Star Trek: the next review

I saw this a couple weeks ago with some friends and wanted to weigh in since I’m pretty sure there is at least one person who will read this (other than me) and I like to be there for them. I care.

As action films go I think it was successful in doing what it set out to do (i.e. revamp a popular franchise in order to considerably expand its fan base). The film is fun and fast paced, never dragging and not overloaded with countless exchanges of unintelligible diatribe (you know like the last half of that sentence). I do believe that the gigantic collection of knowledge which surrounds the Trek universe—essentially that any question one might need answered in order to properly develop one’s characters has already been answered—benefits the production in that they were then able to concentrate on picking and choosing which aspects of the story they wanted to explore.

If there’s already a fully formed world, you don’t have to spend so much time creating it.

The other nice part about starting at the beginning of the story is that it allows you to retell it and shape the characters in the process. In the case of the film, it allows the actors to avoid having to try and mimic the original series (at least not TOO closely). Certainly there’s a little “wink wink, nudge nudge” going on between the director and the audience when a character speaks their famous lines, “damn it man I’m a doctor, not a physicist!” But by in large the actors were allowed to create their own versions of each character and it works to the film’s advantage (this is of course excluding Zachary Quinto’s Spock, who is more or less a spot on rendition of the classic Leonard Nemoy).

I cannot speak for serious fans of the original series (who I believe would probably have more than a few notes for Abrams; a self professed anti-fan of the series). But as someone who is quite familiar with the Trek universe, I enjoyed it. Like the Batman films, this work because the series is being rebuilt from the ground up as an entirely new entity. Because it’s not trying to improve, merely examine from another angle. That seems to be the key to revamping a series without angering its fan base.

Unless it is Keira Knightley’s Pride and Prejudice.

That revamp, had no hope...just a lot of buying power.

However, it's not all rosy in the new land of Trek because JJ Abrams (and I do enjoy his work) has made the worst rookie mistake (or the dumbest directorial decision) in history. LENS FLARES!!!! The set is so shiny (specifically that of the bridge) that whenever the actors move around the additional light catches the camera and flares in the lens. Now it's been minimized as much as possible I'm sure but it is the most annoying thing about the film. By the end (read climactic scenes in which all the hardcore resolution is meant to be happening) I was busy counting lens flares!

Just try and ignore them: I dare you.

Case in point: are we in vegas or on a starship? And where did Spock's ear go?

-Siobhan

P.S. Just because I love all things random and the fact that Star Trek fans will pretty much buy anything: http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/05/star-trek-knit.html

I need you to read this article...

...because the number of contradicting metaphors and competing adjective in her article makes me absolutely crazy. CRAZY. I'm going to put aside the obvious error in the title, though it does a good job of warning potential readers that they ought not to expect too much of the author (which is really not what a writer is after).

The article is full of wonderful little anger-inducing tidbits which managed to simultaneously entertain and annoy. "Hell," writes Constance Draganes in the piece in question, "I don't even know how many babes Captain Kirk has bedded since he first cast his ship's big, dilithium-powered anchors ashore on planets throughout the galaxy." Really? REALLY?! How exactly-- pretell-- does one first cast anchors ashore on many planets? Correct me if I'm wrong here but I'm pretty sure that you can only do something for the first time once. Later still she claims that, "these flyboys whip across the screen like a bunch of over-excited pit bulls." Hmmm, I didn't know that pitbulls could fly; that must be why they've outlawed them in Ontario.

"Guzzling popcorn" and "fumbling definitively" Constance also manages to come up with so many ideas in one article that each sentence brings up a new idea. In fact, I do believe that the one rule she did follow is that each thought needs its own paragraph:

People who write articles without proofreading them make me angry.

I have a few friends who claim to be grammar Nazis; I hope they don't read this blog.

I will have to tell my friends about this article as they will likely also be annoyed by it.

Are you annoyed yet?

Okay I'll stop ranting but if you would please just read it
"Best Trek Ever: Sky's the limit for new 'Star Trek'."