Thursday May 07, 2009

Movie Review: Star Trek

Star Trek, that name has been with us for more than four decades now and it carries with it a heavy baggage, some of it bad or even painful, but most of it good and uplifting.

I won't bore you with a long, and detailed, history of the many forms this series eventually took. I'll only point out that, except for a couple of exceptions, the movies were far from the strongest point of the brand. Even the good ones ("Wrath of Kahn" and "First contact") were hardly perfect and any movie lover would snicker at the mere concept of comparing them to real cinematic achievements (I'm not even talking about "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather" here, but more in the line of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "Robocop"). Actually, the funny thing is that if you had asked me which Star Trek movie I liked the most I would probably have answered "Galaxy Quest". Which, I realize, is tantamount to blasphemous to any Star Trek fan.

All that preamble to say that when I learned they were doing a new Star Trek and that it was going to be a prequel, I shrugged and sighed. Let's face it, most prequels out there are flat out disasters. They're just a lazy way to exploit a franchise. So the idea of bringing back Kirk, Spock and the others, but younger, during a period anterior to the old series by a few years was certainly not appealing to me.

So it's fair to say that my expectations were rather low. That is until a few weeks ago when the trailer came out. I started to be intrigued. Then the early buzz from premieres and special shows was more than encouraging. All in all it managed to brink back a sparkle of anticipation in me.

So Yesterday I went to see Star Trek with two of my friends who are both familiar with, and could be considered fans  of, the Star Trek universe. We sat down, eager to be taken back to the final frontier.

We weren't disappointed. Actually, if you ask me, I think this is the best Star Trek movie of them all. Easily. That is good news for the fans, but it gets better: I do believe that even people who don't know anything about the series and previous movies will enjoy it too, they will miss many jokes and references but that should not deter from their enjoyment.

Kudos on the casting. The actors picked up to reprise the roles of the main parts are spot on. To the exception of Chris Pine who plays James T. Kirk, they all managed to bring the characters back to life. It's not that Chris Pine is doing a bad acting job. His performance is very good, it just didn't particularly remind me of William Shatner's Kirk. Not necessarly a bad thing by the way, as I never was very fond of Shatner's acting talents. It might be an issue for die hard trekkies however.

The script is rather good. Nothing earth shattering, but it works fairly well, specially considering that they manage at the same time to work around the issue of changing the canon (i.e. introducing events that were never mentioned before or even contradict previous installements of the franchise). The solution to that dilemna is hardly original, but at least it works.

This is an "origins" story. It tells how Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov met and ended up together on the bridge of the Enterprise. But the script manages to make this incidental to the main story arc, so the audience is never bogged down with exposition. Kudos to the screenwriters for that.

Good script: check. Good actors: check. What about the special effects? They're perfect, but nowadays this is hardly surprising. I want to commend the director and editor on the editing: for once they didn't feel like they had to edit this "MTV style" (you know, quick cuts every 3 second or so, so that you never know quite what's going on). The action sequences are well done, never overdrawn, and energetic.

If there is one aspect I felt disappointed with, it's the musical score. Obviously they made a point to stay clear of the "traditional" Star Trek music and themes. OK, we get it, this a "reboot",  but frankly, there is nothing memorable about the score. I know, I'm being picky, but to me there is nothing wrong with the old Star Trek music, and it would have worked here.

I'm guessing this will be a huge success and it's very, very likely we'll see more of this new "old" crew. And I, for one, am really looking forward to it and hope they'll manage to keep the same quality going forward.