Saturday, September 18, 2010

Star Trek 2009 Red Letter Media review (review on a review)

The review was pretty good – though it is not as enjoyable when he doesn’t hate the movie in question, but there's good criticism there. “So much for your peaceful vision of the future, idiot”

I wouldn’t say he likes it, at least not with some qualifiers. He states that he realizes what it is a film made to make money – basically dumbed down for the “popcorn eating dimwitted masses.” He takes some serious cracks at the characterizations (everyone’s “HYPERCHARGED”).

He does point out something that I didn’t quite catch when first watching this – that Bones is pretty useless. Sure he’s Kirk’s friend and he gets Kirk on board, but rewrite that scene (where he could simply stowaway on a shuttle), and he’s down for the count. Uhura – who I thought was largely a pain in my rear through the story (I thought Zoe Saldana was a major weak-link in the film, “HYPERCHARGED” or not).

He points out exactly what I have said about the Kobayashi Maru. Each time I see this film the K. Maru makes less sense. But hey, “popcorn eating dimwitted masses” love new-Kirk's unlikable cocky attitude for some reason. Who would have thought a scene involving WESLEY CRUSHER from Star Trek: TNG would be used to prove a legitimate point (other than Wesley Crusher being a complete tool). Wesley’s test in a TNG episode where he tries to get into Starfleet Academy induced legitimate “fear” *and* proved that he was able to make a tough life or death decision. The Kobayashi Maru in the new film is like a simple flight simulator that could *never* produce one iota of fear in the subjects. And Kirk’s smug attitude was something I just can’t get behind. He’s simply an a$$hole in the scene – regardless of whether or not he’s right about how useless the test is (as it’s presented in this film).

RLM also takes a serious crack at the TNG episode "Parallels," which he states is the “worst episode of Star Trek ever" – which may be a bit embellished, but it is pretty bad. This episode is the very foundation that the writers used to create this new film’s convoluted “we’ve changed the past so these events are in a different time line” plot. That’s pretty rough.

The review’s point about branding and name recognition only serves to embolden my opinion that Star Trek (with Kirk, Spock, and everyone else) will either be rebooted again by 2019 in the theaters (if they’re even able to get a third film off the ground by 2015-2016), or will probably be rebooted for television by 2016 (with a whole new cast since most of these people will have film careers and won’t want to do television). This criticism is more about my disgust with Paramount more than it is with the current producers of Star Trek.

Star Trek wasn’t exactly terrible in my eyes, but in my opinion it was only barely was able to capture the essence of Trek at fleeting moments, and most of them were due to good performances by Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban and off-and-on in the film, Zachary Quinto. It was the minor things that bugged me – which is why I complain about it so much.

Generally the films that get to me most, the ones that continue to fester disdain in my mind are the ones that I really wanted to like – and like a lot – but was let down for some reason or another. This film shares a lot with Nemesis (beyond the Romulan stories). Both Star Trek and Nemesis were films that I desperately wanted to love, but was let down because of poor decisions. Similarly, I can’t buy into the premise of Star Trek V or Star Trek: Insurrection, so there isn’t a lot for me to complain about – they’re both range from terrible to mediocre throughout both films. With that said, I can only hope that the sequel can improve on the foundations presented in this film and do something unique and new to the Star Trek universe.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there

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Anonymous said...

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