It's a bloody good movie, and I defy anyone to not have a good time with it. But - and this I know is a somewhat sweeping statement - it's not Star Trek.
Without going into a full bore analysis, my only real issues with the flick (Kirk is something of a cartoon its true, with little approaching an actual character arc, but he's likable and Pine does well with it so that part's okay) boils down to two things. Roddenberry's socialist utopia is nowhere to be found, which would be okay if they'd at least gotten Starfleet right.
The primary function of Starfleet is - all together now - exploration! "To boldly go where no one has gone before." Here its remit is one of "peacekeeping and defense". And thats a quote, Captain Christopher Pike lays it out for us. Now Starfleet always had a military angle to it, it acted in defense of the Federation, but that was always its secondary purpose (one I used to like to imagine arose following the Romulan war. But that's just idle speculation), in fact Roddenberry had originally imagined it as a civilian organization, evolving say out of NASA. In Abrams movie though, Starfleet is wholly military, with any mandate toward space exploration seemingly absent. So when Leonard Nimoy speaks that famous phrase ("... to boldly go...") at the end (and it really should be Pine's speech, but no matter) it seems incongruous with the film we just watched, and one wonders if those words haven't now become little more than familiar phonetics, something that must be there even while their meaning has been ignored or not understood.
And this matters, because if we're rebooting Trek (and thats what this is. don't listen to any waffle about altered timelines, this is a new universe. Vulcan's blue-not-orange sky and money being used in the Federation is testament to that.) then it's important that we recognize what the thing is at its core.
Random example: When Brian Michael Bendis started Ultimate Spider-Man, essentially a reboot of the Marvel comic book, he made sure that at its centre was a bookish, neurotic teenager that is granted amazing powers which only serve to make his life more difficult. After that everything else is up for grabs.
Rebooting Trek requires that you do the same. Give me a group of scientists, artists, explorers, and yes... fighters, stuff them into a giant state-of-the-art star ship, and blast them into the unknown. After that everything else is up for grabs. Other Star Trek movies have been about battle and spectacle (though none quite as hysterically as this one) but have managed it without rejecting the core idea of exploration.
To be fair maybe the exploratory aspect hasn't been rejected, they do use the 'boldly go' bit at the end, however incongruously. Maybe they needed the empty sturm and drang to entice back the masses, but exploration is what Star Trek is all about, it should have been front and centre in what is essentially supposed to be a re-introduction to the franchise. Who knows though, maybe next time Star Trek will show up.
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It's a bloody good movie, and I defy anyone to not have a good time with it. But - and this I know is a somewhat sweeping statement - it's not Star Trek.
Without going into a full bore analysis, my only real issues with the flick (Kirk is something of a cartoon its true, with little approaching an actual character arc, but he's likable and Pine does well with it so that part's okay) boils down to two things. Roddenberry's socialist utopia is nowhere to be found, which would be okay if they'd at least gotten Starfleet right.
The primary function of Starfleet is - all together now - exploration! "To boldly go where no one has gone before." Here its remit is one of "peacekeeping and defense". And thats a quote, Captain Christopher Pike lays it out for us. Now Starfleet always had a military angle to it, it acted in defense of the Federation, but that was always its secondary purpose (one I used to like to imagine arose following the Romulan war. But that's just idle speculation), in fact Roddenberry had originally imagined it as a civilian organization, evolving say out of NASA. In Abrams movie though, Starfleet is wholly military, with any mandate toward space exploration seemingly absent. So when Leonard Nimoy speaks that famous phrase ("... to boldly go...") at the end (and it really should be Pine's speech, but no matter) it seems incongruous with the film we just watched, and one wonders if those words haven't now become little more than familiar phonetics, something that must be there even while their meaning has been ignored or not understood.
And this matters, because if we're rebooting Trek (and thats what this is. don't listen to any waffle about altered timelines, this is a new universe. Vulcan's blue-not-orange sky and money being used in the Federation is testament to that.) then it's important that we recognize what the thing is at its core.
Random example: When Brian Michael Bendis started Ultimate Spider-Man, essentially a reboot of the Marvel comic book, he made sure that at its centre was a bookish, neurotic teenager that is granted amazing powers which only serve to make his life more difficult. After that everything else is up for grabs.
Rebooting Trek requires that you do the same. Give me a group of scientists, artists, explorers, and yes... fighters, stuff them into a giant state-of-the-art star ship, and blast them into the unknown. After that everything else is up for grabs. Other Star Trek movies have been about battle and spectacle (though none quite as hysterically as this one) but have managed it without rejecting the core idea of exploration.
To be fair maybe the exploratory aspect hasn't been rejected, they do use the 'boldly go' bit at the end, however incongruously. Maybe they needed the empty sturm and drang to entice back the masses, but exploration is what Star Trek is all about, it should have been front and centre in what is essentially supposed to be a re-introduction to the franchise. Who knows though, maybe next time Star Trek will show up.