory. It's constant, unrelenting threat delivered at a pace so extreme that no one really has the opportunity to think: not the viewer, not the characters, and apparently not even the writers. It's all just super-charged emotional reaction to multiple dangerous events, one right after the other. And in that way, exactly like Stargate: Universe, Trek '09 is really just a clumsy "dark-n-gritty" transformation of a well-known family-oriented sci-fi franchise (*cough* Battlestar Galactica *cough*).
Even the effects were dark and confusing. Because there was no screen time devoted to making the villain deep or convincing, beyond the yelling, anger, and stabbing someone with a spear, they had to make his ship look menacing. For some reason, this "mining" ship was loaded with spikes. Generally, spikes say "danger" but in this case it just looks like an overly large and amorphous blob with spikes. Explosions rock the ship, and battles involve people running or being ejected through the air from smoke and shaky cameras with lots of lens flare. There's a giant monster, which would take away from the main villain if there were anything to take away from him. It has a confusing head-mouth thing that alternates between looking like a flower and a deformed fish. Just because it's confusing and runs fast doesn't make it cool. And despite everything else, you'd think with a multi-million dollar budget you'd get to see some really cool new sets and interesting scenery. But practically everything is obscured by constant lens flare and extreme closeups.
The plot, what there is of it, is mainly structured around the desire to wipe most of Trek canon away so they can have a clean slate for future movies or TV offerings. Romulus, in the future, is destroyed when its star goes supernova. Spock and the Federation were trying to help but didn't quite make it. The Romulan mining ship captain Nero hears of this, learns that his wife was killed along with most of his race, and yet he decides that it must have been entirely the fault of Spock and the Federation. We get an instant evil villain a la George Lucas or the old Spiderman villains on the Electric Company. They killed his wife, so he wants genocide! Anyway, Nero somehow finds himself a black hole and goes back in time to plot his revenge. He even tells captain Pike that he's destroying the Federation to save Romulus. Nero makes good on his threat, and Vulcan implodes in a display of impressive effects. Spock, a Vulcan known for emotional control, goes from being angry with Kirk to marooning him on Delta Vega. There's a monster chase, Kirk meets future Spock for a bit of expository dialogue, and Kirk is convinced that he must now take command from young Spock and yet become best friends with him. Nevermind that Nero could be going after Earth, Kirk and Spock need to be pals. Kirk attempts to regain buddy status by telling young Spock he never loved his mother, triggering a rage attack... whoops! Then Kirk takes command despite having been under arrest earlier and exiled from the ship. Young Spock then incomprehensibly decides to follow Kirk (what? why?) and go after Nero rather than following orders to rejoin the fleet. They catch Nero, avoid getting sucked into a black hole "lightning storm" and gloat (yes, gloat) over Nero's death.
As for the acting, it wasn't too horrible although there was very little chemistry between the actors. Chris Pine's Kirk was portrayed as a sort of snotty college fraternity jackass, and yet somehow becomes captain for this crew. Quinto's Spock was filled with anger, lust or rage most of the time, making it the worst portrayal of Spock I've ever seen. Saldana's Uhura was not bad, except for her incomprehensible relationship with Spock. Urban's McCoy made no sense, until I realized that he was using every single McCoy catchphrase possible. Pegg's Scotty did not come off as Scotty, but rather as some kind of failed technician. Yelchin's accent for Chekov was overdone to the point of being distracting, and he was far too young.
Where were the core themes and values of Star Trek in this movie? Kirk is portrayed as a bad boy, a cheat, and a simple action man ("GET THEM!"). There's no trace of the clever strategist Kirk created by Roddenberry in any of this, but we are still meant to approve of this Kirk. Where is the complexity of Spock, his hidden emotional depth, intelligence and logic? Not here, but we are apparently meant to value his emotional outbursts and murderous rage against Kirk, and then accept Spock's bipolar switch to passive acceptance of him as captain. This is the antithesis of Spock. The other characters similarly have no character development, mainly because there's no time devoted for that.
It also effectively wiped out all of the Trek canon except for Enterprise (ENT), which many fans considered the weakest of the Treks. And it did this solely for a commercial reason, not to tell a good, complex story with humanity and depth. Not only is Vulcan destroyed, the entirety of the original series (TOS), the Next Generation (TNG), Voyager (VOY), and Deep Space Nine (DS9) are wiped clean. How then does one explain that VOY was essential to the 1990s development of computer technology? What of "first contact" and the Borg, given that the TNG crew was not there to stop them? What of Kirk saving the whales to prevent Earth's destruction? Oh you might say, "but all of that is still in Trek's primary timeline and this is just an alternative version!" But honestly, there's so much time travel intricately wired into Trek canon, even pre-ENT canon, that nothing makes much sense now.
So at the end of the day, what we have in Trek '09 is a plot driven completely by commercial interests, horrible cinematography, overdone effects, and an incredible amount of misdirection and distraction. It's full of action, to be sure. And it made a lot of money. But are those things derived from the spirit of Trek, what it's known for and loved for originally? Somehow, I don't think Roddenberry would be very happy with this "product" full of drek.
before hell breaks lose
