As previously promised — or threatened, depending on your point of view — I have more to say about that new Star Trek movie that everyone’s loving on. Before I get wound up, I’d like to reiterate again that I really did enjoy the movie, so don’t misunderstand my criticisms of it. But you know, everyone is raving about how great it was, and I, in my usual contrarian, stubborn-old-fanboy way, just can’t let that stand without argument. Because while it was better than I expected, there were a lot of not-so-great things about it.

Even though it’s been out two weeks now, I’m going to assume that spoiler protocols are still in effect for some, so exercise caution in going below the fold:

Thinking a bit more about the storyline, it occurs to me that if you strip away the time travel and all the origin-story stuff, the core premise of the movie is this: there’s a madman with a superweapon who is bent on avenging his dead wife, and the only thing standing between him and interplanetary genocide is the starship Enterprise. Sound familiar? It ought to, as we’ve seen this story at least twice before, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn and Star Trek: Generations, and probably in a bunch of old TV episodes I’m not recalling at the moment. Throw in the idea that the Enterprise (or at least its bridge) is crewed by cadets and youngsters not long out of the Academy, and the parallel to Kahn increases. Then there’s the bit where Captain Pike is implanted with a mind-altering alien creepy-crawly that will bend him to the bad guy’s will, just like Chekov in — you guessed it — Wrath of Kahn. So much for all the talk about Abrams’ Trek being a fresh, new approach, eh?

(To be fair, the pre-Abrams Trek movies are also guilty of cannibalizing both the original TV episodes and other movies for their plotlines. I probably wouldn’t have mentioned this issue at all if not for the scene with the Ceti eel — er, the Centaurian slug. That was just a little too blatantly ripped off from my favorite Trek movie for me to overlook. Incidentally, what happened to that thing anyway? We never see the slug leave Pike’s body, never hear that McCoy extracted it or anything, so is he still walking around under its influence? That’s a major security risk, isn’t it? Not to mention a major plot hole. Although I suppose it could explain how Kirk got his captaincy so quickly, couldn’t it? Would a guy who reprogrammed the Kobayashi Maru simulation so he could win be above making a suggestion to a soon-to-be-promoted officer under the influence of a creepy-crawly? Maybe Kirk’s not quite as noble as we’ve always imagined him to be…)

But I’ve probably spent too much time bashing on the film’s storyline, so let’s move on to another area that deserves some scrutiny: the overall look of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. In a nutshell, I loathed it.

There was, of course, the dreaded rapid-fire editing and shaky handheld camerawork that have come to define the modern action movie. I can’t wait for this tiresome fad to be over, but at least Star Trek‘s big set-pieces were comprehensible, unlike those of, say, Quantum of Solace.

A much bigger problem for me was the constant lens-flare effects. If you don’t know the term, a lens flare is what happens when you point your camera toward a very bright light source; the light reflects off the glass elements inside the lens, resulting in artifacts that look like streaks or polygon shapes. In the worst cases, the image washes out entirely, consumed by glare. We’ve all seen (or taken) snapshots that contain these things. The artifacts can be quite beautiful in the right sort of scene, and cinematographers occasionally add them on purpose to make a movie look more “real” or for a dramatic effect. (The technique was popular in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and was put to memorable use in Planet of the Apes and Easy Rider, among others.) There are even a few scenes in Star Trek where I think it’s appropriate and realistic. The problem is that J.J. Abrams seems to be hopelessly infatuated with the effect, and he throws it into damn near every single shot. Since the movie came out, he’s given an interview that’s being much repeated across the web, in which he attempts to defend the technique, saying essentially that he wanted to give the movie a unique look, and, somewhat ridiculously, that “the future was so bright it couldn’t be contained in the frame.” Uh, no. Sorry, J.J., not buying that last one. Okay, so you wanted to give your movie a unique look. You certainly did that, but you also got really carried away and it became a serious distraction. Tone it down in the inevitable sequel, please.

Stylistic concerns aside, I was also pretty unhappy with the flick’s production design, especially the revamp of our old friend, the starship Enterprise. Look at that photo up there at the top of the entry. The front half is fine — better than fine, actually, since it recalls the design of the ship in both its 1960s TV guise and its more glamorous big-screen version in the ’70s and ’80s — but the rear is all wrong. The lower section (the engineering hull, to those of us in the know) looks foreshortened and way too thin at the fantail, and the engines… ugh. Stocky and bulky and just… just ugh. I’m offended both as an old-school Trekkie and also simply as someone who appreciates a good balanced design, i.e., an object that just looks neat. Those engine nacelles, my friends, do not look neat.

The interior of the ship isn’t any better. The all-white-and-glass “iBridge” did nothing for me — although I did like how the “main viewer” was an actual window with overlaid digital displays, rather than a big-screen TV mounted on the wall — and the scenes in the engineering spaces were too obviously shot in an actual terrestrial power plant or a distillery or something. I swear I saw concrete walls in a couple of shots. And the exit door at the Delta Vega station, the one with the perfectly ordinary push-bar? Pulled me right out of the story and made me wonder where they filmed the scene. Come on, Abrams! It’s the 23rd Century! Make it look that way! Have we been so disappointed by a 21st Century without flying cars that we can’t even imagine a futuristic-looking future anymore? (Being fair again, most of the film did look adequately futuristic, but that stupid push-bar really bugged me.)

At this point, you’re probably wondering how I could possibly say that I liked the movie if I have this many gripes with it. Well, believe it or not, there were aspects of the film I did like.

Generally speaking, I liked the cast and their performances very much. Chris Pine as Kirk especially surprised me; he managed the near-impossible feat of capturing the character of Kirk, including certain familiar mannerisms and postures, without seeming like he was doing a William Shatner impression. He was perhaps a bit too cocky in a couple of places, but I tried to keep in mind that this is a young Kirk, not yet tempered by experience. He’s not my Kirk, exactly, but then he’s not supposed to be. The bottom line is that I bought him in the role, despite my expectations not to. I had a similar reaction to Zachary Quinto as Spock; he lacks Leonard Nimoy’s gravitas, but he’s also a young man playing a young Spock. He echoed many of Nimoy’s distinct speech inflections, at least.

Oddly, I was disappointed with the two actors I most expected to like, Karl Urban and Simon Pegg. Everyone’s talking about how uncanny Urban’s portrayal of Dr. McCoy is, how he practically channels the ghost of DeForest Kelley, but honestly he reminded me more of Dan Ackroyd’s spoof of Kelley in that old Saturday Night Live sketch. He was right on the verge of parody in a number of scenes. And while Simon Pegg’s Scottish accent was more accurate than anything Jimmy Doohan ever did, nothing about him really said “Scotty” to me. (That was probably a script problem as much as anything; I’m hoping the sequel will give Scotty something to do other than comic relief.)

I could take or leave Zoe Saldana (Uhura), John Cho (Sulu), and Anton Yelchin (Chekov). They all did fine with what they were given, but none of them struck me as the only people who could’ve played these parts. Also, Saldana came across as a little too bitchy for my tastes in some scenes, but as with Pegg, that might have been the script more than any problems with the actress, and I’m willing to reserve judgment until I’ve seen more of her take on the character.

Eric Bana (Nero) also did fine with what he had, but that wasn’t much and I doubt he’s going to be remembered as one of the great Trek villains. Or at all, really.

Ben Cross and Winona Ryder as Spock’s parents have received a fair amount of criticism even from people who unreservedly liked the movie. I had no problem with either of them myself; as with Quinto’s Spock, they lacked the gravitas of their counterparts from the original, but I again blame their ages relative to the originals. The entire cast of this movie is on the young side compared to the people who populated the 1960s Star Trek — even my very non-Trekkie dad mentioned that after seeing a TV spot the other night.

Finally, Bruce Greenwood simply rocked as Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Enterprise. Non-Trekkies probably don’t realize that Pike is a character from the original series as well; he was the captain in the first, unsold pilot, where he was played by Jeffrey Hunter as a brooding man on the verge of a professional burn-out. Greenwood’s Pike is much more likable and heroic, a confident smart-ass who is very much like the man we know Kirk is going to grow into. Even though Abrams chose not to go with the “Hornblower-in-space” concept, I hope we see Pike again in the sequels. He was cool.

A few other quick thoughts (and for these I’m going to drop any pretense of objectivity and just go into full-on Trekkie mode):

• I try not to be one of those nutcases who’s always screaming about “canon,” and I went into Trek 2.0 with few expectations that the movie would hew to anything that had been previously established. But there was one big piece of revisionism that really bugged me: in the old series, Kirk had an older brother named Sam. The way history was changed in this movie wouldn’t have erased Sam’s existence — as an older brother, he would’ve already been alive when the Kelvin was attacked — so where was he? What’s especially frustrating about this issue is that the writers had a perfect opportunity to deal with it: the kid that young Jim races past in the stolen Corvette could’ve been Sam instead of the generically named “Johnny.”
• Speaking of the Corvette scene, as a lover of classic cars, I found the concept of driving a 300-year-old Stingray off a cliff stupid and downright offensive, even if it was just a computer-generated Stingray. And the product placement in that scene made me want to gag. Nokia? Really? In the 23rd fricking Century? Right down to the same irritating ringtone that I hear on the train every day? Uhura ordering Budweiser in the bar, I could accept, but the Nokia thing was too much. Again, as with the wood on the ice planet and the 20th Century push-bar on that fire door, it destroyed my suspension of disbelief and yanked me right out of the movie.
• In another canon-related note, it’s funny (and annoying) how in this revised timeline, the planet Delta Vega has changed from a desert planet on the edge of the galaxy to an ice world that is apparently a moon of Vulcan, given the close-up view Spock Prime had of Vulcan’s destruction. This was an unnecessary and dumb change.
• Speaking of Vulcan, I have to hand it to Abrams and his screenwriters for having the huge brass balls to actually destroy the planet Vulcan and kill off Spock’s mother Amanda. Those elements were so integral to Trek 1.0, it was virtually unthinkable that anything could happen to them, and I’m sure a lot of old-school Trekkies were utterly blindsided by it.
• I’m not especially upset by those paradigm-shifting events because they led to two of the better scenes in the movie: Uhura’s attempt to comfort Spock in the turbolift and Sarek’s heart-to-heart with his son. And about that apparent romance between Spock and Uhura, I’m actually fine with that. There was a flirtatious vibe between them in several original-series episodes, so it’s not entirely without precedent.
• Although the overall design of the film left me cold, I did like the updating of the classic 1960s uniforms, especially the return of the miniskirt and go-go boots on Uhura. And it was nice to see the classic communicator and shuttlecraft designs, even if it was only briefly during the Kelvin sequence. However, would it have killed them paint the bridge doors red? Or even better, have Kirk return from Nero’s ship with a torn-out shoulder seam? After all, there are homages and then there are homages!
• I liked how so many sound effects from the original series found their way into this film. They’re subtly altered, to sound more digital I guess, but they’re definitely there.
• I like to think that the cadet Kirk calls “Cupcake” — and who then proceeds to pummel the tar out of him — is Finnegan, the classmate who was established to have tormented Kirk at the Academy in the classic episode “Shore Leave.”
• Finally, while I’m sure the revised timeline thing was intended to soothe the feelings of us old-timer fans who didn’t want to hear that everything we’ve loved for decades is now null and void, I found it extremely out of character for Spock Prime to just content himself with living in a new history where Vulcan is destroyed, his species endangered, and everything else just not quite right. Star Trek has done a lot> of time travel stories over the years, and the number-one concern for our heroes has always been ensuring that history turns out as it’s “supposed” to, whether that means fixing something after it’s been changed or preventing the change in the first place. But now after all those other temporal adventures, he just shrugs and goes off to score some pointy-eared babes and replenish the race? I don’t think so. This is actually a good argument in favor of Abrams having done a straight-out, square-one reboot.

And there you have most of the things I’ve been thinking about Star Trek 2.0. I commend anyone who’s actually read this far, and apologize for being so long-winded about this topic. I’d still like to do an entry considering the question of just how true this movie is to the spirit of the original Star Trek, something I’ve sort of referenced a few times in this and the other review entry but not directly tackled. But really I think The Girlfriend probably said it best when the lights came up in the theater and she turned to me and said (somewhat cautiously, I might add), “I know you’d rather they hadn’t done this at all, but if they absolutely had to remake Star Trek, I thought this was pretty good.”

Yeah, I suppose that’s about where I am with it, too. It certainly could’ve been worse…