Star Trek

As chil­dren, we tend to find the extra­or­di­nary in every­thing. The sim­plest things inspire won­der and it doesn’t take much to make us believe any­thing is pos­si­ble. As adults we gen­er­ally become much more cyn­i­cal, los­ing touch with much of what makes the world so great to inhabit. Star Trek the Movie did what no iter­a­tion of the fran­chise has done since I used to sit hud­dled below the tele­vi­sion in my paja­mas right before bed watch­ing Kirk and Spock bat­tle aliens on dis­tant worlds while my par­ents watched over my shoul­der and waited for me to fall asleep just before the end­ing: it made me believe any­thing is pos­si­ble. The plot line was absurd at times and the jokes often threat­ened to bring too much slap­stick, but it had me cheer­ing over and over as I watched my child­hood heroes do the things only they can do and which I will always aspire to.

I went to see the film in the uni­ver­sity dis­trict. I expected to find the the­ater packed, but the belly of the younger gen­er­a­tion evi­dently isn’t the ideal spot for open­ing week­end of Star Trek. As I entered the barely half full the­ater, I caught the eye of one of the only other peo­ple over 25, aside from my group of friends. I gave him a barely per­cep­ti­ble nod, com­mu­ni­cat­ing in the way two war­riors must while sneak­ing into the enemy camp. Youth may hold the keys to the future, but they’ll never under­stand the pure joy of watch­ing Kirk take a hit to the head from a huge Sty­ro­foam boulder.

I truly believe this new series of movies will allow a younger gen­er­a­tion to redis­cover Star Trek in a way The Next Gen­er­a­tion, Deep Space Nine, Voy­ager, and Enter­prise sim­ply failed to accom­plish. While these ver­sions of the fran­chise empha­sized peace, equal­ity, and under­stand­ing, Star Trek the Movie man­ages to cap­ture what the orig­i­nal series truly embod­ied: kick­ing the crap out of any­one who opposes the afore men­tioned ideals. Cer­tainly for­give­ness is a won­der­ful virtue to aspire to, but my gen­eral rule of thumb is when some­one blows up an entire planet, the man has got to pay, prefer­ably by watch­ing help­lessly as an onslaught of pho­ton tor­pe­does breaks apart what remains of his ship. I have suf­fered through count­less sea­sons of hal­fassed retal­i­a­tion and sissy cheek turn­ing, but twenty min­utes into this film I was almost ready to say it was all worth it.

Peo­ple always say qual­ity is in the details and it def­i­nitely shows in this film. Although the spe­cial effects have been updated and the ship given an over­haul there are still plenty of things which iden­tify this place as home. The ele­va­tor doors still make the same sound when they open, extras still fall to their deaths off tall objects left and right, and the captain’s chair still swivels and has those ridicu­lously uncom­fort­able look­ing arm rests.

The set and effects weren’t the only things which evoked the orig­i­nal series. Zachary Quinto played Spock so per­fectly it was often dif­fi­cult to dis­cern I wasn’t watch­ing clips from the orig­i­nal show. His per­for­mance exposed a depth to Spock’s char­ac­ter I always knew was there but which has rarely been explored in the past. Chris Pine por­trayed a rebel­lious and trou­bled young Krik who tran­si­tions into the bold Cap­tain we all know and love so nat­u­rally I didn’t even real­ize it was hap­pen­ing until Kirk and Spock finally stood side by side on the bridge of the enter­prise as cap­tain and first offi­cer, at which point I have to admit I dis­cov­ered a per­cep­ti­ble lump in my throat.

If you had any love for the orig­i­nal Star Trek series, do your­self a favor and see this film so you can relive what made it so great. Just try not to go see it with a bunch of col­lege stu­dents if you can avoid it; we barely escaped with our lives.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under News, Previews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.