Note: There
may be spoilers here, but I gotta be honest. It doesn’t really matter.
It’s not
that the new film is completely devoid of ideas. It’s got kind of a tepid
message about globalism vs nationalism (which, in an era of space travel might
be called something else, perhaps planetarianism vs universalism?), but this is
a very old trope that the Roddenberry religion has peddled since before Bones
ever uttered the lines, “He’s dead, Jim.” And while I appreciate many aspects
of the Star Trek universe, I’ve never really bought into this concept that one
day, all nations (or planets) will get along. In fact, I think it’s a dangerous
philosophy. That’s right, I think Gene--the "Great Bird of the Universe"--was naïve
and delusional in his politics, but it’s a fiction, and so I can go along with
it.
Another
great debate that seems patently absurd once you see the movie is whether they
should have made Sulu gay in the Kelvin timeline. Listen, folks, let me break
it down for you: There is one shot in the movie that lasts about a second in
which Sulu hugs his husband. There is one shot of a photograph of his daughter
sitting on his control panel in the bridge of the ship. The truth is, if you
didn’t hear from the media that “Sulu is now gay!” you would not even notice. I’m
serious. It would not even register. It is a total non-issue.
As usual,
Pavel Chekov had the least to do among the crew of 7, a constant complaint of
mine. And of all the lines they could have lifted from the original series,
they picked one of his silliest, the one about Scotch being invented by a
little old Russian lady.
One welcome
addition was Sofia Boutella, as the scrappy alien, Jaylah. She was both tough
and sympathetic, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of her in future installments.
Idris Elba, who has earned the unique honor of starring as Roland in the much-anticipated
film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, is somewhat wasted as a
rather bland villain, even more bland than Nero from the first Abrams Trek. Oh,
in the end, they decided to impart some humanity on him (literally) and maybe a
hint of regret, but it doesn’t have any real payoff.
Perhaps the
biggest surprise is that Simon Pegg didn’t write a better script. With his
background of witty adventures, including Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, I
figured he would inject some new life into what was clearly going to be a
slump, now that Abrams switched from Trek to Wars. But all he could manage to
do was selfishly write in more screen time for his Scotty. (Not that I’m
complaining about that; I like Scotty.)
If you love
action above all else, you may like this movie. For me, there were so many long
action sequences, my eyes started to glaze over and my mind wandered, and by
the end, I just had to pee so bad I missed the lovely closing credits sequence
which are always so good. They save a space station, but you never really get
to know the station or the people on it, so why do you really care? These giant
vessels fill the screen to the point where you’re not even sure what you’re
looking at. The whole thing has kind of a dark cast to it. I’m not sure if it’s
because of the 3-D component. (We don’t see live action films in 3-D, generally—a
waste of money.) And the sound quality was poor, at least in our theatre. Oh
sure, Scotty and Chekov may have thick accents, but you can usually understand
them okay. Not here.
And why
couldn’t they start the closing credits sequence with “in loving memory of
Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin?” I realize there doesn’t seem to be a
precedent for that in Star Trek movies, but maybe there should be. But at the
end of the day (which is what watching this movie kind of feels like, a whole
day), people aren’t what matter anyway. It’s the franchise, now 50 years old,
always reciting that silly speech at the end, but never really boldly going
anywhere new at all.
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