Star Trek (2009)

A review by Azzam Abdur-Rahman There are a lot of different nicknames for films. You have your blank checks where you make something with a seemingly endless budget. You have your star vehicles where the director and writer do matter. Your low-budget flicks. So on and So on but J.J. Abrams take on Star Trek is the first and only consolation prize film. Now don’t get me wrong as a 100 million dollar action film it is fun, exciting and well made but as a Star Trek film it is all wrong. Abrams a lifelong Star Wars fan was offered a franchise diametrically different and he decided “Naw, I am gonna make this a Star Wars flick!” And that is why I am talking about these films compared to Brooks because guess what… I don’t hate them. Abrams did something that no one else had done so far. He made Star Trek big with this film. Big to a point when this released people were clamoring for the next installment but the film isn’t without its flaws because at the end of the day it’s a consolation prize. To discuss this Trek is to discuss its cast which is truly the master stroke of this film. We can agree to disagree on may pieces of this movie but Abrams really got this right. Simon Pegg as Scotty was a master class choice because he is not only an iconic actor to this point for his work in british television but his work in film as well. Then the cast is a swath of up and comers or people who have never been given this kind of film before. Anton Yelchin (may he forever be loved and rest blissfully in piece) is a guy who could take any role and make it viable! John Cho has been a company player for so long and his own franchise showed how incredible he could be! Karl Urban was a B-Movie flop by this point but this film showed not only can he act he is an irreplaceable entity in this franchise the second he says his first line. Zoe Saldana has the weakest role and she still kills it! But the best of the best here is Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. Quinto was built for the role of Spock. He looks the part naturally and I mean that as the highest compliment but he also is able to make emotions shocking in a way no other actor can. His whole bit on Heroes was his heel turn having weight and emotion in a shocking way. The man makes the calculated unfeeling nature of being Vulcan and the pure emotion of being human feel like a real duality something we hadn’t seen from the franchise before. Chris Pine on the other hand had to have been the hardest to cast. Shatner love him or hate him made a space navy captain sexy, brave, funny and charming all at once. You were willing to support him in the previous films and shows because he believed in taking risks and doing what needed to be done for the greater good. While Nimoy was iconic as Spock, Shatner was and is James T. Kirk. Everything about that character rested on the shoulders of not imitating the work Shatner. Pine was not only the perfect casting choice but the only one who would have worked. He is rugged charisma. He is the kind of actor that being good looking is a detriment too because he is so good he is overlooked often. And all this incredible casting lives in a broken movie too.. And this is where my praise ends because the plot of this film is a nightmare. This film try to both have its cake and eat it too. The plot involves time travel creating an alternate dimension from the traditional Trek story lines. At the time, it worked. It was an easy way to reboot the franchise and be respectful to the original in some way but at time has gone the move has a felt lazy and it undermined the work of the earlier films. It finds way to make the movie its own punching bag. Just beating you into the plot it wants to have which is pure bombast. Star Trek is famous for diplomacy and political ideas being at the forefront of the plot. The villain Nero talks about that once then it is back to big booms and bangs but that isn’t what offended Trek fans most. It was the pure destruction of Vulcan. In order to have his Death Star moment Abrams had a planet wiped out of the plot of this franchise for what I assume is fun. It is an insane choice that adds to the idea that bombast was the only thing Abrams was interested in. With that being said, it is a good start to a franchise that for the longest time did not reward incoming fans. Trek was always the smartest show where a man fights an alien and Abrahms found a way to make it the average sci-fi that could be better. At the time I saw it I had high hopes that they would reign back the bombast and bring back what Trek fans love most about this franchise. It’s hope for the future but that isn’t what we got in the next sequel but we will talk about that next sunday. Star Trek (2009) is a consolation prize at the end of the day so this is still better than it has any right to be and all we can do is just accept that there was a version of this film that could have been made with Matt Damon. We didn’t need that.

Rating: 3/5