Star Trek

I will be watching The Spirit again to try and dissect where and how badly it went wrong. I will also be re watching Star Trek. Because it is a really well put together film.

It starts with a bang. It is a great opening. Right off the bat, it demonstrates just how different this Trek is from past versions. Space is not sterile blackness. Light explodes across the screen whenever possible. The battles are not the slow, submarines in space affairs of before. The lasers are not solid beams. There is a lot more motion.

And George Kirk dies. That changes the character of James T a fair bit. It changes his motivations, but not his core. But the death of George Kirk also shows how this Trek is a lot closer to the classic Trek than some of the later series. Shatner was cast as Kirk for a reason. As was all the original cast. And there is a reason they are all so easy to imitate/mock.

They are larger than life, they are operatic. They had to be. Most of the original series was shot from a distance. So the cast set their standards to that. They were playing to the cheap seats. When the camera got in close, though, they didn't pull back.

The camera in this movie is almost always close, in on the faces. In on the action. The framing of the action and the actors is operatic, so the actors can be a little less so.

But they are all fantastic. Each actor inhabits their characters, without falling into straight mimicry.

There are some nits that can be picked.

The first for me is the introduction of kid Kirk. I understand that they were trying to show how the lack of his birth father had made him rebellious and angry. But the scene to me just made me think he was a douche. An ungrateful little shit. The bar scene a few scenes later was all does a much better job of setting up his character.

I understand that they wanted the symmetry there: young Kirk - young Spock - adult Spock - adult Kirk. But the kid Kirk is easily the weakest scene in the whole damn film, so I woulda chucked it. But that's me.

I also didn't like the chase scene on the ice planet. It seemed to Phantom Menace-y. Remember that scene with the fish? Yeah. Lame then, still lame now. Like a piece of screenwriting software flagged that section of the film for not having enough action. Superfluous.

And the villain of the piece didn't have all that much to do. I mean he did a lot. A lot. He changed the whole god damn Universe. But he seemed less a foil for the crew of the Enterprise and more like a plot point.

But this film was not about the villain, it was about the crew of the Enterprise. Who they are, how they fit together. And on that point, Star Trek more than succeeded.