Review: Star Trek (2009): The Dumbing Down of a Great Sci-Fi Franchise to Fit the Attention-span of the Jersey Shore Generation

Children on board: Chekov, Kirk, Scott, Bones, Sulu and Uhura

I am going to spare everyone a summary of the plot and cut to the chase: while this movie was entertaining with a handsome cast and flashy scenes, it was not Star Trek.. If you had named it, let’s say “Space Academy – the Early Years” it would be pretty ok but naming it Star Trek is sort of like throwing a bucket of acrylic paint at the Mona Lisa and calling it art. If you dont know much about Star Trek and dont care too much about internal consistency in a movie in general, character development, plausibility or a plot for that matter, then this is the movie for you. As a matter of fact I believe that one of the reasons this movie has proven to be very popular among non-Star Trek fans is because it is not Star Trek!! It is a glossy reboot of the original with little substance beneath its action-packed surface and pretty faces, resembling more an MTV video. Here are some of the more serious issues with this movie:

+ All of the “acting” is ‘over the top’ and everyone is exaggerated, to the point of clownish buffoonery. Kirk (or Chris Pine really) appears to have ADD or something and he is arrogant, cocky, erratic, tactless and obnoxious. I was so annoyed early on with him already that I actually enjoyed watching him being beaten up at the bar. A cutsey boy cadet who walks on a bridge and says, “I’m in charge”. You have got to be kidding me. Not only that but an Admiral placing him as second in command of a ship? Wow.

The Bloomingdale's make up counter doesn't look this chic

+ Lightning fast cuts from one scene to another like an MTV video and really poor plot where all the Enterprise crew just happen to find themselves together even though their entire respective pasts have been inexorably changed? Ridiculous.

+ The back stories behind how the original characters met was insulting and every tagline from the original series was used most inappropriately, as if they had a list of lines required to be used so that they could show at least some resemblance to the original show. Instead of spending time on developing each character, such as Spock’s inner struggle and Kirk fighting his demons and finally turning from a repeat offender to a serious and devoted Starfleet officer, they forwarded (literally) all that to focus more on CGI effects and visuals.

An adolescent, arrogant Kirk caught cheating gets to play captain

+ Speaking of visuals: The interior of the Enterprise looks like a Bloomingdale’s make-up counter. How ridiculous and untrue to even an altered timeline was that? The interior of ships in the 24th century didnt look this chic.

+ The villain was uninspired and dumb. Seriously. I mean here you got this Romulan (who doesn’t even remotely look Romulan by the way and has super strength) decide to obliterate _an entire planet_ based on essentially faulty intelligence. There is no passion, no substance, no character behind his person and motive other than what was written in the script for him to act like. God awful.

Spock makes out with Uhura - pon farr or not

+ The product placement was so obvious. Way to promote an enlightened future in which all of human kinds’ ills coming from money and economic deprivation have been eradicated – by having something like 20 millions worth of product placement in there.

+ Bones: The reason for why McCoy says he is called “bones” was totally pulled out of the writers’ butts in this movie. The expression comes from civil war time doctors who had to use saws to amputate legs. The term “bones” (which Kirk called McCoy in The Original Series) comes from that. In this stupid movie McCoy says “in a divorce my wife got everything and left me dry to my BONES” and they use that to explain why Kirk calls him “bones”. Ridiculous.

+ If this is a future in which money has been eradicated (and lawyers executed), how can McCoy _lose_ everything he has in a divorce and be left “dry to his bones”?

+ The Star Trek series, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation, brought in top scientific minds to advise about what is and is not science and how they can take an idea and transform it such that, even though it is science-fiction, it is still scientifically consistent and coherent. This movie spent a lot of time on special effects, flashy scenes and catchy one-liners but very little on rationalizing the science and incorporating it intelligently into the movie to create consistency. They dumbed the whole premise down to a grade school level and some of the things they are trying to pass as “science” would make the head of any Star Trek regular writer spin in disbelief. That’s what happens though when you set out to deliver bread and circuses to the masses. Ships flying through Black Holes and coming out the other side intact? Enterprise escapes the black hole by blowing up the warp core inside of it? Ski diving onto a platform FROM SPACE? A mining ship annihilating an entire planet?

Spock doing to Kirk what I wanted to do to him all along

+ The writers seemed to be thinking that simply because this is science fiction, any kind of implausible garbage they come up with goes. Sci-fi doesnt equal magic though and the one thing Star Trek didnt rely on was magic bullets to explain phenomena and anomalies etc. In this movie, the most absurd stuff goes down and we are to believe it makes sense because the genre is sci-fi and the writers say so? How stupid do they actually think people are?

+ This movie is not true to Star Trek in even a rudimentary way. It is not intelligent, or thought provoking. It is not about space exploration and asking the tough questions, there is no ttempt at science, philosophy. Nothing. This is Star Trek the way only a product of the over-stimulated times we live in could make it. Cheeky, sexy, and dumb.

BFFs out of the blue, yet forever

+ Speaking of inconsistency: Spock’s and Kirk’s relationship in this movie is adversarial from the start and all they do is argue and fight and at some point Spock is juts about to strangle Kirk. Yet in the end, somehow out of the blue, they become good friends, because the old Spock says they were in another life. That is completely inconsistent with how the characters have behaved and been portrayed throughout the movie as you cannot just push the button and say “hey, I am good friends with you now”. That is just bad writing folks. If you cant even get something like character consistency within a plot right, you are a lousy writer. How Orci and Kurtzman are still with a job and get to write the sequels is truly beyond me.

+ Kirk’s promotion: how does a cadet go from being suspended for cheating to becoming the captain of one of Starfleet’s most prestigious spaceships less than a week later? Yes he saved Earth, but come on. That scene where he is decorated as the second coming of Zefram Cochrane, by the same man who just a few days ago held the hearing on his cheating ways, was ridiculous. A cadet getting full command of a flagship while his instructor, in whose class he cheated and was caught, gets to serve under him as second in command? Laughable…if I was Spock, Vulcan stoicism or not, I would have taken the matter to Starfleet command.

+ McCoy’s character played by Karl Urban seemed too old and sophisticated to be a Starfleet cadet, especially among this group of immature rascals. He seemed to be the only adult amidst this circus where a child (Kirk) was getting to play captain or something. Even though Urban did a fantastic job playing McCoy, they should have cast him either next to a more mature cast of Kirks and Spocks or cast him as an admiral or something. He really was the only one who wasnt out of his mind.
+ More than 600 episodes from Star Trek: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, and Voyager are all rendered invalid, because a couple of writers, who I must mention have never even written a Star Trek episode before, had so little creative talent that their best idea was Well, why dont we just change the whole time-line, then we dont have to worry about established details and accurate characterizations. I am sure it’s a good way for the writers and producers to turn a fast buck but Star Trek is part of pop culture. The continuity so lovingly and painstakingly preserved by all the movies, TV series and novels subsequent to the The Original Series has been destroyed with this movie. You dont have to be a Trek geek to find that outrageous.

Spock giving the four digit Vulcan Salute

+ It is sad to know that the last time I, or anyone of us, will probably EVER see Leonard Nimoy do the Vulcan salute is in this nasty piece of tourist trinket!
Bottom line: Somehow it all felt very untrue to the essence of Star Trek. It was too Hollywood and glammy and very little story and depth. If you like bling and lots of mind-less action and nail-biting sequences and good looking, hollow characters having music-video length “dialogs” with each other while flashing their handsomeness in front of smooth, shiny surfaces and catchy shots, then this is the movie for you. But if you expect substance, drama, depth, coherence and plausibility, then you are in the wrong place. They had a lot of potential with this one but they just missed it. Since they were going to make sequels, they should have spent more time truly developing the characters and their relationships with one another and just the beginnings of their journey rather than rushing through that part and getting into some mind-less, pointless, absurd plot involving an insane yet at the same time comical Frankenstein’s Romulan monster. They just missed all that and it felt rushed. The creative angle was missing and you could literally see dollar signs hanging from every cgi shot. Open up a spot for Jackie Chan, 20 ninjas and Lindsey Lohan in the sequel and the abomination will be complete.

Review: Reality Bites

Never has angst looked so attractive and essential

“Reality Bites” is a movie that I found (and still find) to be very close to the real life experiences people who leave the safety of college face. If you are in your late 30s or early 40s and kinda settled in your ways and job, you probably won’t get this movie anymore. You are too grown up and the issues these mid-20 something kids are facing will seem trivial and nonsensical to you.

Heck, even the actors, in the movie’s “special features” section – especially Steve Zahn and Ethan Hawke, as well as Ben Stiller – don’t really get the characters they played 16 years ago anymore. They talk about how childish their struggles in retrospect seem to have been and how bratty and ungrateful they find their characters now that they themselves have reached their mid-late 30s, early 40s and apparently figured out what life is all about: “having a career or something…” I guess that’s where the true tragedy lies: no longer being able to identify with your idealistic, hopeful, driven young self of the past anymore.

Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder) just can't seem to figure it out

This movie is about four friends who face life – Reality – right after college. Leleina’s (Winona Ryder) speech at the beginning of the movie about what her generation is going to do with the damage they have inherited and a poignant “I dont know” as a response sum it up pretty well.

She is the valedictorian of her college and an aspiring documentary film maker. She walks around with her camera filming her friends, asking them lots of personal and intimate questions about themselves and life in order to eventually create a documentary that will mean something. She wants to make a difference in the world and just like any hopeful college student, was imagining that she would “be somebody” after all the hard work she put in thus far. Little did she know that Reality just doesnt work that way. It’s hard to be a saint in a paradise that is crumbling and when paying your rent takes precedence over making a meaningful difference in someone’s, or even your own, life.

That's all we need: a couple of smokes, a cup of coffee and a little bit of conversation. Just you and me and five bucks

She shares an apartment with her nerdy-hip friend Vicki Miner (Janeane Garofalo) who is a cynical yet at the same time strangely idealistic girl working at The Gap as a manager. Even though she is hip and goofy she is also lonely and feels like she is pursuing hollow ambitions. She graduated college, but the only thing she really seems to have remembered is her social security number, which she can recite to Leleina even when she is drunk and stoned at the same time. If you’ve gone to college in the 90s, you’ll know that your social is just about the most important and over-used thing ever.

Their gay friend Sam, who seems very tight with Vicki, has even less of a clue about what he wants to do with his life now that he graduated. He is shy and has not come out to his mother yet about being gay. He thinks he needs to have a career of some sort, but just like his counterparts, is floating adrift in a sea of cluelessness about not only who he is but also what is expected out of him.

Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke)

And then finally there is Troy Dyer, brilliantly acted by Ethan Hawke. Troy is a rebel, the freethinker, the “what’s-it-all-mean” kinda  guy. He is a philosophy major who was only a few units away from his BFA – yet he does not seem very interested in ever going back to finish up. He is superbly smart and could probably land a good paying job faster than any of his friends if he actually put some ambition and effort into it, but he doesnt want to. He is an artist and his music and philosophy mean a lot to him and he seems to have little use or respect for the “establishment”. His music and his philosophy mean so much to him that he is not willing to just give it all up so he can get that “toehold in the burger industry”. In fact, he has a disdain for it and the fact that his everyone has sold out to it.  His father is dying of cancer and he doesnt want to give up the one thing that means something to him and then end up like him, with tumors growing in his groin.

Troy is madly, insanely and secretly in love with Lelaina and because that is the only non-cynical emotion he has, he has a hard time telling her to her face how he feels about her or even fully commit. He dates a lot of faceless girls whose names he often doesnt remember and whose phone numbers he can memorex even less.

As far as Troy (Ethan Hawke) is concerned, the establishment owes him Snickers

Troy is the most interesting and intriguing character in this movie as he just symbolizes the struggle his generation is facing so poignantly and realistically. The philosopher and artist inside him refuses to sell out for a steady paycheck and an equally meaningless and meager profession that will catapult his life into a boring, meaningless and existential rut. He takes pleasure in the details, like “quarter pounders with cheese, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment your laughter becomes a cackle…” and all he and Leleina apparently need are 5 bucks, a coffee and good conversation. He steals a Snickers from the gas station he works at, stating that the establishment “owed him Snickers” and gets fired.

When he moves in with Leilana and Vicky, Vicky says that it is only temporary until “he can afford his own place”. Lelaina responds that this was the American dream of the 90s and could take years. Indeed. Even in the 2010s, if you can afford your own place by the time you are 35, you are lucky. The Dream never seems to end for America.

"There is no secret handshake. There is an IQ pre-requisite, but no secret handshake"

The diametrical opposite to Troy is Michael Grates (Ben Stiller). He is a bit older, a few years out of college and pretty much grounded in reality. He takes an interest in Leleina after he runs into her car by accident and has her come to his office only to find out that she is broke and cannot afford a law suit. When he first comes over to the “maxi pad” (as Vicky calls their apartment), Troy mistakes him for a “collection agent”. Michael is precisely what Troy does not want to be: he wears a suit, he has a boring corporate job, a steady income; in short: a sellout.  In a way he Michael “conformed” to the system and he has learned to walk the line of adulthood and idealism because he has realized that sometimes you gotta wrap the meatloaf in attractive wrapping (i.e. make concessions) to sell it. Troy thinks he’s the reason Cliff’s notes were invented. Tensions ensue as Leleina finds herself rejected from jobs she didn’t even want to have and as Troy’s feelings for her finally come to the surface, in turn creating tension between her and Michael.

Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke

This is a movie that captures the Zeitgeist of Generation X pretty accurately. I cannot describe the so many ways in which the struggles these college graduates go through truly resembles the reality for many people in their age and place. I’ve lived nearly every moment and spoken nearly every dialog said in this movie in my own life.

These kids are overeducated and underpaid and, literally, from one day to the other, have to come to terms with the fact that all the hard work they put into their education and idealism is not going to become a reality – at least not anytime soon and definitely not the way they imagined it would.

Troy resists this disillusionment as much as he can – which is what makes him so appealing as a character: he represents the “I won’t surrender” scream we all wished we had yelled out at some point in our lives to declare our independence but also the discontent with the status quo. But we all know that – as if trapped in quicksand – Troy will be sucked into accepting this biting Reality at some point in his life, like the rest of us, whether he likes it or not.  Let’s just hope he does not end up like his father.