J.J Abrams’ “Star Trek”
There was a period in the 90s in which Star Trek spin-offs were seemingly unmissable. Next Generation had ended its run in 94 and was in heavy syndication, and Voyager and Deep Space Nine were at the height of their run. This is when I first started watching Star Trek regularly. The first glimpses I had of the show was when I was about 6 or 7. The images struck me as wondrous and exciting. When the show started becoming syndicated I had the chance to delve into it deeply. In a significant way, these 90s Star Trek series (Next Generation had actually begun its run in 87) had a considerable impact on my taste in television. I watched and enjoyed most of their episodes for the most part. So I approach J.J Abrams Star Trek being quite familiar with the Star Trek franchise, and there are two questions by which I’ll assess the new film: Does it work as a film in and of itself to one who is not necessarily a fan of Star Trek? And is it a film that is a worthy entry into the Star Trek mythos? The answer to the former is “maybe”; to the latter, a resounding no.
For, upon leaving the theater, I did not have any immediate gnawing sense of dissatisfaction. I was diverted for those two hours, and for the crowd that adored Iron Man and X-Men: Wolverine, Abrams Star Trek should be a fun movie. I don’t think Iron Man and any of the X:Men films are any good, mind you, but they are the sort of dumb summer fare we’ve grown accustomed to and Abrams’ Star Trek should entertain along those lines. It was only as the hours passed that the film’s failure as a Star Trek story became more and more evident to me. First, it is not something that has to do with the film’s set-up as an action/adventure fim. All the Next Generation films, as well as most of the TOS films, are action-adventure rombs. The film’s failure as a Star Trek entry has to do with its complete and utter disregard for the implications of the film’s plot.
First, the makers of the film, as you are no doubt aware, were seeking to effectively reboot the Star Trek franchise. I hear this is a common practice in the comic book industry. For instance, Spiderman began its run in the 60s, and Marvel rebooted the Spiderman story so that it’s told in a way that is fresh and modern and therefore more appealing to today’s audiences (after all, Stan Lee’s comics do strike us today as horribly retro.) What marvel did is to reboot the Spiderman universe entirely. There’s no logical connection to the stories Lee and his writers penned for the series, except that the new series borrows elements and draws inspiration from them. In the movies, recently the 007 franchise was rebooted with 2006’s Casino Royale. The same thing was done for the series when Pierce Brosnan took over the role with “Golden Eye” in 1995. Abrams Star Trek is reboot, but it’s a reboot in a fashion that is aggravating, poorly thought out, and ultimately insulting to the Star Trek franchise in general. For the film doesn’t just reboot the Star Trek universe–no, it has a plot that erases all the previous shows, movies, characters, and stories of Star Trek from existence! It’s like finding out in the last chapter of a novel that everything you’ve read up to point had been a dream. And worse, it’s as if the author had no idea that he had suggested as much!
The plot of the film involves villainous characters traveling back in time from a date that, presumably, immediately postdates the end of Voyager, in order to interfere with Federation history. The plot details are irrelevant: Let’s just say that these villainous characters, by the end of the film, succeed marvelously in interfering with Federation history and changing the time-line. This is how Abrams and his writers chose to reboot the franchise–not by starting from scratch, but by logically connecting it to the regular Star Trek canon and using time-travel shenanigans to put the young versions of the original series characters on a new path. In a rather ham-fisted scene, Zachary Quinto’s Spock and Zoe Saladan’s Uhura explain to the audience that the characters are now on a new path–on an ‘alternate time-line’–and that their destinies have been changed. But what about the destinies of, I don’t know, the cast of Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine? How could all those characters be born–or the stories which they’re were involved in occur–given that the villain of the film has successfully interfered with history? In a scene that is perhaps intended to call back to Star Wars: A New Hope, the planet of Vulcan is destroyed. Now if we watch Next Generation or DSN–in which Vulcan still exists–we know we’re watching a timeline that doesn’t exist and perhaps characters who most likely will never be born.
Apparently it has only recently dawned on Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman–the writers of the film–of the implication of their plot. Orci has been going around claiming that the time-line which bad guys came from (the time-line of all the shows and movies) somehow remains intact, due to quantum mechanics (?!?), and that the universe Abrams film takes place in will now be one that is parallel to that other, regular universe. Except for one problem: no where in Star Trek movies or shows has it been suggested that time travel leads to the creation of a parallel universe. Indeed, in all the Star Trek plots involving time travel, it’s never suggested that the good characters need not worry about some bad guy going back in time and meddling with things since it would just create a new time-line that cannot effect the one that the characters are in. Indeed, the time-travel stories always depended on the assumption that there is one time-line which time travel can alter. Since Abrams and his duo of writers (the same brilliant scribes that brought us the recent “Transformers” flicks) unwisely chose to connect themselves with the established canon (via the time-travel story), the same rules as all other Star Trek movies/shows/stories apply–and so, by implication, since the bad guys of the film succeeds in going back in and meddling with things, all the Star Trek stories we are familiar with have effectively been retconned out of existence, never mind what Robert Orci claims.
If that was deliberate, it would be staggeringly asinine, but since it was apparently not deliberate, it’s just despairingly poor writing and staggeringly asinine. The plot of film, by the way, has much else that is wrong with it. Kirk is jettisoned on a snowy planet on which he randomly happens to run into two characters that are crucial to the plot. In Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, it is mentioned that Kirk, by cheating, happened to have passed in his Starfleet Academcy days the insurmountable Kobayashi Maru tactical test. Abrams film proves that things that are reputed to be legendary about characters are perhaps best left as legends.
The direction of the film isn’t much to speak of either. It suggests the work of a director painfully aware of his limitations working hard to dazzle us with the superficialities he is only capable of. The interior of the Enterprise, for god knows why, is distractingly bright. And there is much needless shaky hand-held camera work. Many of the aliens that are shown have faces that look like reflections off fun-house mirrors. There’s a scene that involves Kirk making love to a green alien–except she looks entirely like a cheerleader of the Dallas cowboys who has been painted green. Abrams forced kinetic style seems incongruous with the spirit of Star Trek. There is simply no grace.
But in the end, it’s the time-travel plot that remains the glaring fault of the film. By implication, it negates all other Star Trek stories. And it is indicative of the cheap plot device that time-travel has in general become in science fiction. It’s not an original story but rather something that even the most non-creative movie executive could have thought up to reboot the franchise. Moreover, it actually undermines the purpose of a reboot because it beholds any sequels to the rules and premises established in the regular canon. But should this incompetence surprise us? After all, over the last months Abrams has been announcing at the top of his lungs that he had not been familiar with Star Trek before being asked to shoot the film. He was sneakily suggesting that as a consequence his approach would be all the more original because of that lack of familiarity. Paramount has chosen to hand the reigns of the series to someone who is eager to announce his lack of interest in it. What happens when this new franchise inevitably fizzles out? How will they reboot Star Trek then? I don’t think we’ll care about Star Trek in general by that point to even ask the question.
