Movie Review: Star Trek (The Lamest Plot)

When will hollywood learn that the quickest way to make a crappy movie is to use "Time Travel" as a plot device, and so it is that we come to the polished turd that is "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (no not that one, the new one).

While were on the subject lets throw the canon in a corner and take a massive crap on it. Then take the pieces that didn't get any shit on them and throw them back in to the movie willy nilly.

I almost didn't go to see this movie when I heard it involved time travel. I mean the instant you bring TT into a movie it is nearly impossible to reconcile the paradoxes thus created. Seriously.... Deranged miner blames Spock for the destruction of Romulus so he "ends up" going back in time and once there decides to exact revenge on Spock by destroying Vulcan and Earth. Oh yeah Spock also "ends up" going back in time 25 years after that, and mean ol' Romulan guy is waiting for him, captures him and then proceeds to destroy Vulcan (and kills Spock's mom too the big meanie), and now we have 2 Spock's in one time and some junk that makes "Black holes" called "Red Matter" (imaginative name ay! cause it's matter, and it's red... get it?), and all the history of who, how, and what is thrown out the windows (the canon). So if Romulus is destroyed what would be the point of attempting to make peace with a race who's planet will be destroyed in a supernova some time in the future? You figure out the logic (or lack thereof) behind it all.

Next up lets change some of the characters.... Like making Spock and Uhura hot for each other (what, Ohhhh!, Huh?). Wasn't it Nurse Chapel who was hot for Spock, Oh... Right she's not in this one. Oh and Uhura rooms with a green Orion slave girl with a bad body paint job (cause Starfleet needs horny oversexed controlling women in it's ranks). Well make Scotty an eccentric guy with a little alien comic relief dude for an assistant. Then there's the reckless, yet some how always right Kirk. Except Kirk was never reckless. Spock is played as a brooding know it all (borderline EMO) douche bag who flies off the handle over the slightest insult, and don't even say "yo mama" to him. Then for good measure toss in a little bit of Sulu and Chekov (just a little cause we don't know how to develop their characters). Though we will make Chekov an over reactive spaz. Then there are the Vulcan's who have suddenly become snotty eugenics types who conveniently have emotions whenever they feel like it.

Now the ships and equipment... The inside of the ships vary from hospital like sterility with a touch of art deco discotheque thrown in, to what looks like a large chemical plant , sewer plant, or maybe a brewery. The hand phasers did a silly mechanical switching from stun to kill. The giant mining ship looked like it escaped from an episode of Babylon 5. For a utilitarian device it has a lot of unnecessary nasty/evil looking spikes and protrusions all over it. I could just see some Romulan ship designer having his design rejected for not being SCARY enough "damn the cost! I want my mining ship to scare the piss out of an asteroid before I strip it of minerals". The Enterprise looked like Chihuly Thew up and out came the plans.

Okay... Enough Bashing, now to the things I did like about the movie.

The CG and special effects are top notch. The battle scenes are nice and messy, and sometimes when we are outside the ship there is no sound (just like in real space). We get to see the Enterprise maneuver more like a fighter jet then wallow around going only left and right like they did in most of the TV series.

There were some quite funny, but mostly irrelevant moments throughout the movie. There is even the gratuitous red shirt who gets killed. Doctor McCoys Character is nearly spot on, and he spouts a few of TOS cliches. We actually get to see Captain Christopher Pike do something more that go "beep" or even "beep.... Beep....". The original communicator even makes a couple of cameos.

For the most part though they might as well have made the movie about a completely different set of characters that had nothing to do with the original.

Go see it, but try not to think about it too much or you'll end up bashing it on a blog nobody ever reads (oh wait).


Eric said...

I thought this movie was pretty good.

The plot was based around the fact that the Romulan mining ship and Spock both got stuck in the same singularity, only the mining ship went through first. Everone knows that when you want some cool action in a move, black holes are the way to go. I mean, they're black and they're holes and nobody knows what's on the other side so you can do whatever you want. If I had a black hole I'd make it so that the other side was an alternate universe where bacon was considered a health food and asparagus was high in cholesterol.

I also thought the red matter was a nice touch. It looks really scary and it's in a shiny sphere that's reminiscent of "Rover" from The Prisoner. Plus the name "red matter" means that you really can't analyze it too much because you don't know exactly what it is. It's kind of like the "green matter" in my refrigerator. I don't know what it is but I'm sure it could cause planetary destruction in the wrong hands.

As for time travel, Star Trek has a rich history of time travel. In "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" not only is there time travel, there is also a whale and an eco-friendly theme. In "Star Trek: First Contact" the Borg go back in time to sabatoge human space travel, probably because a non-recycling species shouldn't be running around space all willy-nilly dumping their trash in other peoples solar systems. While this movie had the time travel, it didn't leave me with that guilty feeling that I get if I throw away a plastic bag. That is the only fault I can find with it.

Flinx said...

As I said any movie with time travel is crap. They should have just created a whole new universe and set of characters (oh wait they did). Recycling?!?!? NON SEQUITUR! And you can only go into a black hole, The reverse side would be a.... White hole, which no one has found yet. Quasars are not white holes.

Flinx said...

One more thing... I never feel guilty about throwing away plastic. The Earth created humans to convert oil into plastic becasue the Earth needs plastic, when all the plastic is made that the earth needs the earth will get rid of humans.

Eric the Unicorn said...

I saw it again this weekend and still liked it.

Paul said...

I finally got out to see it. I agree with most of your points, but the time travel itself didn't bother me. What bothered me the most was the lack of depth to the characters. Overall though I found it an enjoyable movie.