Star Trek 2009
May. 10th, 2009 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWhich I just saw, though in Bamberg not in Munich, as the Aged Parents kidnapped me, but thus is life. Unspoilery verdict: JJ Abrams pulled it off, the interviews are forgiven, the homages (both to various Trek incarnations and to Abrams' own oeuvre - Rambaldi is really to blame for everything, I tell you!) are just geeky fun to the nth degree without stopping a lay audience from understanding the film.
First of all, I am rather relieved that various Trek episodes - Yesterday's Enterprise comes to mind, aka The One Where Tasha Yar Is Alive - established that the ST universe is one where multiple timelines and the resulting universes co-exist in a "both/and" kind of way, instead of "either/or". Otherwise the events of this film would mean that 40 years of Star Trek lore would now be, if not non-existent, then somewhat different from the way we saw it. But it's canon that the STverse is a multiverse, so my fannish problem is solved, and I can admire Abrams' way of getting around the quintessential prequel problem: to wit, we already know who lives and who dies, and what will happen to them and the world(s) they live in. By letting his villain travel back to alter history, Abrams removed that certainty from the audience. On the other hand, he gives them one character from the timeline they're familiar with - Old Spock (or Spock Prime as he's called in the credits, which amused me to no end), which I found very comforting. And the references to old continuity abound if you can spot them, as I said. It surprised me that the one which had me in absolute stitches was to Enterprise (certainly the stepchild of all the ST shows) - the gag with Scotty and "Admiral's Archer's beagle".
Much as I enjoyed the new incarnations of the Enterprise crew - about whom more in a moment - I think what really settled the film as ST for me were Sarek and the Sarek-Spock scenes on the one hand, and Christopher Pike and the Pike-Kirk scenes on the other. Abrams shows are (in)famous for their daddy issues and that trailer with James Dean!Kirk had me worried he'd go over the top there, but no, on the contrary. Ben Cross was wonderful as Sarek (Mark Lenard would have been proud), and in a film which manages to blow up Romulus in one timeline and Vulcan in the other, ST fans fond of Vulcans (not just of Spock, I mean) can absolutely revel in his scenes (and be relieved Spock managed to save him). Bruce Greenwood (whom I remember as Truman Capote's long-suffering boyfriend in Capote and as Kennedy in Thirteen Days) was similarly great as Pike (zomg an Abrams oeuvre with not one but two likeable father/mentor figures to the main characters, and that's not counting Kirk's actual father who in his brief on screen life was noble and sympathetic as well), and it made me more than happy that the film utterly avoided one of my pet annoyances about TOS, wherein every Starfleet officer of equal or higher rank than Kirk seemed to be shown as less competent, if not insane - I'm exaggarating for effect, but only a little. Pike, by contrast, was quietly competent, smart, brave and basically the Hornblower in space type Roddenberry imagined in the pilot. Him surviving but still ending up in a wheelchair made me somewhat misty-eyed and is a lovely nod to both the original ST pilot and its reworking into The Menagerie.
(The women, of course, fared less well: Number One didn't appear in the film - though I can understand why they did that, as the Kirk-Spock plot demanded it - and Amanda got killed. Which on the one hand upset me - like virtually every ST fan, I love Amanda Grayson - but on the other did it in a way it was supposed to; as the destruction of Vulcan itself, it underlined that really no one was safe and protected by our familiar timeline.)
Now, about Our Heroes. Young Kirk's rebel without a cause phase with the car, endlessly shown in the trailer of this movie, still made me roll my eyes somewhat, especially given the Nokia product placement, but Still Young But Now Adult Kirk won me over, and I've never been a big Kirk fan (he has his moments, and scenes where it's impossible not to empathize; but his reply in ST IV to Gillian Taylor's "so you're from outer space?" question - "No, actually I'm from Iowa" - is the only time I was actually charmed; whereas when watching TOS I invariably love McCoy and Spock). It helped that the rebel-without-a-cause phase was kept brief and far more scenes were devoted to showing Kirk had intelligence to go with his derring-do; also, between McCoy's method of getting Kirk on board the Enterprise and being-chased-by-ever-larger-monsters-on-Hoth, the film wasn't afraid of showing of humor at his expense (but without achieving this via caricature). I didn't have a Sylar problem when watching Zachary Quinto (which I had been somewhat worried about); and in his one scene with Nimoy, I could believe they were two versions of the same character. I already raved about his scenes with his father; the one with the academy takes on something always imagined in fanfic ever since it got referenced on screen (i.e. Spock choosing Starfleet) and came across as fannish wish fulfillment in the best way. Nicely done gradually shifting attitude towards Kirk, too. The one element I didn't completely buy was the (second) kiss with Uhura, but then I never bought Sylar/any female character on Heroes either, chemistry wise, so maybe I just don't see it with Quinto. Which isn't to day I reject the idea of Spock/Uhura. Their first scene together when she demands her place on the Enterprise was awesome, and I completely believed her reaction to him throughout, plus as Spock Prime (hah!) some scenes early in TOS with Uhura where she teases him and flirts with him a little, and Nichols and Nimoy had nice chemistry, I can buy the pairing as plausible. (As I said, it's just the Quinto-kissing-someone-on-screen moment of disbelief problem.)
Uhura, incidentally, was great throughout, and of course I loved that her first name was the one from the tie-ins (and the one Nichelle Nichols picked); just as I loved the mention of McCoy's divorce in his introductionary scene. (The divorce backstory is referenced in the novels and was supposed to factor in one episode on screen, which also was supposed to feature Bones' daughter from that marriage, but the episode was so much rewritten that the McCoy backstory vanished without a trace.) Would like some fanfic about her and her Orion room mate (I don't mean slash, I mean friendship), please.
Loved John Cho as Sulu, and you could tell who in the audience had seen The Naked Time by the reaction when Sulu, in reply to Kirk's question about what his martial arts training had entailed, said "fencing". And there, I thought, the nod towards the old episode ended, but lo and behold, they actually gave him a fencing scene. *hearts*
Chekov and Scotty were adorable, but with Chekov the looks were somewhat distracting, because could they have found someone who looks less like Walter Koenig as a young man (or WK in general)? Still, the actor visibly enjoyed himself immensly, and so I even waved aside that Chekov wasn't supposed to be on the Enterprise at age 17, because hey, changed timeline. (I will point out, however, that this makes Pavel the alt-ST's Wesley Crusher.*g*)
I couldn't quite see why Nero and all his crew ran around with shaved heads and tattood, and at first wondered whether this was so the scriptwriters wouldn't have deal with a continuity headache - i.e. the fact that at this point, no one in the Federation was supposed to know that Romulans and Vulcans looked pretty much identical - but as we were dealing with a different timeline anyway, that can't have been the reason. So I'm still puzzled. Also, Nero's story doesn't bear much thinking about - what exactly did he do during those 25 years he waited for Original Spock to catch up with him? Would that time have been far better spent warning everyone on Romulus? Still, Eric Bana does a good obsessed villain in the tradition of Ricardo Montalban. And most importantly:
OMG THE MULLER SPHERE RAMBALDI IS EVERYWHERE!
Seriously. As soon as we saw that red ball which was the Romulan Weapon Of Doom that started out as Spock's Invention Of Planetsaving, I knew who really invented it. And I defy any viewer of Alias to tell me otherwise.
(There must be a crossover in which Arvin Sloane shows up in the STverse of that timeline. Hey, he's immortal as of the end of the show, and he's the experts in Red Balls Of Doom if ever there was one.)
Oh, and the composer, another Abrams' stallwart like the scriptwriters, smugled in at least one Lost motif, I think. Bless.
In conclusion: my list of favourite Treks (DS9) and captains (Picard) remains unchanged, but I wholeheartedly embrace this version as well and hope there will be more.
First of all, I am rather relieved that various Trek episodes - Yesterday's Enterprise comes to mind, aka The One Where Tasha Yar Is Alive - established that the ST universe is one where multiple timelines and the resulting universes co-exist in a "both/and" kind of way, instead of "either/or". Otherwise the events of this film would mean that 40 years of Star Trek lore would now be, if not non-existent, then somewhat different from the way we saw it. But it's canon that the STverse is a multiverse, so my fannish problem is solved, and I can admire Abrams' way of getting around the quintessential prequel problem: to wit, we already know who lives and who dies, and what will happen to them and the world(s) they live in. By letting his villain travel back to alter history, Abrams removed that certainty from the audience. On the other hand, he gives them one character from the timeline they're familiar with - Old Spock (or Spock Prime as he's called in the credits, which amused me to no end), which I found very comforting. And the references to old continuity abound if you can spot them, as I said. It surprised me that the one which had me in absolute stitches was to Enterprise (certainly the stepchild of all the ST shows) - the gag with Scotty and "Admiral's Archer's beagle".
Much as I enjoyed the new incarnations of the Enterprise crew - about whom more in a moment - I think what really settled the film as ST for me were Sarek and the Sarek-Spock scenes on the one hand, and Christopher Pike and the Pike-Kirk scenes on the other. Abrams shows are (in)famous for their daddy issues and that trailer with James Dean!Kirk had me worried he'd go over the top there, but no, on the contrary. Ben Cross was wonderful as Sarek (Mark Lenard would have been proud), and in a film which manages to blow up Romulus in one timeline and Vulcan in the other, ST fans fond of Vulcans (not just of Spock, I mean) can absolutely revel in his scenes (and be relieved Spock managed to save him). Bruce Greenwood (whom I remember as Truman Capote's long-suffering boyfriend in Capote and as Kennedy in Thirteen Days) was similarly great as Pike (zomg an Abrams oeuvre with not one but two likeable father/mentor figures to the main characters, and that's not counting Kirk's actual father who in his brief on screen life was noble and sympathetic as well), and it made me more than happy that the film utterly avoided one of my pet annoyances about TOS, wherein every Starfleet officer of equal or higher rank than Kirk seemed to be shown as less competent, if not insane - I'm exaggarating for effect, but only a little. Pike, by contrast, was quietly competent, smart, brave and basically the Hornblower in space type Roddenberry imagined in the pilot. Him surviving but still ending up in a wheelchair made me somewhat misty-eyed and is a lovely nod to both the original ST pilot and its reworking into The Menagerie.
(The women, of course, fared less well: Number One didn't appear in the film - though I can understand why they did that, as the Kirk-Spock plot demanded it - and Amanda got killed. Which on the one hand upset me - like virtually every ST fan, I love Amanda Grayson - but on the other did it in a way it was supposed to; as the destruction of Vulcan itself, it underlined that really no one was safe and protected by our familiar timeline.)
Now, about Our Heroes. Young Kirk's rebel without a cause phase with the car, endlessly shown in the trailer of this movie, still made me roll my eyes somewhat, especially given the Nokia product placement, but Still Young But Now Adult Kirk won me over, and I've never been a big Kirk fan (he has his moments, and scenes where it's impossible not to empathize; but his reply in ST IV to Gillian Taylor's "so you're from outer space?" question - "No, actually I'm from Iowa" - is the only time I was actually charmed; whereas when watching TOS I invariably love McCoy and Spock). It helped that the rebel-without-a-cause phase was kept brief and far more scenes were devoted to showing Kirk had intelligence to go with his derring-do; also, between McCoy's method of getting Kirk on board the Enterprise and being-chased-by-ever-larger-monsters-on-Hoth, the film wasn't afraid of showing of humor at his expense (but without achieving this via caricature). I didn't have a Sylar problem when watching Zachary Quinto (which I had been somewhat worried about); and in his one scene with Nimoy, I could believe they were two versions of the same character. I already raved about his scenes with his father; the one with the academy takes on something always imagined in fanfic ever since it got referenced on screen (i.e. Spock choosing Starfleet) and came across as fannish wish fulfillment in the best way. Nicely done gradually shifting attitude towards Kirk, too. The one element I didn't completely buy was the (second) kiss with Uhura, but then I never bought Sylar/any female character on Heroes either, chemistry wise, so maybe I just don't see it with Quinto. Which isn't to day I reject the idea of Spock/Uhura. Their first scene together when she demands her place on the Enterprise was awesome, and I completely believed her reaction to him throughout, plus as Spock Prime (hah!) some scenes early in TOS with Uhura where she teases him and flirts with him a little, and Nichols and Nimoy had nice chemistry, I can buy the pairing as plausible. (As I said, it's just the Quinto-kissing-someone-on-screen moment of disbelief problem.)
Uhura, incidentally, was great throughout, and of course I loved that her first name was the one from the tie-ins (and the one Nichelle Nichols picked); just as I loved the mention of McCoy's divorce in his introductionary scene. (The divorce backstory is referenced in the novels and was supposed to factor in one episode on screen, which also was supposed to feature Bones' daughter from that marriage, but the episode was so much rewritten that the McCoy backstory vanished without a trace.) Would like some fanfic about her and her Orion room mate (I don't mean slash, I mean friendship), please.
Loved John Cho as Sulu, and you could tell who in the audience had seen The Naked Time by the reaction when Sulu, in reply to Kirk's question about what his martial arts training had entailed, said "fencing". And there, I thought, the nod towards the old episode ended, but lo and behold, they actually gave him a fencing scene. *hearts*
Chekov and Scotty were adorable, but with Chekov the looks were somewhat distracting, because could they have found someone who looks less like Walter Koenig as a young man (or WK in general)? Still, the actor visibly enjoyed himself immensly, and so I even waved aside that Chekov wasn't supposed to be on the Enterprise at age 17, because hey, changed timeline. (I will point out, however, that this makes Pavel the alt-ST's Wesley Crusher.*g*)
I couldn't quite see why Nero and all his crew ran around with shaved heads and tattood, and at first wondered whether this was so the scriptwriters wouldn't have deal with a continuity headache - i.e. the fact that at this point, no one in the Federation was supposed to know that Romulans and Vulcans looked pretty much identical - but as we were dealing with a different timeline anyway, that can't have been the reason. So I'm still puzzled. Also, Nero's story doesn't bear much thinking about - what exactly did he do during those 25 years he waited for Original Spock to catch up with him? Would that time have been far better spent warning everyone on Romulus? Still, Eric Bana does a good obsessed villain in the tradition of Ricardo Montalban. And most importantly:
OMG THE MULLER SPHERE RAMBALDI IS EVERYWHERE!
Seriously. As soon as we saw that red ball which was the Romulan Weapon Of Doom that started out as Spock's Invention Of Planetsaving, I knew who really invented it. And I defy any viewer of Alias to tell me otherwise.
(There must be a crossover in which Arvin Sloane shows up in the STverse of that timeline. Hey, he's immortal as of the end of the show, and he's the experts in Red Balls Of Doom if ever there was one.)
Oh, and the composer, another Abrams' stallwart like the scriptwriters, smugled in at least one Lost motif, I think. Bless.
In conclusion: my list of favourite Treks (DS9) and captains (Picard) remains unchanged, but I wholeheartedly embrace this version as well and hope there will be more.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 02:37 am (UTC)This has been bothering me as well, but I finally managed to convince myself that it was a mourning thing. Shaving the hair for mourning seems logical to me (in that it's seen in a lot of cultures in antiquity here on Earth, at least), and the tattoos might be a sort of physical way of sort of... showing off and/or taking on their determination to embark on a quest for revenge?
This is what I'm going to keep telling myself. Because looking back at every other time we've seen the Romulans, it just doesn't make much sense otherwise...
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 03:36 am (UTC)