Star Trek: A Review

Beam Me Up, JJ
A review of the new Star Trek movie

         I grew up in eastern Iowa, not far from a small town that will be the future birthplace of James Tiberius Kirk.  I know where he will be born because the town celebrates his future birthday every year.  There's even a museum and statue of their future favorite son.  The name of the town, well, village, is Riverside, Iowa.

         After its launch in 1967, Star Trek became a unique and powerful phenomena of popular culture.  While the networks at first wouldn't listen to the fans and canceled the original series, something in Gene Roddenberry's vision resonated in the popular culture.  It arrived in a world on the brink of nuclear destruction, divided by race, religion, ideology, disease, and poverty.  In the face of these challenges, Star Trek offered a vision of the future full of hope and confidence.  Somehow humankind would survive and build a new and better society, one which surmounted our present-day problems.  That new world honored diversity, and replaced divisions with a federation of intelligent beings all working together for the common good.  In the future, technology and a strong moral compass assured that all beings could find a path in which they might live long and prosper.

         This vision of hope became the DNA that bound together millions of fans world-wide.  Without it, forty consecutive years on TV in six different series and ten feature films would never have happened.  Never mind that the plots were often hackneyed, and the characters flat.  Never mind wisecracks about William Shatner and stop-action acting.  This series was never about art or literature.  It was about hope.

         But, let's face it, something about the franchise had lost its panache in recent years.  We all loved Scott Bakula, but even his considerable talents couldn't rescue the last incarnation on television.  To be sure, the writing was better, the special effects dazzled, and the acting was solid.  But something had changed.  Maybe it was us.  Maybe hope no longer mattered.  Maybe the Star Trek vision no longer held meaning.

         The new Star Trek splashed onto the big screen this last weekend and breathed new life into the series .  The director, J.J. Abrams, brings just the right combination of drama, character, humor and, yes, hope to the screen.  This movie promises to re-launch the series for a new generation of viewers, in the language of today's problems and today's challenges.  At the same time it respects the old and the enormous fan base that's out there.

         In the latest Star Trek film, when James T. Kirk departs for the Starfleet Academy, he does so from the Riverside Space Port, in a nod to that little village in Iowa.  That was when I knew that the writers and producers of the new Star Trek movie cared about the myriad fans of the old series and would be true, in their own way, to Gene Roddenbery's vision.  Never mind that the scenes from Iowa looked like Southern California.  Where in Iowa is that enormous gorge that the youthful Kirk drives his Corvette into?  Well, nowhere.  But it was fun to watch.

         The casting director deserves special kudos for selecting actors who are credible as youthful versions of their iconic forebears.  Chris Pine looks and acts like we'd think a young Kirk would, all bravado and obsessed with the young ladies.  Karl Urban is perfect as the disheveled and laconic McCoy, and Simon Pegg steals every scene he's in as Scotty, delivering zinging one-liners with aplomb.  Zoe Saldana is credible as Uhura, and the rest of the bridge contribute in their own way.  But the star of this film is Zachary Quinto as Spock.  His performance is perfectly nuanced.  He channels the cool and logical Spock that Leonard Nimoy created.  But there's the twitch of his lips, or the cock of an eyebrow, or an ironic twist to his tone, that reveals new and unexpected depths.  The script shows him as an outsider growing up, the X-Man of this story.  As a youth, bullies taunt and beat him for being a half-breed and he yearns to become a perfect Vulcan.  When at last he succeeds and gains admission to the Vulcan Science Academy, he turns it down because they insult his dual heritage.  Later, it's his passion that leads him astray, but it's Spock's discipline and integrity that bring Kirk to the command chair.  We see his conflict in his face and in his tone at the penultimate moment.  His story is the one that resonates with today's outcasts, just as Nimoy's did for an earlier generation, and Quinto plays it to perfection.

         No Trek movie is complete without its villain, and Eric Bana adds a new page to the saga.  Just as Ricardo Montalban created a conflicted and believable villain for an older generation, Bana portrays the bad guy in this film with passion and clarity.  Like all interesting villains, he's not pure evil.  It's the searing loss of family and friends that drives him to the deeds he commits.  We understand him, even if we cheer when his ship collapses into oblivion.

         The sets and CGI images are faithful to the old versions of Trek, but they have the gritty reality of Star Wars, too.  Even the brand-spanking-new Enterprise on her maiden voyage doesn't have the plastic perfection of the 1967 craft.

         The new Star Trek movie re-launches the series.  The old vision is there, along with the creative fires to keep it going through more sequels.  There must be joy in Riverside, tonight, as their future favorite son makes hearts throb and continues the mission to boldly go where no one has gone before, or at least not gone recently.  Star Trek and its vision of the future are back.  That vision never really left us, for it was always in our hearts.

         Don't count out the tenacity -- or audacity -- of hope.

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Cross-posted from my blog at
http://maxgriffin.blogspot.com/