The Most Honest, Spoiler Free Star Trek Review On The Internet

I used to be a huge Star Trek fan. Then they kept pumping out total shit and I couldn't care anymore. By the time the last movie came around, Plethora and Syd were fucking PUMPED to go see it, and I figured I'd go just for kicks. Unsurprisingly, the movie was fucking dreadful. That said, I was still pretty excited about this movie. It looked like it would be a good movie and wouldn't have to rely on the name Star Trek to try to make money.

The movie was getting pretty much universally good reviews from people who had seen it, although there were a lot of people, at least on the internet, who were extremely offended by the fact that they were making this movie. Rather than try to retype this as though it was not part of a previous discussion, here is my view on that matter that I wrote before the movie. Note that the person I was directly responding to had basically said that this movie was as aggregious as the upcoming Three Stooges movie:

Wow, your angry fanboy is showing. I'm angry at the idea of them redoing the Three Stooges, but that's because those guys WERE the Three (To six) Stooges. The entire show was them and their antics, and anything that follows will be just stealing their name and trying to copy them in hopes of making a quick buck. It's also worth noting that the Stooges were consistently excellent. This, however, is totally different. First of all, the Star Trek franchise has been driven into the fucking ground. There is absolutely nothing left that could possibly be done to destroy the Star Trek franchise. More importantly, whether you think that Star Trek couldn't have existed without that original cast, the fact of the matter is that, unlike the Three Stooges, Star Trek is more than that core cast. Star Trek created an entire universe. Unfortunately, they then filled the entire universe with shit that is unfortunately canon; when they killed Landfill in Beerfest and then replaced him with his twin brother so it was like Landfill never left, it was funny because it was a comedy movie and it was done in a comedic fashion. When you do it with Data and pretend it's a serious plot, that's fucking stupid.

Long story short, it's a fucking movie. As a fan, you should be grateful that they took the Simpsons' all purpose "Plan B" and moved the town 5 miles to the left so they could start over and create a better franchise instead of just trying to make another movie on top of the mountain of shit that they've created for themselves.

So now you have the back story; you know where I was going into this movie: a former fan of the Star Trek franchise who hasn't cared about it in over a decade and was actually happy that they were trying to start over instead of just piling another serving onto the same heaping plate of shit that they've been serving us for years. I did not walk into the theater last night having prejudged the movie as terrible because I was some whiny fanboy, and if anything I walked in excited and expected to like this fresh new take on the Star Trek universe.

Sadly, I did not leave the theater excited. I left the theater disappointed and pretty bored. There was a decent amount of both action and comedy in the movie, but those were really the only entertaining aspects of the movie. The main plot of the movie was pretty much terrible, or rather, it was handled terribly. You certainly could tell a good story using many aspects of the main plot, but that wasn't the goal of this movie. The goal of this movie was to reboot the franchise. The thing is, that's not how it's done. You don't write a movie that's over two hours long just to explain how you're rebooting the storyline, you just do it.

Batman Begins was a reboot of the Batman movies, and an excellent one. The recent Hulk movie was also a reboot, and while it was no Batman Begins, it was still a very enjoyable movie. What did those movies do differently? They made a movie that was designed to tell a story; they pretended any previous movies never existed. In both Batman Begins and Hulk we see a retelling of the characters' origins and their early adventures. That's what I was expecting from this movie, and that's what this movie should have been. Instead of simply starting at the beginning and retelling the story a little differently, Star Trek starts at the beginning and then insists on spending the rest of the story explaining why the story is going to be different than it was last time. Anyone who is anal retentive enough to actually care that you're changing the story will have been trolling the internet and read your interviews from months before the movie where you say it's a reimagining or an alternate universe or whatever. They will already know going in and no one else will care, so don't spend your entire 126 minute movie explaining why it doesn't match previous Star Trek canon when it's completely unnecessary.

Overall the acting in the movie was fine, but much of it was a bit over the top, almost like watching a cartoon. This is probably for the best, however, as that resulted in most of the comedy which was the best part of this film.

There wasn't a whole lot of action in the movie, but the action that was there was entertaining, albeit a bit repetitive. I don't know how many times I need to see the same character dangling off a ledge even though we all know they're not going to die.

This movie also seems like its trying to spend too much time pandering to fanboys of the original series. Whenever characters are introduced or interact with each other for the first time, there are a lot of little jokes and stuff that target people who have watched the original show. Some of this is to be expected of course, but there was so much that my girlfriend mentioned during the movie that she felt like she was missing a lot by not already knowing who they were.

So how would I rate the movie overall? It's a little hard to say. It was a long movie and the chairs in movie theaters are never that comfortable, so my girlfriend kept having to readjust. That, combined with her comment about the introduction of the characters, made me think that she was bored/not enjoying the movie, and I think that effected my opinion of it a bit. Even so, the movie revolved around an uninteresting plot that was designed only to explain the reboot, that hinged both on an incredible coincidence and an action disguised as "cold logic" that made absolutely no rational sense from any view point, and that contained a plot hole that was literally the size of a black hole. Because of that, I feel confident in giving the movie a C-. However!!! Now that this waste of time bullshit of explaining how the reboot was possible is out of the way, I have high hopes for a sequel. I have no complaints with any of the changes to the characters or with their casting choices, so if this movie does well enough to warrant a sequel I will be happy despite disliking this movie. I do hope they tone down Chekhov's accent just a little bit, because it was actually a little distracting.

In the interest of fairness, I want to note that my girlfriend gave the movie a strong B. You can take that to mean that this movie is more enjoyable to those who are unfamiliar with the characters, but she agreed (And said this before I did so she wasn't agreeing just to shut me up) that the movie would have been boring without all the comedy and the action, so I think our opinions are pretty much the same except that I'm being less forgiving with my overall evaluation.

It is really hard to review a movie without spoiling anything.

dr_jeebus@sydlexia.com

Is it unusual for a chief medical officer to spend almost the entire movie on the bridge instead of in sick bay?