Media Consumes Me

Star Trek, or Star Trick?

*Spoiler Alert* The film by JJ Abrams will be discussed as if the reader has already seen it!

There is a point during J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek when the film crosses a certain threshold, a threshold that was anticipated partly by my skepticism that Abrams and his team of producer/writers (Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman) could pull off a decent and credible Star Trek plot. This was after all a complete rebuild of one of the best space adventure franchises of all time. I knew going into the film, Abrams and his cronies would feel compelled to think about demographics, and bottom lines. How could they write and present the film to a wider, trendier, ultimately more profitable audience, without totally compromising the important principles of a good Star Trek story? After all, the latest Star Trek television show “Enterprise” had disappointed even the most desperate of Star Trek connoisseurs. I understand it was only a matter of time. It was either this or no Star Trek at all. A dilemma, which (in my opinion), has not been settled, despite the movies popularity.

This threshold is crossed in the depths of an ice cave.

In this scene, Kirk is saved by a hooded man as he runs from a giant ice arthropod and nearly falls to his death. The hooded man turns out to be a much older Spock (played my Leonard Nimoy himself), who just so happens to be in the same 200 yard radius as Kirk, and how he was sent by Nero, (an evil, revenge bent Romulan played by Eric Bana) against his own will to watch the destruction of Vulcan in the sky.  This whole situation is highly ridiculous, but that doesn’t even really bother me personally. It’s a movie. Coincidences are not coincidences – they happen.

What’s truly ridiculous is the story that Spock tells Kirk by way of mind meld (that is: a poor man’s cinema version of a mind meld – consisting of narrative by Spock’s conscience, and a montage of tantalizing special effects and reaction shots). The threshold is here. Spock’s entire story begins with the dramatic words, “One hundred and twenty nine years from now, a star will explode, and threaten to destroy the galaxy.”

What Spock doesn’t say, is that the star is actually the Romulan sun, and that the real reason they’re in trouble is because Spock made a promise he couldn’t keep, and therefore pissed off some miner named Nero, who then went on a killing spree, and destroyed a handful of planets. I am unsure at what point the galaxy is ever in any danger from this.

At one scene, Old Spock tells his younger self that he told Jim the old Spock and new Spock couldn’t meet in person or there would be a space-time paradox, which was a lie so Jim would have to do things himself. So should we presume that the whole scene in the ice cave is just an overdramatized story given by Spock to a simpler minded James T? Does Abram’s and his producer writers think of the audience as a simpler minded James T, and they themselves are the Vulcan’s who will show us a oversimplified dumb down version of a story in order to appeal to our sensibilities?

Words like super nova, galaxies, and terms like threaten to destroy, coupled with epic special effects, giant explosions, 3d sound effects – all for the purpose of dazzling the senses, but with little substance at the heart of it: that’s not Star Trek. That might be Transformers, or Terminator Salvation, but it’s not Star Trek J.J.!

Star trek is the realm of awe inspiring science based fiction, about the human condition, and people of all races and species cooperating and setting out into the unknown galaxy.

I admit, I enjoyed the spectacle, and I even saw it twice. With that, I expect the next film to have more real science mixed in with the fiction, and more human elements – more heart and soul. Please.