A Franchise Goes Boldly Backward
by MANOHLA DARGIS (NY TIMES) 
A bright, shiny blast from a newly imagined past, “Star Trek,” the latest spinoff from the influential television show, isn’t just a pleasurable rethink of your geek uncle’s favorite science-fiction series. It’s also a testament to television’s power as mythmaker, as a source for some of the fundamental stories we tell about ourselves, who we are and where we came from. The famous captain (William Shatner, bless his loony lights) and creator (Gene Roddenberry, rest in peace) may no longer be on board, but the spirit of adventure and embrace of rationality that define the show are in full swing, as are the chicks in minis and kicky boots.
Initially appearing in 1966, the original “Star Trek” is a utopian fantasy of the first order, a vision of the enlightened future in which whites, blacks, Asians and one poker-faced Vulcan are united by their exploratory mission (“to boldly go”), a prime directive (no intervention) and the occasional dust-up. An origin story directed with a sure touch and perfect tone by J. J. Abrams, the fully loaded film — a showcase for big-studio hardware, software, muscled boys who can act and leggy girls who aren’t required to — turns back the narrative clock to the moment before the main characters first assembled on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a sleek spacecraft that invariably sails into intergalactic storms. Even utopia needs a little bang.
Apparently so do franchise reboots, which explains why the movie opens with a loud, somewhat chaotic scene filled with fireballs, airborne bodies, heroically clenched male jaws and a squawking pregnant woman about to pop out the future James Tiberius Kirk. Born in space (well, a shuttle craft), Kirk is destined to return to its embracing darkness. (Future “Trek” scholars will be working the Oedipal angle hard.) But this being an origin story, first there’s a peek at a boy (Jimmy Bennett as the young Kirk) tearing down an Iowa highway in a stolen hot rod, a paradigmatic character moment that’s juxtaposed with images of a young brainiac (Jacob Kogan as the wee Spock) problem-solving with intelligence and a few punches.
Kirk and Spock don’t meet in person until they’re adults — now played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto — at Starfleet Academy, which, in keeping with the show’s liberal leanings, is in San Francisco. At school Kirk flirts with Uhura (Zoë Saldana), a hot number who coolly brushes him off and makes friends with a doctor, Leonard McCoy, a k a Bones (Karl Urban, wild-eyed and funny). Kirk also comes smack up against Spock, an officious instructor. In the tradition of many great romances, the two men take almost an instant dislike to each other, an antagonism that literalizes the Western divide between the mind (Spock) and body (Kirk) that gives the story emotional and dramatic force as well as some generous laughs.
Those laughs never slide into mockery. Mr. Abrams doesn’t treat “Star Trek” as a sacred text, which would be deadly for everyone save the fanatics. But neither does he skewer a pop cultural classic that, more than 40 years after its first run, has been so lampooned (it feels like there are more “South Park” parodies than original episodes) it was difficult to see how he was going to give it new life. By design or accident, he has, simply because in its hopefulness “Star Trek” reminds you that there’s more to science fiction (and Hollywood blockbusters) than nihilism. Mr. Abrams doesn’t venture into politics as boldly as Mr. Roddenberry sometimes did, though it’s worth noting he does equate torture with barbarism.
The barbarians here are the Romulans, who at one point in television time used to look a lot like Spock, but here resemble a Maori motorcycle gang complete with facial tattoos and Goth threads. Led by the glowering psychopath Nero (Eric Bana, an actor who knows how to take villainy seriously), the Romulans are mainly on hand to provoke the Starfleet cadets into space. There Mr. Abrams shows off some expensive-looking special effects, including an enemy warship that, with its enormous, grasping tendrils, by turns resembles a monstrous jellyfish and a malignantly blooming flower. The film comes down on the side of hope, but its apocalyptic interludes, including the image of a planet imploding into gray dust, collapsing like a desiccated piece of fruit, linger.
Despite these visions, the flashing lasers and latex aliens, “Star Trek” is fundamentally about two men engaged in a continuing conversation about civilizations and their discontents. Hot and cold, impulsive and tightly controlled, Kirk and Spock need each other to work, a dynamic Mr. Abrams captures with his two well-balanced leads. Mr. Quinto lets you see and hear the struggle between the human and the Vulcan in Spock through the emotions that ripple across his face and periodically throw off his unmodulated phrasing. Mr. Pine has the harder job — he has to invoke Mr. Shatner’s sui generis performance while transcending its excesses — which makes his nuanced interpretation all the more potent. Steering clear of outright imitation, the two instead distill the characters to capture their essence, their Kirk-ness and Spock-ness.
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the story has plenty of chatter, but Mr. Abrams keeps the talk moving, slowing down only intermittently, as when Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) or the wryly smiling Leonard Nimoy (!) unload some paternalistic advice on Kirk. A television veteran (“Lost”), Mr. Abrams handles the action scenes better than he did in his only other big-screen outing (“Mission: Impossible III”), largely by not lavishing too much time on them. By far his finest moments take place on the brightly lighted deck of the Enterprise, where against the backdrop of limitless space, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the young crew fumble with roles that — much like the young actors playing them, including Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu — they ultimately and rather wonderfully make their own.
“Star Trek” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some intense but bloodless action.
A bright, shiny blast from a newly imagined past, “Star Trek,” the latest spinoff from the influential television show, isn’t just a pleasurable rethink of your geek uncle’s favorite science-fiction series. It’s also a testament to television’s power as mythmaker, as a source for some of the fundamental stories we tell about ourselves, who we are and where we came from. The famous captain (William Shatner, bless his loony lights) and creator (Gene Roddenberry, rest in peace) may no longer be on board, but the spirit of adventure and embrace of rationality that define the show are in full swing, as are the chicks in minis and kicky boots.
Initially appearing in 1966, the original “Star Trek” is a utopian fantasy of the first order, a vision of the enlightened future in which whites, blacks, Asians and one poker-faced Vulcan are united by their exploratory mission (“to boldly go”), a prime directive (no intervention) and the occasional dust-up. An origin story directed with a sure touch and perfect tone by J. J. Abrams, the fully loaded film — a showcase for big-studio hardware, software, muscled boys who can act and leggy girls who aren’t required to — turns back the narrative clock to the moment before the main characters first assembled on the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise, a sleek spacecraft that invariably sails into intergalactic storms. Even utopia needs a little bang.
Apparently so do franchise reboots, which explains why the movie opens with a loud, somewhat chaotic scene filled with fireballs, airborne bodies, heroically clenched male jaws and a squawking pregnant woman about to pop out the future James Tiberius Kirk. Born in space (well, a shuttle craft), Kirk is destined to return to its embracing darkness. (Future “Trek” scholars will be working the Oedipal angle hard.) But this being an origin story, first there’s a peek at a boy (Jimmy Bennett as the young Kirk) tearing down an Iowa highway in a stolen hot rod, a paradigmatic character moment that’s juxtaposed with images of a young brainiac (Jacob Kogan as the wee Spock) problem-solving with intelligence and a few punches.
Kirk and Spock don’t meet in person until they’re adults — now played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto — at Starfleet Academy, which, in keeping with the show’s liberal leanings, is in San Francisco. At school Kirk flirts with Uhura (Zoë Saldana), a hot number who coolly brushes him off and makes friends with a doctor, Leonard McCoy, a k a Bones (Karl Urban, wild-eyed and funny). Kirk also comes smack up against Spock, an officious instructor. In the tradition of many great romances, the two men take almost an instant dislike to each other, an antagonism that literalizes the Western divide between the mind (Spock) and body (Kirk) that gives the story emotional and dramatic force as well as some generous laughs.
Those laughs never slide into mockery. Mr. Abrams doesn’t treat “Star Trek” as a sacred text, which would be deadly for everyone save the fanatics. But neither does he skewer a pop cultural classic that, more than 40 years after its first run, has been so lampooned (it feels like there are more “South Park” parodies than original episodes) it was difficult to see how he was going to give it new life. By design or accident, he has, simply because in its hopefulness “Star Trek” reminds you that there’s more to science fiction (and Hollywood blockbusters) than nihilism. Mr. Abrams doesn’t venture into politics as boldly as Mr. Roddenberry sometimes did, though it’s worth noting he does equate torture with barbarism.
The barbarians here are the Romulans, who at one point in television time used to look a lot like Spock, but here resemble a Maori motorcycle gang complete with facial tattoos and Goth threads. Led by the glowering psychopath Nero (Eric Bana, an actor who knows how to take villainy seriously), the Romulans are mainly on hand to provoke the Starfleet cadets into space. There Mr. Abrams shows off some expensive-looking special effects, including an enemy warship that, with its enormous, grasping tendrils, by turns resembles a monstrous jellyfish and a malignantly blooming flower. The film comes down on the side of hope, but its apocalyptic interludes, including the image of a planet imploding into gray dust, collapsing like a desiccated piece of fruit, linger.
Despite these visions, the flashing lasers and latex aliens, “Star Trek” is fundamentally about two men engaged in a continuing conversation about civilizations and their discontents. Hot and cold, impulsive and tightly controlled, Kirk and Spock need each other to work, a dynamic Mr. Abrams captures with his two well-balanced leads. Mr. Quinto lets you see and hear the struggle between the human and the Vulcan in Spock through the emotions that ripple across his face and periodically throw off his unmodulated phrasing. Mr. Pine has the harder job — he has to invoke Mr. Shatner’s sui generis performance while transcending its excesses — which makes his nuanced interpretation all the more potent. Steering clear of outright imitation, the two instead distill the characters to capture their essence, their Kirk-ness and Spock-ness.
Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the story has plenty of chatter, but Mr. Abrams keeps the talk moving, slowing down only intermittently, as when Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) or the wryly smiling Leonard Nimoy (!) unload some paternalistic advice on Kirk. A television veteran (“Lost”), Mr. Abrams handles the action scenes better than he did in his only other big-screen outing (“Mission: Impossible III”), largely by not lavishing too much time on them. By far his finest moments take place on the brightly lighted deck of the Enterprise, where against the backdrop of limitless space, Kirk, Spock and the rest of the young crew fumble with roles that — much like the young actors playing them, including Anton Yelchin as Chekov and John Cho as Sulu — they ultimately and rather wonderfully make their own.
“Star Trek” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some intense but bloodless action.
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