Nothing new under the blockbuster sun

Director: J.J. Abrams
Producer: Bryan Burk, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
Screenwriter: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman
Stars: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana
MPAA Rating: PG-13
When reviewing a film like Star Trek, which is a part of a vast fictional universe , there are to main ways to analize it:  Either I review it as a part of the whole or I see it as a science fiction movie apart from it's context. I will do the second mostly, since I'm far from being a trekkie. Having said that this is my review:
Star Trek XI is a science-fiction/action blockbuster movie who follows EVERY rule in that genre,  and it does that pretty well.  It’s an entertaining film with almost no intelectual content;  it’s fairly fun to watch; it’s amusing.  No surprise there since we got director J. J. Abrams (directed and wrote Mission:  Imposible III, wrote Armageddon,  etc) and writing team Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Transformers, The Legend of Zorro, The Island...) on the Crew. They know about mainstream.

The usual dichotomies are present (good vs. bad, etc.) and if I said “almost no intelectual content”  it’s because there are some thoughts throughout the movie about Logic vs. Passion.

Actors are good.  Zachary Quinto (who had the most chalenging role as Spock -- the pointy eared Vulcan) performs respectably his Human (passion) -- Vulcan (logic) dual personality.  And Chris Pine does fine as the renegade Hero James Kirk.

Direction is very decent.  I particulary liked the abscense of fancy camera movements that usually do nothing more than making the viewer think on the fact that there is an actual camera filming (except in masterly developed exceptions like Matrix). Effects and CGI are flawless.  The opening sequence and some little fragments are very interesting.

And that’s about everything positive I can say about this film.

The plot is to much simple revenge story -all pseudo-scientific baberish aside-  and many things are obscure to anyone who is not a follower of the series.

I’ve said I’m not a trekkie but I’ve seen some of the previous movies and parts of the original and Next Generation series. And I liked them.  There weren’t as many action scenes and stories where much more richer and complex than this one (The Final Frontier, 1989; Generations, 1994; First Contact, 1996)

I was disapointed to see there is a time travel plot once again. This has became much too common in science fiction, and there is nothing new here on the subject.  Nor anything of the logic paradoxes or things that can make a time travel plot interesting. — Do read Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity for a space-time story at it’s best-- I think this time-travelling plot has the only purpose to “reset” the whole thing and being able to give a fresh start to the franchise.

We see once again a chase scene in an alien planet with strange animals who start to upscale in the predator chain as the chase goes on (fish eaten by bigger fish who gets eaten by bigger fish kind of thing), little funny aliens, etc. And a big mistake I think is that the movie fails to rise again up to the excitement of the opening sequence.

There are to many winks to trekkers who might get excited when seeing the classic characters when they where young, becoming the characters they love. Those  caused me the same emotion as a bearded man winking me in a truck driver stop would. I heard many trekkies liked the filmed. Let’s agree that their perspective is much too subjective.

Resuming:

J. J. Abrams and his crew transformed a rich science fiction universe into a decent but mindless science-fiction action blockbuster.

If you liked Armaggedon you probabily will like this.

If you are a Trekkie you probabily have seen the movie 4 times already.

If you like good action movies, wait for Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds.

Information on IMDB