The phrase “not your father’s Star Trek” has been used in the pre-release advertising for the rebooted Star Trek. We know there’s some truth to the line because it’s not written in Klingon below the English.Some of the more easily offended Trekkies — the fan fiction writers, the Enterprise fabricators, the costume wearers, those with Romulan alter-egos — will be frustrated with the hyper-stylized Star Wars-like zip that’s been added to the Star Trek franchise. For everyone else, though, the film is a new, or maybe a first, reason to pay attention to Star Trek and all its über-geekiness.
So yeah, the new Star Trek is good. Real good. Like Wrath of Khan good. Better than the franchise probably deserves. And it couldn’t have come at a better time: Battlestar Galactica has left a sad void in the cosmos, George Lucas is hibernating until his next inevitably bad Star Wars project, and science fiction in general is suffering on the edge of a lull. Sci-fi, like westerns, will always be a welcome genre in movie theaters, as will Star Trek if this is the tone of the series from now on.The film recasts USS Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk: gone is the syntax-deficient William Shatner, and in his place is Chris Pine, an actor who reportedly, and wisely, never watched a Shatner performance in fear he would unconsciously emulate it. Pine’s version of Captain Kirk is all cockiness and swagger, a guy’s guy — Matthew McConaughey in space. His story begins in Iowa, which is still farms and open fields even in the future. Blasting classic rock from the stereo (Beastie Boys, the Bach of the future), Kirk steals his uncle’s car and the seeds of rebellion are sown.
Years later he joins Starfleet to prove he has what it takes to be a hero like his father, who was a captain of a starship for 12 minutes but saved 800 lives including his infant son’s. In the space federation he meets sexy radio operator Uhura, medical officer “Bones” McCoy, novice helmsman Sulu, Russian navigator Chekov, engineer Scotty and a logical-thinking Vulcan named Spock (Zachary Quinto). Even moderate Trek fans will recognize some of these names, and here Kirk meets them all for the first time as he embarks on his journeys through space, the final frontier. We find out how Spock and Kirk first became friends (via the enemy route), how Bones got his nickname (a divorce left him with nothing but) and what Uhura's first name is (Nyota), which is as sought after in the Nerdiverse as Queen Amidala nip slips or maybe that Hello Kitty waffle iron. We also meet strange new alien races, including a giant snow spider and one of Kirk's sexual conquest whose skin glows a Ninja Turtle green.
The new actors all look and sound like the original characters — the exception, of course, is Pine, who redefines Kirk — without being outright parodies of the Star Trek legacy. McCoy, Kirk’s closest friend, is played zealously by Karl Urban, who nails all of DeForest Kelley’s little one liners, especially, “Damn it, man!” which he uses as a response to almost anything. Most of the characters’ dialogue include big nods to all the lines Trek has delivered to pop culture: Scotty says, “I’m givin’ it all she’s got, captain”; Spock uses the farewell, “Live long and prosper”; and crewmen are ordered to “set phasers to stun.” And overall, the film looks and sounds like a Star Trek movie.
But it’s still light years away from the original films, which were dull and fairly wooden in their delivery of action and intensity. In this reboot, the ships seem to have real speed, the photon torpedoes explode with cataclysmic effects and many of the developments require real human interaction, not just button mashing on holographic panels. When a sub-orbital drilling rig needs to be disabled Kirk, Sulu and a red-shirted guy skydive down to the platform. Our fathers’ Star Trek would have never left Enterprise’s bridge. Later we see planets implode, impressive new warp speed and teleportation effects, a futuristic San Francisco and an updated Enterprise — there is definitely no shortage of nifty stuff to look at.It’s all shown in a break-neck, Bourne-like editing style that nearly renders a bar fight and an opening space battle unwatchable without sea legs. When the editing pace does slow down, the vistas are beautiful and the action sparkles. In one battle sequence the sound effects fade out to lonely, yet heroic, music that is particularly moving considering the ramifications of the scene’s star, who races his ship into a barrage of enemy fire so dense that survival is impossible.
The plot, which I’m hesitant to share because it’s an afterthought to the characters and their original meetings, involves a Romulan tyrant named Nero (Eric Bana), a future Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and the creation of black holes using a ship that looks like a cholla cactus. Lost creator and Star Trek director J.J. Abrams, a rising talent worth keeping your eyes on, ports over some of his Lost mythology (time travel, literal and metaphysical determinism, quantum mechanics) and keeps it all in the Trek spirit.I had a blast with this film. It was fresh, thrilling and surprisingly invigorating, words that had all but abandoned the franchise until this reboot. If you were never a Star Trek fan now’s the time to attempt a new introduction.
