Star Trek 2009

Star Trek 2009

May 09

The new Star Trek flick is not only a great movie. It’s not only a damn fun night at the theater. It’s not only THE summer movie to beat for balls-out action and laughs.

It’s also damn good Star Trek.

That’s what we’ve all been holding our breath about, isn’t it? The geeks, the nerds, the dweebs, the weirdos; the Trekkies and the Trekkers and the Klingon cosplayers; the desperate fanman in his two-sizes-too-small Deep Space Nine tee and the button-down corporate lawyer who slapped silly putty on his ears when he was eight to play Spock for Halloween.

All the previews looked good; all the rumors and spoilers sounded right. It always looked like a well-crafted product of the Hollywood blockbuster machine. But would it be good Trek? Not in a slavish devotion to obscure details, but in spirit, in mindset, in tone?

They did it. They absolutely fucking did it. Star Trek is easily the best time I have had in a movie theater in years; I grinned from start to end and clapped like a fool when it was over. And the afterglow is because on top of everything they got exactly right, they managed to do what seemed impossible for so very long: They reminded us that Star Trek can be great, not by kissing up to an ever-dwindling diehard fanbase or dismissing all that has come before in favor of some “hip,” “edgy” reinterpretation, but by just MAKING GREAT STAR TREK. It’s that simple. They made great Star Trek. It’s great.

(POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHOY)

Of course, then the question becomes, “What do you mean by ‘great Star Trek,’ anyway, asshole?”

First, I’m not an asshole, asshole. Second, what I mean is whatever you think I mean. Asshole.

Anyone who enjoys Star Trek on any level has their own particular definition of what makes for great Trek. Shit, there’s enough of it out there to split the fanbase (such as it is) into near-endless factions; some of us buy into the utopian vision for humanity’s future, others get off on the high-concept sci-fi allgeories; and still others just want to see George Takei topless once in a while.

So we’re going to need to all agree that as first invented by that Great Bird of the Galaxy, Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek was meant to be a science-fiction adventure driven by strong characters and big ideas. And that’s what we get on screen…well, maybe minus the “big ideas” part, although there is time travel involved, which typically involves complicated ideas, if not large ones. But if you’re looking for a commentary on our recent actions in the Middle East disguised as a space fight with aliens holding laser guns, you’re shit out of luck.

Here’s the thing, too: We’ve not even really seen ANYTHING like this in Trek before. The closest comparison is, naturally, the original series, which had a similar go-for-broke spirit and the same rock-steady characters…performing on cardboard sets and poking their fingers at Christmas tree lights to make their spaceship fly.

By the time that Enterprise crew graduated to the big screen, with all the budget and FX that implies, they were pushing forty; their second flick, the legendary Wrath of Khan, is a revenge battle to the death in space that also happens to be about how every character we care about is too OLD to be doing everything they’re doing. So in the original series, we got the swash and the buckle without the larger canvas of a feature film, and with the features, we got the larger canvas with only a hint of the swash and/or buckle, because as we all know, galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young.

Star Trek 2009 gives us the vitality, edge, flat-out fuck-all sexiness and swagger of the original series married to a very contemporary action film with the healthy FX budget that requires. It also delivers new versions of characters that even the most straight-edge mainstream non-nerd will recognize and yes, maybe even love.

Even after seeing it and enjoying the hell out of it, I am stunned by the achievement. A perfect pop confection with heart, brains, and laughs; the reboot of a film and TV franchise thought long since dead; and a love letter to this sometimes transcendent, often thrilling, occasionally goofy old TV show from the sixties that just happened to spawn a multimedia empire. And has spawned one yet again, if this weekend is any indication.

Make no mistake, by the way: It is a love letter. It is new and fresh, but it is downright WORSHIPFUL of everything that has come before. This movie has just as many lustful caressing FX shots of the Enterprise as any of the other flicks, and its own classic “Kirk and McCoy approach the Enterprise and drool” moment. There’s Khan references all over the place, a fencing Sulu,

The cast is exceptional; they all bring in flavors of the original performances while claiming the characters as their own. I consider myself to be one of the bigger (read: sadder) Shatner devotees on the planet, and I didn’t once think of his Kirk while Chris Pine was on the screen. As so many others have already written, Karl Urban’s McCoy is some kind of crazy voodoo channeling of De Kelley’s spirit into a new body…and FUNNY. Damn, is he funny. Everyone’s funny; this is a fun, fast movie. It sweeps you away; dare I say, it’s transporting.

Even better, somehow they manage to balance this massive cast in just the right way so that not only does every one of the Big Seven get their own moment to shine, but most of them get several moments, and all of them feel fleshed out. Part of that is bringing in the character awareness we all have as viewers of the original series, but the moments are still strong in their own right, and suddenly guys like Hikaru Sulu, who was lucky to get a single laugh in Star Trek III, are actual true supporting cast members.

Consider this too: Trek is a classic franchise-debut “origin” flick, showing Who They Are and How They Came To Be; it has to set everything up for however many movies they’re going to be able to crank out of this series. Within 40 minutes, all the players have been introduced, the stakes are clear, most of the Big Seven are on board the Enterprise, and it’s absolutely fucking CLASSIC TREK: Distress call from Vulcan, it may be a trap, drop out of warp into a starfield packed with debris, and we’re OFF. That achievement alone is amazing, considering how many clunky half-assed origin flicks we’ve had to suffer over the past few years (Fantastic Four, Batman Begins, Harry Potter).

Eric Bana and Leonard Nimoy do their thing, with varying degrees of success; the worst thing you can say about Trek is probably that its central plot seems a bit of a toss-off, but there’s plenty of great Star Trek where some threat of the week exists just to provide an excuse for these characters to bounce off one another and have some adventures. I went in knowing full well what I was getting by way of the time-travel plot; it’s a genius device and I still love it, since it gives these creators total license to either copy or disregard every detail of all the Trek that has come before, at their discretion. In execution it feels a little clunky, especially Nimoy’s big mind-meld infodump that provides the background for the story. But then, no one considers Carol Marcus’ Genesis briefing to be the best scene in Star Trek II, so fuck it. It bounces these characters; they have adventures; it satisfies completely.

I’m running out of things to say and ways to say them. I don’t even remember when I started loving Star Trek; from high school weekends spent watching best-of marathons on Chicago’s WPWP-TV 50 to changing a password just last week to “StarTrek1966,” I am unrepentant.

Star Trek 2009 made me love Trek all over again. It’s fucking fantastic. See it now.