I’ve been dithering over an entry on J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek remake for weeks, ever since that first batch of production photos hit the Web. I had lots to say about them, but I procrastinated, let myself be distracted by other topics, and finally lost the moment. You folks out there with blogs of your own understand: it’s all about being topical, and the farther away from “current” you get, the harder it is to work up the motivation.

Then came the first photo of the revamped Enterprise, and I was off again, repeating the same cycle.* And now here we are a week past the release of the first full-length trailer (viewable here, if you’ve somehow missed it), and everybody in the blogosphere has weighed in on the thing except me. I hate being behind the curve and frankly don’t know what I’ve got to contribute that a million other people haven’t already said, but I’ve had a few friends contact me and specifically ask why I haven’t written about it yet, so I guess it’s time I finally have my say.

I’ve been dubious of remaking Star Trek from the very beginning. (I know everyone’s calling it a “reboot,” and I think I’ve probably referred to it as such myself, but what does that term really mean, anyhow? Reboot, refresh, reimagining… whatever you call it, it’s all the same thing, isn’t it? Even with Leonard Nimoy on board to try and provide some connection between the new film and the original series, we’re still talking about a do-over of a classic media property with an aging fan base. Abrams’ Trek is as much a remake as that justifiably forgotten Lost in Space movie that starred Joey from Friends. I suspect some marketing guy somewhere probably came up with “reboot” in the hopes that it would sound a little less sacriligeous. But I digress.)

My loyal readers know I tend to frown on remakes in general. However, I am willing to grant that there are cases where the original fell short of its potential and actually warrants another attempt. Battlestar Galactica is the obvious example here, even though I personally don’t care much for the updated version. Star Trek, on the other hand, falls into another category altogether. It is one of a small handful of films and TV series that rise to the status of icon, shows whose stories and imagery and catchphrases are so thoroughly woven into the cultural fabric that everyone knows and recognizes them, even non-fans. There aren’t many such media phenomena, but there are a few. And in my opinion, they ought to be sacrosanct. You shouldn’t re-edit them to suit modern sensibilities, and you most certainly shouldn’t insert sparkly new FX that weren’t possible when they were made (George Lucas, I am looking at you). And you don’t remake them simply because they’ve gotten old. Aside from any necessary restoration work, you let them be what they are, or what they were, or whatever.

But of course many people consider my opinion to be extreme and/or weird. Movies and TV aren’t widely considered legitimate or enduring art, after all, and when there is potentially billions of dollars to be made from restarting a successful media franchise, well… sacrosanct goes out the window and we get J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, coming to a theater near you in 2009.

So, that’s my baseline in approaching this project. I don’t think a remake is necessary or desirable, and I’m frankly a little bit resentful that the Powers That Be have overruled me on this matter. That said, the trailer is… not bad.

Or so I’ve decided after several viewings and a week to think about it. My initial reaction was reflexively negative, simply because of what it is. But now after a cooling-off period, I can see that it has a lot going for it. It’s exciting, in that jittery, over-caffeinated, fast-cut style that The Damn Kids seem to like these days. It contains a number of striking images, including some that remind me of commercial illustrations that caught my eye as a kid and have stayed with me over the years. (Tell me that Abrams’ robot cop wasn’t inspired by Michael Whelan’s cover art for Fred Saberhagen’s Brother Assassin, or that this shot of the distant city-towers of the 23rd century doesn’t have a similar vibe to one of the more famous paintings of Roland the Gunslinger.) The shot of young Kirk observing the construction of the Enterprise is as stirring and awesome a sight as any in all the science-fiction flicks I’ve ever seen (even if it does mess with my long-held notion that the Enterprise was built in orbit; I guess if you have the power to do the things we’ve seen in other Star Treks, raising something that big into space isn’t all that difficult). And the filmmakers have obviously made some effort to respect the look of the original source material: the uniforms, the shuttlecraft, the “beaming” effect, the revamped Enterprise itself… they’re all instantly identifiable as Star Trek, even if they don’t look exactly as we remember them. (I’d like to see what Abrams has done with the iconic props of the old series, the communicator, hand phaser, and tricorder.) I’m not crazy about the interior Enterprise sets — the Apple-store “iBridge” and the rounded corridors — but they’re not all that different from the originals, and the sets were always changing in every other movie anyhow, so that’s not a deal breaker for me.

I still have some reservations, though. I see a real possibility that this movie will be yet another case of style over substance, and I don’t think I will ever embrace the idea of new actors playing characters that are as real in my mind as my own parents. That’s one of the big challenges in remaking an iconic film or series. Sometimes a particular actor is so indeliably fused to a particular role that it’s nearly impossible for anyone else to take over. (Recall, for example, how David “Hutch” Soul made everyone forget about Bogart when he played Rick in that Casablanca TV series in the early ’80s. What’s that? You don’t remember that show? Hm… I wonder why?) Granted, this trailer doesn’t provide much more than glimpses of the new cast, but the only one I’m reasonably comfortable with so far is Zachary Quinto as Spock. He’s a little too baby-faced, but he’s got Nimoy’s reed-thin build and posture, and he seems to have the proper inflections when he speaks his lines. I’m optimistic about Karl Urban’s McCoy, because I’ve seen him do the crusty-exterior-with-a-soft-heart thing in other films (notably his turn as Eomer in Lord of the Rings), but his delivery of the “disease and danger” speech here seems a little too hysterical and out of character. I love Simon Pegg, and lord knows his Scottish accent is much more realistic than Jimmy Doohan’s ever was, but his one line in this trailer is really corny. (I grant that both Urban’s and Pegg’s scenes are probably taken way out of context and may be more effective in the complete film.) And then there’s Chris Pine as James Tiberius Kirk.

I’ve read a number of very positive comments about how Pine’s got the same mischievous twinkle in the eye as William Shatner’s Kirk, but I don’t see it. He has yet to impress me as anything more than a reasonably good-looking kid who I probably couldn’t pick out of a line-up of a dozen other actors his age.** But then part of my resistance to Pine’s portrayal of Kirk might be how Abrams has apparently chosen to interpret Kirk, i.e., as a troubled and reckless kid looking for a place to belong. That’s not my Kirk. The Kirk of the original series was an explorer at heart; he was driven by duty and the urge to see what was Out There, not a desire to find his “true worth.” These characteristics aren’t necessarily incompatible — Pine’s Kirk is younger than Shatner’s, and he may find through the course of this story that his “place in the world” is to be an explorer. I’ll wait to see how the finished film actually handles this theme before passing any final judgment. But for now, I’m concerned that Abrams may have missed the central point of the original series, just as Ron Moore missed what I believe to be the real heart of Battlestar Galactica when he created his version.

Star Trek 1.0, at its best, was about exploration, whether you’re talking about exploration of space or of human nature, and if you’re going to do a remake of the series, I think that’s what you really need to capture for it to legitimately be Star Trek. I don’t see anything in the Abrams trailer that suggests this is his theme, and the bland poster campaign — consisting so far entirely of headshots of a cast of mostly unknown faces — certainly doesn’t scream “boldly going” to me.*** Instead, it seems we’re getting more of the same old stuff that the Star Trek franchise came to be about in the ’90s: space battles and political intrigue and soap-opera-style character development. The sad fact is, after Next Gen and Deep Space Nine, I no longer care much about the politics and frictions between the Federation and its neighbors. If we must have a new Star Trek, can’t it be about something new? About a ship venturing beyond the familiar and encountering something never before seen (either by its crew or the audience)? Maybe that’s what Abrams has in mind for the inevitable sequel…

I guess the bottom line here is that the trailer has left me ambivalent. I’m not entirely dismissive of the project, but I’m not sold on it either. John Kenneth Muir, whose blog I recommended earlier, points out that this Star Trek isn’t really for people like me, not for the Boomers and Gen-Xers who grew up with ST 1.0, and that “even if the new Star Trek is a great movie, my generation is going to have a tough time living with it.” That sums up my feelings pretty concisely. The big difference between he and I, though, is that he’s pretty confident it will be a great movie, and I am not. Moreover, he wants Star Trek to continue. I was perfectly content with the idea that it was over…

* Truthfully, I was a little hesitant to get into a deep analysis of the ship re-design because I was afraid I’d end up sounding like the type of fan I’ve always disdained, the ones who miss the forest — the actual show — for the trees, i.e., the meaningless details. Like this kid I knew back in college who obsessed endlessly over finding an “in-universe” explanation for why the gang on Red Dwarf had different quarters in the later seasons of the show than they had in the first year. Apparently, the obvious explanation — that the producers had built new sets in between seasons, probably because their budget had increased — just wasn’t sufficient for him. I’ve never wanted to become so involved in anything that I got like that…

** This is a whole different rant, but what is it about the up-and-coming crop of actors all being so bland and, frankly, kind of funny-looking? I can’t think of any twentysomething actors who are genuinely handsome or charismatic.

*** Yet another digression: I hate the photoshopped-head style of movie posters. I miss the colorful painted collages I grew up with. Damn Photoshop…