Star Trek (2009)

First off, let me get something straight. I am not a Trekkie. Or a Trekker. Or whatever else Trekkies have started calling themselves to make themselves feel not quite so nerdy.

If I sound at all defensive about this, it's because I am. For most of my childhood and going into college, people have always automatically assumed that I'm a Star Trek fan. It's not that I have anything against Star Trek, exactly ... it's just that, well, fuck you, no, I'm not a Trekkie!

(Of course, my love of the new Battlestar Galactica and how it, um, made me cry a bunch of times is well documented, so I am fully aware of how silly and hypocritical it is for me to get worked up about the Star Trek thing. But whatever).

So I went into the new Star Trek movie with some concern. I like J.J. Abrams. I thought the trailer looked pretty cool. It seemed entirely possible that I might enjoy this movie. And if I did, what would that mean for my meticulously constructed self image as an irredeemable Treknophobe? Gulp. It's sort of like the gay high-school quarterback who gets to college and realizes he doesn't have to keep acting like a homophobic douchebag because, well, nobody really cares. It may be for the best for everyone involved, but it's still a scary prospect for said quarterback.

So, I finally went and saw the new Star Trek. Not on opening day, of course, where people might see me. I went on a Sunday morning with a couple friends, so I wouldn't feel like some sort of weirdo in a trenchcoat getting off on green alien porn. I sat there in the dark theater and tried to relax.

And, by the time the credits rolled, I felt pretty okay with the whole thing. Sure, I liked the movie. But no, it's not the greatest thing I've ever seen. I didn't get infected with some Trekkie virus. I'm not reordering my Netflix queue to catch up on all the TV seasons and movies I've so far managed to mostly avoid. My identity is safe.

Star Trek is, like Batman Begins, an origin story, and like most origin stories it spends a good portion of its narrative capital setting up the world (or worlds) and reintroducing us to beloved (or, in my case, not so beloved) characters. We meet James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), a ne'er-do-well Iowa farm boy with a dark family tragedy in his past. We meet Spock (Zachary Quinto), struggling from childhood to repress his human emotions in favor of his Vulcan logic. Kirk is recruited by Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to enlist in Starfleet, and we get the sense that he does it at least in part because he likes Uhura (Zoe Saldana), a young cadet who doesn't seem to have much use for him. On the way he befriends a nervous and irrascible young doctor, Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban). Et cetera, et cetera...

And then, like most of these origin stories, Abrams and his writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, try to backload a whole bunch of plot in the second half of the movie. This is usually the fatal flaw in films like this, and it is definitely clunky here. But it works better than I would have expected.

What works:

The casting. Almost across the board, Abrams managed to pick actors who are able to embody the essence of who we believe these characters to be without resorting to caricature. I was particularly impressed with Pine's performance as Kirk. As a nonfan I'm probably unqualified to say this, but he feels like Kirk, even though he rarely if ever tries to Shatnerize the role. We get the charm, the fearlessness, the intelligence. But Pine also lays a foundation of hurt and anger that gives Kirk a deeper resonance that I certainly don't remember from any of the other movies (granted, I haven't seen any of them in years ... see, still defensive, right?).

Quinto is also quite good as Spock. Like Kirk, we get the sense of some dark stuff simmering beneath the surface, and when he explodes it's like dynamite.

I enjoyed all the other performances, particularly Urban's McCoy -- which comes the closest to mimicry but is still fun and effective nevertheless -- and Simon Pegg's broadly comic but underused interpretation of my namesake, Scotty. Saldana is effective as Uhura but is unfortunately subject to that great curse of female characters in movies like this: she only seems to exist so that Kirk can want to screw her. Hopefully if there is a sequel they'll find something more for her to do.

The only performance I didn't like was Anton Yelchin as Chekhov. The accent didn't work. At all.

I also have to mention Eric Bana as the baddie, a renegade Romulan ship's captain from the future. This is the type of underwritten but over-the-top role that can be deadly for an actor. I'm not really a huge Bana fan, and I thought he looked kind of silly in the trailer, so I wasn't expecting much. But onscreen it works. Bana personifies all the simmering, under-the-surface rage that Kirk and Spock are trying, in their disparate ways, to supress. He seems to have walked in from a different movie altogether, and he brings a real menace to the role that I found surprising.

The tone: it's sort of de rigueur these days to make these big "reimaginings" all dark and gritty (see Christopher Nolan's Batman movies and Michael Mann's new Miami Vice). Generally, I'm all for that. The darkness and grittiness is a large part of what I love about the new BSG, after all.

But, of course, that's not Star Trek. Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman find the perfect balance between grounding the characters in some sort of emotional reality (or as much as movies like this allow), while at the same time keeping things fun. The humor was especially surprising to me. Pine and Urban bring a lot of levity to their roles, which allows Quinto to brood without getting too precious. Pegg, obviously, is very funny, and even Quinto and Bana are allowed a couple laughs.

I think if they'd gone all BSG with this, the hardcore fans would have rebelled. But they add just enough edge to make people like myself happy.

What doesn't work:

Surprisingly little, as it turns out. As I touched on before, my big beef with the movie is the way they try to cram all the actual (and pretty complicated) story into the end of the film. They manage to construct a plot that ties pretty nicely in with all the backstory, but the beats are rushed and they use the worst possible elliptical technique to dump information: Leonard Nimoy's extended cameo as Old Spock from the Future, sent here (apparently) to magically meet up with Young Kirk and explain a whole bunch of shit to him so that he can go and fulfill his destiny, or whatever. I know it's a bone for the fanboys, but really? Didn't we all learn our lesson from Watchmen?

That said, however, there are only a couple moments here and there where things bog down. Abrams keeps things moving at a brisk if not exactly breakneck pace, and he displays a unique talent for allowing character development to happen in the middle of a big action scene.

Overall, as a nonfan I'd say they did about as good a job on this new Star Trek as they could have. Certainly better than I expected. If you're going to see it though, I'd say be sure to catch it in the theater. I have a feeling that it might not hold up as well on the small screen.