by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright May 2009
I can describe the story in Star Trek 11 in three words: silly, silly, silly.
Oh, and did I say the story was silly?
After a couple of hours reflection, I think what I saw was a multi-million dollar fanzine interpretation of Star Trek. It was cute, but its major result was simply to introduce a new generation of actors to playing the same old roles.
The makers of this film were fully in command of their sets, actors and effects, and these all came out well. I didn't see anything surprising for 2009-era effects and acting, but I didn't see any big mistakes, either. One thing I constantly fear seeing in post-2005 movies is music video-style fast, meaningless cuts from one point of view to another. This movie was mercifully short on those.
The actors did their parts well, as well. The weakest were the Romulans, who looked more like contemporary Goth street punks than they did vicious aliens.
Now... to the problems I saw as I sat down with my popcorn...
o Space is a big place, and you see for light-years. One ship does not surprise another ship easily. In this first encounter, the Romulan ship somehow surprises the Federation ship.
o The mining machine and the little "red matter" drop are a pretty wacky combination... especially since this black hole maker is coming from a big, big tank of other black hole making stuff. But... I forgive in this first scene, this is high technology, I figure.
o The bad guy's greeting on first contact, a mellow, "Hello." is incongruous if this is a mystery ship.
o The whole captain going to the other ship, wife on board having a baby, captain suiciding to save the crew, was so melodramatic. She tells him, "It's a boy." What? They didn't know that two, three, seven months ago? I was moaning in my seat, and it wasn't with empathy.
o The Iowa farm boy business did not work at all for me. First, a steep-walled canyon in Iowa? (Quick fix for this, make it a holodeck experience. Holodecks can fix any size plot hole, and no reason not to have them on Earth.) Second, if you're a rule-breaking burnout at ten, you'll be a nameless, aimless, rule-breaking burnout at twenty. We needed to see lots of sparks of brilliance and discipline mixed in. The movie's answer to this lack of brilliance and discipline was Captain Pike saying to Kirk after the bar fight, "You don't need to be just another anonymous burnout because you have genes and mythology that will make you great." weak... weak... this makes Kirk into a Hercules variant -- destined for greatness no matter what he does.
o Likewise, why are logical Vulcans bullying young Spock? That's not very logical or unemotional on their part.
o Showing a Starfleet cruiser being built on Iowa farmland doesn't work. These are space ships, not planet-to-space ships. Planet-to-space is what the probes do. You can make pieces on Earth, but the final assembly is going to happen in space. Quick fix for this: make that cruiser part of the Star Fleet Academy Museum... just up the road from the very real, very full of big planes, SAC museum in Nebraska.
o The Kobiashi Maru incident was particularly badly handled. This exercise works, this teaches its lesson, only when comes as a surprise to the students. The concept in this movie that you can anticipate it, and that you can retake it, and "win", is totally silly.
o The concept that cadets are going to crew a just finished, top-of-the-line cruiser is so young teenager fantasy!
o Kirk remembers the thunder? He wasn't even born! Yeah, his mother could have told him... but she was in labor! Yeah, they could have looked at the tapes... again and again and again... wait, no they couldn't, the military hands out flags to grieving widows, not tapes of death scenes. Besides, Captain Pike was a friend of Father Kirk, if any major character was to see the tapes of what happened, it would have been him. In sum, why is Kirk's insight on the thunder so significant?
o Revenge, revenge, revenge... Is there any other motivation in an action movie these days? It's sure endemic in the movies of 2008/9, and I'm sure tired of it. Hey, movie makers, and movie watchers, there are other reasons to do things!
o When the Enterprise tangles with the Romulan ship the second time, it comes out into normal space which is filled with space trash. Once again, space is a big place, this scene looked mighty silly.
o Three paratroopers are going to take out the mining machine? The one that is stuck deep into Vulcan atmosphere, and then deep into Earth's atmosphere? What happened to Vulcan's air defense? What happened to Earth's air defense? At the end of the movie, Spock demonstrates with his Vulcan space ship <sigh> that the mining machine is vulnerable to airplane attack.
o "Warp speed" has never been well-defined in Star Trek. And nothing, other than holodecks, makes Star Trek more of a Space Opera than this lack of a warp speed definition. The standing definition of warp speed is, "Whatever the TV-maker/movie-maker needs it to be." Closely related is messing with time and alternate universes. Warp Speed, transporters, time traveling, alternate realities and holodecks are all so easily abused. When they are abused, they become de facto fantasy-style wishes, "I wish this could happen, I wish that could happen." This movie pushes the abuse into new frontiers when we see teleporting on to starships in warp.
o All the stuff with young Kirk meeting old Spock on the ice planet was so silly. As was having Scotty transported into a coolant tank, then floating down glass tubes, to an emergency exit... that lets out just him with a light splash of coolant. Space Opera Rules are fully in effect for these scenes. (Space Opera Rules are the new, improved, high technology version of Poetic Licence.)
o Spock gives up command to Kirk? What? Kirk has less emotional involvement in this situation? This guy killed Kirk's father! There's no other choice for captain on the ship? Once again, such young teenage fantasy.
... After this, the movie becomes a cliched blur for me. I disconnect memory circuits. I know I'm not going to see anything new. There will be more danger, an "I'll go it alone" scene, and a spectacular "we don't abandon our friends" rescue. Oh, and a celebrating party at the end.
So, I'm still wondering why movie makers can spend multi-millions making a movie, and be so satisfied with a story that is so vengence-filled and so retreaded, and why movie watchers feel satisfied when they see something such as this.
Where's the wonder? Where's the strange, new lands? Where's the seeing things we haven't seen before?
One thing I'm not wondering about, one thing I know: I know I'm not satisfied.
-- The End --