J.J. Abrams reinvigorates and reinvents the Star Trek franchise in this fun new film.
The Plot: (Spoilers)
The starship USS Kelvin encounters an anomaly in space. As the crew investigates, a huge ominous-looking spaceship emerges, opens fire, and hails the Kelvin. A Romulan appears on the viewscreen and demands that the captain take a shuttle over to the ship. The captain (Faran Tahir) leaves the Kelvin in the command of his first officer, George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth), with instructions to evacuate the ship if he doesn't hear back from the captain. On the Romulan ship, the captain is interrogated about a ship he knows nothing about and an Ambassador Spock he has never heard of. He is asked the stardate, and when he says it is 2233, he is killed by Captain Nero (Eric Bana).
On the Kelvin, Kirk opens fire and orders the crew to abandon ship. This includes his wife Winona (Jennifer Morrison), who is pregnant with their son and is going into labor. The entire crew makes it off the ship except for Kirk, who tries to set the auto-pilot for a collision course with the Romulan ship, but it is offline. Kirk decides to sacrifice himself to give the rest of the crew time to get away. As he pilots the Kelvin, he talks with Winona, who has just given birth. Together they name their son James Tiberius Kirk before the Kelvin is destroyed in the collision.
Years later, a young James T. Kirk is in Iowa and is joyriding in a 1960s Corvette. A policeman on a hoverbike spots him and gives chase. Kirk ends up heading straight for a cliff; he realizes at the last second and jumps from the car as it goes over. Meanwhile, on Vulcan, a young Spock is teased by a group of Vulcan boys about his mixed heritage due to his human mother, in an attempt to provoke an emotional response from him. (They succeed.)
Now grown, Spock (Zachary Quinto) is accepted into the Vulcan Science Academy, but declines to go to Starfleet Academy on Earth instead. Meanwhile in a bar back in Iowa, Kirk (Chris Pine) meets Starfleet Cadet Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and gets into a fight with other cadets.
The fight is broken up by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruse Greenwood), who tells Kirk that he studied the Kelvin and knows of his father's heroism, and challenges the young Kirk to join Starfleet and do better.
Kirk is reluctant, but end up boarding the transport to the Academy. He ends up sitting next to Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), who has joined Starfleet after losing everything in a divorce. He says all he has left are his bones.
A few years later, somewhere in space, Nero's ship is waiting, when an anomoly like the first one appears and a small ship emerges. Nero orders it captured.
At Starfleet Academy, Kirk has just taken the Kobayahi Maru no-win scenario for the second time, and plans to take it again. His friend McCoy doesn't understand why, since it can't be beaten, but Kirk is confident. When he takes the test again, he is acting strangly calm, when the simulated Klingon ships inexplicably drop their sheilds, allowing Kirk to successfully beat the scenario. The creator of the test, Spock, has no explanation. Kirk is accused of cheating and a hearing is called where Kirk meets Spock, but it is interrupted when an emergency on Vulcan requires all the cadets to be immediately commissioned and assigned to ships, except Kirk who is on a suspension for his suspected cheating. McCoy is assigned to the USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain Pike, and sneaks Kirk onboard. Spock and Uhura are also assigned to the Enterprise. Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (John Cho) inadvertantly delays the Enterprise's departure momentarily, putting it a few seconds behind the other ships. When their mission is announced, Kirk realizes the similarities between this situation and how the Kelvin was destroyed, and rushes to the bridge to tell Captain Pike. They arrive at Vulcan to find that the other Starfleet ships have already been destroyed by the powerful Romulan ship, which fires on the Enterprise and does serious damage before Nero hails and orders Pike to come to his ship. Pike leaves Spock in command and makes Kirk first officer, to Spock's annoyance. He assigns Kirk, Sulu and the chief engineer to make an orbital skydive to destroy the Romulan's drill that is being used against Vulcan and is interfering with the transporter. If they can't stop the Romulans they are to fall back and regroup with the rest of the fleet.
Kirk and Sulu manage to land on the drill, but the engineer missed and was killed by it, and he had all the explosives. They fight off some Romulans and use their weapons to disable the drill, but its too late: the Romulans have formed a black hole inside Vulcan that will destroy the planet in minutes. Sulu falls from the drill, Kirk jumps to save him, and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) beams them up before they hit the ground. Spock then beams down to find and rescue the Vulcan Council, which includes his parents. He gets them out of their cave, but the planet is rapidly collapsing and as they start to beam up the ground under Spock's mother, Amanda (Winona Ryder), collapses and she falls out of the transporter beam to her death. The planet Vulcan collapses into the black hole as the Enterprise leaves to regroup with the fleet, and Spock estimates that only about 10,000 Vulcans escaped. Uhura tries to comfort him. Meanwhile, on the Romulan ship Nero wants Pike to give him Earth's defense codes, and puts a sluglike creature down Pike's throat to make him more cooperative.
On the Enterprise, Kirk wants to go after Nero before he attacks Earth and argues with Spock, who intends to regroup with the fleet as ordered. Spock puts Kirk in an escape pod and leaves him on frozen Delta Vega. Kirks pod lands several miles from a Starfleet outpost and as Kirk walks he encounters some of Delta Vega's dangerous native creatures and takes refuge in a cave, where he finds an elderly Vulcan who claims to be Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Old Spock mind-melds with Kirk, revealing that in the future, Spock had tried to prevent the destruction of Romulus, but had failed. Nero, captain of a Romulan mining ship, lost his family and wanted revenge on Spock and the Federation. In attempting to escape, Spock caused them both to be thrown back to different points in time. Nero captured him and left him on Delta Vega so he could see Vulcan be destroyed, using the technology on Spock's ship, and now was on his way to destroy Earth.
Kirk and Spock get to the outpost where they find Scotty (Simon Pegg), who was exiled to Delta Vega after losing Admiral Archer's beagle in a transporter accident. Spock shows Scotty the secret of transwarp beaming to get Kirk and Scotty onto the Enterprise, saying that having seen his home destroyed and his mother killed, his younger self is too emotionally compromised and Kirk must convince him to give up his command. Kirk and Scotty beam onto the Enterprise, and Kirk provokes Spock, leading him to realize he is not fit for command.
Kirk takes command and goes after Nero. Chekov finds a way to sneak up on Nero's ship and Spock volunteers to beam over and steal back Spock Prime's ship (though Spock doesn't yet know where it came from). Kirk goes along to try and rescue Pike.
On the Romulan ship, which has started to drill into Earth, Spock finds Spock Prime's ship, and when the ship recognizes him and reveals the future date, Spock puts the pieces together. Meanwhile Kirk fights Nero and his crew to get to Pike. While Spock launches his ship and uses it to destroy the drill, Kirk rescues Pike. Spock sets a collision course and Scotty beams Spock, Kirk and Pike to the Enterprise. The collision creates a black hole that will destroy Nero's ship. Kirk offers to rescue Nero, but he refuses and the Enterprise manages to escape while Nero and his ship are destroyed.
On Earth, Spock meets his future self, who reveals that since the past has already been changed and there are so few Vulcans left he can't stay in hiding. For his heroism, Kirk is promoted to Captain and put in command of the Enterprise, replacing Pike who was promoted to Admiral and is now in a wheelchair from his injuries on Nero's ship. Spock volunteers to be Kirk's first officer, and the complete crew warps off into space.
My Review:
This is a very good film (despite some continuity errors and a few other oddities) and at least one of the best in the Star Trek film series, though it will take more than one viewing before I am comfortable ranking it among the others. J.J. Abrams certainly knows how to make a movie. There is more action is this film than any other Star Trek film. Many of the action scenes are filmed with the quick cuts that are part of most movies today, and sometimes they seem to be too fast, though after seeing the film again I may change my mind. All of the action is otherwise done well and most of the stunts seem realistic and reasonable (unlike those in recent superhero movies and those shown in the movie trailers that precede Star Trek). The writers clearly know Star Trek and care about the franchise. The script is full of dialogue that references the original TV series and movies. There is even a great reference to the Star Trek: Enterprise TV series. The special effects were excellent, as is to be expected from Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic. The Enterprise doesn't look exactly like we remember it, but it still looks like the Enterprise and looks good, as do the other Starfleet ships we see. I'm not sure I like the designs of some of the other ships, but they are well rendered. Now on to the cast:
Chris Pine as James T. Kirk: Chris Pine made the role of Kirk his own. Of all the cast members, Pine's performance as Kirk is probably the hardest to compare to that of the role's original actor. For one, Pine's Kirk is younger than William Shatner's Kirk ever was, and, perhaps more importantly, Pine's Kirk is intentionally meant to be somewhat different than Shatner's Kirk. (This makes sense in the plot of the film.) Thus, Pine's Kirk never really reminded me of Shatner's Kirk, and I was able to accept him as Kirk and I thought he did a good job. We don't see a lot of Kirk as we're used to seeing him: in command on the bridge of the Enterprise, but when we do see him in that role, it works.
Zachary Quinto as Spock: Quinto did a great job as Spock. His performance will undoubtedly be compared to Leonard Nimoy's (and in this particular film that particular comparison can't be avoided). Quinto credibly held his own as a younger version of the Spock we know. At his most Spock-like, Quinto's performance seemed the most like his predecessor's of any of the new actors, and I easily accepted him as Spock.
Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard McCoy: I thought Karl Urban's Dr. McCoy stole the show in pretty much every scene he was in. The writers gave him great McCoy-esque lines and Urban gave the lines a quality that really made him seem like a younger version of the late DeForest Kelley. I think Urban and Quinto gave the performances that best reflect the way the characters were portrayed by the original actors.
Simon Pegg as Montgomery Scott: Simon Pegg's Scotty doesn't appear until well into the film, so we don't see as much of him as some of the others, but Pegg nailed the accent and gave a good performance of Scotty most of the time. There were moments when he seemed a bit too excited, but I think this might have been more of a writing/direction problem than with the actor.
John Cho as Hikaru Sulu: There's not a lot to say about Cho's performance as Sulu. The character doesn't get a lot of dialogue (apparently getting an exciting fencing scene instead), but Cho does a credible job.
Zoe Saldana as Uhura: We see more of Saldana's Uhura than we do of Cho's Sulu, though without giving away spoilers its hard to describe her character's role (though she still fills the communications officer position as she did in the TV series, there's a lot more to her role here) but I will say that she gave a good performance.
Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov: Yelchin's Chekov is interesting. The character's accent seemed a bit overdone; it is played for laughs, especially the famous v-w aspect, and, like Pegg's Scotty, Yelchin's Chekov seemed a bit too excited sometimes. The character isn't played entirely for laughs though, and is shown to be a very competant (though young) Starfleet officer. Yelchin doesn't look anything like Walter Koenig, which isn't his fault, but it does make him seem a little out of place, but if you look past that and the overdone accent, he did good.
Eric Bana as Nero: I expect Eric Bana and his character, the Romulan villain Nero, is going to be compared to Tom Hardy's Shinzon from Star Trek: Nemesis. Nero is a better villain than Shinzon though. Nero is obsessive and has an axe to grind, much like the great Star Trek villian Khan, and Bana plays him well. When it comes to Star Trek villiains, Nero is one of the best, up there with Khan and the Borg Queen.
Leonard Nimoy as Spock Prime: I don't really know what there is to say about Leonard Nimoy's role as Spock Prime, except that it is everything one would expect from him. Nimoy IS Spock, and there's really no way he can mess it up. I thought he let Spock show a little more emotion than usual, especially in the scene with Zachary Quinto, but considering what happens in the film, it works.
Other Characters: The actors playing the minor characters all did reasonable jobs. Winona Ryder as Spock's mother Amanda worked surprisingly well. Ben Cross was OK as Sarek, though I do miss the late Mark Lenard. Chris Hemsworth and Jennifer Morrison (best known as Dr. Cameron from House) were good as Kirk's parents, as was Bruce Greenwood as Pike. The kid who played young Spock did OK. I didn't care much for the kid who played young Kirk, but then again he only really had one line, so its hard to judge him.
Some other comments about the film...
Kudos to the writers for coming up with a plot that largely respects the existing canon, and yet frees the film from it. This is accomplished through time travel, with Nero coming back in time from the future of the existing canon and creating an alternate reality that diverges from the old reality at Kirk's birth. This explains the differences in Pine's Kirk from Shatner's Kirk, as Shatner's Kirk knew his father while Pine's Kirk didn't. This can also account for most of the other differences, such as the different look of the Enterprise and the uniforms. This plot makes Star Trek: Enterprise the only part of previous Star Trek canon that applies to this film (and presumably any future films).
This film gives the first glipse of a time period we've never seen before: the time period of the USS Kelvin's destruction, when Kirk was born. I don't know if it was intentional, but I thought the blue uniforms of the Kelvin's crew with the Starfleet arrowhead made for a nice transition between the blue astronaut jumpsuits of Star Trek: Enterprise and the later uniforms of the rest of the film.
On the original Star Trek series, each starship had a unique insignia, with only the Enterprise using the arrowhead insignia. Star Trek: Enterprise referenced this when the uniforms of the USS Defiant were seen in In a Mirror, Darkly. By the time of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, all of Starfleet used the arrowhead. Now we see that at the time of the USS Kelvin, that ship's crew wore the arrowhead insignia, as do all the cadets during the film's main time period. Does this mean that the individual insignias for each ship was a short term "experiment" during the time of the original series?
Apparently in both the Kelvin's time and the time period of the film "Stardates" are just the calendar year, suggesting that at some time in the near future the stardate scale will be recalibrated to align with that of the original series and beyond. (Did Nero know about that?)
A bald Romulan with a giant starship and a weapon of mass destruction who wants to get his revenge by destroying the Earth; where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, the last Star Trek film: Star Trek: Nemesis! (OK, Shinzon wasn't technically a Romulan, but still...) If they are going to recycle a plot, at least it works better here.
The USS Kelvin had only one warp nacelle. Wasn't it established somewhere that a starship needs at least two?
Was Kirk's mother a Starfleet officer assigned to the USS Kelvin, or did Starfleet ships during the Kelvin's time have families aboard?
Now we know where Kirk got his odd middle name (and incidentally, I was named after after my two grandfathers just like Kirk was, so I think that explanation is pretty cool). But that still begs the question, why was Kirk's paternal grandfather named Tiberius?
So NOKIA and Budweiser are still in business 200+ years from now. I guess I know whose stock to buy.
The cop's hoverbike was cool, but his uniform and face mask and the way he said "CITIZEN" seemed really dystopian to me.
Considering that Starfleet Academy is in San Francisco, what are Starfleet cadets doing hanging out in Iowa?
Uhura ordered a Cardassian drink from the bar, suggesting that first contact with the Cardassians had occurred some time ago.
Uhura's attitude towards Kirk, and her relationship with Spock (which just seemed weird), should add a whole new layer of subtext to some of the scenes from the original series.
Speaking of Uhura and Spock, Spock apparently never mentioned that he was betrothed to T'Pring. On the bright side, that probably doesn't matter anymore anyway.
Kirk's Orion girlfriend was a nice touch.
Spock created the Kobyashi Maru test?
While the active cadets were apparently given field commissions, Kirk was put on a suspension from the academy unitl the Kobyashi Maru incident was resolved, so was still a cadet and wasn't even supposed to be on the Enterprise, yet Pike made Kirk, who, as a cadet, was presumably under EVERYONE ELSE ON THE SHIP in the chain of command, acting first officer. And nobody besides Spock had a problem with that?
Kirk realized early on that the ship attacking Vulcan was the same ship that destroyed the USS Kelvin, but never seemed to acknowledge that Nero was responsible for his father's death.
Scotty's reference to Admiral Archer's beagle was a great reference to Star Trek: Enterprise, but seeing as how this is about 90 years after Enterprise, it's probably not the same Archer and definitely not the same beagle, which is good, because I liked Porthos and wouldn't have wanted him to die in a transporter accident.
Whose idea was Scotty's little sidekick? He reminded me way too much of the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi. At least his appearances were brief.
On a similar note, who came up with the "Scotty in the pipe" scene? That was just silly.
Spock relinquishing his temporary command of the Enterprise is referred to as "resigning his commission" which isn't the same thing!
So Kirk was promoted directly from Cadet to Captain? That's got to be the fastest rise through the ranks EVER! I realize its kind-of necessary, after all, he's not Lieutenant Kirk or Commander Kirk, he's CAPTAIN Kirk, but still. Is Starfleet shorthanded or something?
The new version of the original Star Trek Theme is very cool.
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