I'm
struggling with this one, I've got to be honest. I have long been a fan of Star Trek, an affliction inherited, like hay-fever,
from my dear mother but I don't lap up every single movie, episode and spin-off that has come out of the series during the last fifty years. Indeed, I think the role of a fan should be to always push a series to new heights, challenge writers to do something different. This makes remakes, or reimaginings if you prefer, something of a problem for me. My belief is simple: if you are going to remake something, it should be because you believe you can do better than what came before.
So how does the new Star Trek movie shape up? I'm in two minds. I would say that the opening sequence, which features the last stand of the USS Kelvin, represents some of the most exciting, emotion-provoking film-making I have seen, particularly within the Star Trek franchise. I was on the edge of my seat, I shed tears within ten minutes of the start of this film and that is pretty outstanding. There was no reduction in pace with the arrival of James Tiberius Kirk to the film, along with Christopher Pike played by Bruce Greenwood who did an exceptional job during this film throughout. Why was it good? Because it was different. Not the same. We were seeing event that had never been seen before with characters that had the same names as our old friends from yesterday, but who represented their essence rather than parodying the originals. It was bold, visceral, exciting and oh my weren't those special effects an absolute joy.
But then suddenly it all seemed to stall somehow. As we leave Starfleet Academy behind us we encounter reference after reference to things past with no apparent purpose, characters that started to look more like the old parody routines on the Saturday Night Show than an attempt to truly embody a character; and I should make clear that what I truly objected to was not that there were portions of this film that are “not as good” as the
original, though that was certainly the case. It was that there are parts of this film that just don't try to do anything different.
Much comment has been made about whether the film is respectful of the original, but I doubt anyone has stopped to ask whether or not it actually should be. What was brilliant about the original series was that it was clever, exciting and above all went boldly where no other series had gone before. The characters may have slipped towards the melodramatic occasionally but they were passionate, they seemed misguided in places but never forced. I left the cinema on Thursday sure that everything that was good in that film was connected to a detail that had been changed, while everything that was not involved an ill-thought out method of referencing the past or attempts to do things that were identical to the past.
I guess the question is obvious: should a film that intends to remake a franchise that is already worshipped, in some cases literally, by fans worldwide attempt to change the direction, tone, characters and so forth, or should it simply try to update, remaster and adapt the original at all times mindful of those fans and the cast that came before?
I suppose I fundamentally disagreed with the intentions behind this movie. In so many ways, Star Trek has not moved on from the tenth film Nemesis. It is still trying to repeat the successes in the past, and considering how literally boundless the possibilities in Star Trek are I am amazed that no one can see the potential for something generally new in that universe. The quality I most admired about Star Trek growing up was that it was not afraid to go into dangerous territory and challenge its own lofty idealism. I remember episodes about gender identity, the nature of good and evil, the definition of life, conformity vs individuality, the list is endless. The premise of this movie? Alternate reality, a mainstay of the science fiction genre, and not an especially inventive example of it. A good Trek plot is full of ideas tightly executed. This is no Wrath of Kahn.
I loved portions of this film. The opening sequence gave me great hope for this film and I kid you not when I say the first half hour is worth the ticket price alone. I loved those characters such as Kirk and Spock and Pike and Chekov that were not copies, that were fresh and new with a gentle nod at the characters I had loved before. I even loved the glitz, the retro uniforms, the space battles. I was convinced by this film that we haven't seen the last of the good times from Star Trek, but if subsequent attempts capture the magic of the original it will only be through the acceptance that the past is the past and the future needs to be executed with guts and integrity rather than reverence.