Having said that, Zachary Quinto is absolutely outstanding as Spock, standing up to his elders, and suppressing the rage at his planet's destruction. But, he's surrounded by a lot of lightweights. Chris Pine plays Kirk, the ship's captain but acts more like Zak Efron than anything else. Chosen for his good looks, he is the handsome rebel who fights with plebs in local bars, drunkenly rejecting the greatness that is owed to him because he doesn't have a father figure.
This already treads ground close to Star Wars, and they end up veering away from any real brooding or character development. A problem with remaking something is you either stick wholeheartedly to the original, or come up with a fresh version that cuts through modern developments. Star Trek isn't bold enough to do either. We see Simon Pegg with an achingly bad Glasgow accent as a dire joke character, and Chris Pine is injected with a virus to make him ill enough to be taken onto the ship (under some beserk intergalactic legislation), comically staggering around, sweating and acting like a fool, but of course in no real danger. It's this halfhearted comedy that is the film's biggest flaw.
The James Bond series had a similar problem in making the new Casino Royale - do we continue making films that are parodies of themselves, with 40-something actors and exploding toupees? Casino Royale stuck its neck out in being entirely serious (except of course the necessary innuendo), but Star Trek attempts to be something sharp, sleek and modern, with Quinto being really quite scary, but these wuvvie characters ruin their attempt. If it was going to be a strong modern film, then it needed the female lead (Uhura) to be considerably more attractive, and present in more scenes. She appears once or twice, rejecting Kirk's inebriated advances, but falling for the allure of Spock's genius. The original Star Trek had fans buying posters of all the characters, but there was no boldness in the characters, all caught in a strange middle ground.
Throughout the film, there was no real sense of danger. When we see the actors get into their ship, it's stressed that it is VERY BIG, then they fly to a VERY VERY BIG station, then the Romulon ship appears like a broken pinecone, and it is VERY VERY BIG. After a certain point, I just stopped caring.
Naturally, everything is alright at the end, and we are introduced to the familiar crew of the ship, lining us up chronologically for a whole set of adventures. Though they have all just avoided the destruction of the universe by a fraction of a second (just like everything else at the cinema...), and the music is playing, the group is nowhere near strong enough to be the characters that gained such a cult following. Star Trek has lived long and prospered, but it existed best in the bedrooms of geeky teenagers. ★★
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ReplyDeletei disagree with the zaC efron comment
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