J.J. Abrams — the director of the new Star Trek movie (as well as the creator of Cloverfield and TV’s Lost) — has said in interviews that he’s “never been a Trek fan.” That makes two of us. So going to watch Star Trek took a leap of faith for me. Fortunately, Abrams brings his swashbuckling irony to this summer movie.
It starts out lumbering, with a painfully wooden young actor playing… James Kirk. I thought, God no, someone as bad as Shatner manning the helm. But no, it was just Captain Kirk’s dad getting his Starfleet ship broken into a million bits, setting us up for the backstory birth of young daredevil James Tiberius Kirk, his better-known, horn-dog son.
Abrams comes with built-in postmodern filters, and he sets the irony phasers to “stun.” It’s a given that those of Abrams’ generation never actually watched Star Trek in its original TV broadcast days, from 1966-1969. He no doubt watched the show — as most of our generation did — in syndicated reruns, endlessly replayed on TV for decades. The bad monster suits, bad special effects, bad fashion (clingy Rayon and mini-skirts were very popular aboard the USS Starship Enterprise) and bad hair was obviously secondary to the peace-loving, logical sci-fi message that has endeared Star Trek to its diehard fans. But it’s the kitschy-memory stuff that has filtered down into collective pop culture consciousness, and which no doubt entertains non-fans (like Abrams) the most.
This means his “reimagining” of Star Trek is chock full of gags and funny bits that actually help carry a movie that could have been weighted down with seriousness (like the original big-screen Star Trek movies in the ‘80s, starring Leonard Nimoy and a stunning gallery of William Shatner hairpieces). So it’s Gen-XYZ hijinks aboard the Enterprise, as Abrams takes us back to the very first mission of the vessel. We get to see how Scotty became Scotty, how a young Chekhov honed his Borscht-thick Russian accent (pronouncing Captain Kirk as “Cyaptain Kyork” and Vulcan as “Wulcan” for extra laughs), how Lt. Uhura first attracted Kirk with her projectile breasts (a favorite area of interest for Trekkies) while actually having the hots for Spock (played by Zachary Quinto, who distractingly resembles Ben Stiller). There’s Sulu’s fondness for fencing (for those who remember the old series) which plays a part during the destruction of the planet Vulcan, and Kirk’s general hotdog personality, combined with a certain seediness that is not unlike Shatner’s original TV character. Basically, these ragtag Starfleet crewmembers in their polyester threads are like The Bad News Bears in Interstellar Training; but, of course, they get to prove their mettle during the two-hour movie.
Abrams wastes little time in setting up characters. We see Kirk as a kid, stealing his stepdad’s hot rod and sending it off an Iowa cliff with police in pursuit; cut to Spock as a kid, getting his daily taunting from fellow Vulcan students about being half-human — not only that, his mom is Winona Ryder! Vexed and confused, Spock joins the Starfleet command instead of heading to university as his parents want.
Fast forward 15 years, and these unlikely buddies are stuck together on the maiden voyage of the Enterprise. It seems a badass Romulan named Nero (played unrecognizably by Eric Bana) has been drilling into the core of planets with a very big rig and depositing red droplets capable of imploding the same, causing black holes! Abrams is much less concerned with the “science” of these plot developments, focusing instead on hand-to-hand combat aboard drilling platforms, phaser battles in dark boiler rooms, and eyebrow-lifting dialogue between the principal crew of the Enterprise. Naturally, he gets to work in every famous Star Trek line fans have grown to love and non-fans love to parody (“Live long and prosper”; “Damn it, I’m a doctor, not a physicist!”; “Set phasers to ‘stun’”; even “I kenna dew it, Captain, we dunna have the power!”; though, notably, no “He’s dead, Jim.”)
Along the way, a few surprise faces pop up, including Simon Pegg as Scotty, the brogue-tongued engineer (a bit longer in the tooth than the rest of the baby-faced cast) who develops transporter technology for the Starfleet. Then there’s Leonard Nimoy himself, playing Spock of course, though I’ll not give away his precise role lest I incur the wrath of Khan and other Trekkie vengeances. There’s even a modified version of the monster that romped across Manhattan in Cloverfield, though this one is smaller and red.
Abrams’ casting seems to reflect his TV-baby origins. Chris Pine who plays Kirk is mainly known for TV roles and “teen hunk” vehicles like Princess Diaries 2. Zachary Quinto (Spock) comes from TV’s Heroes. There’s John Cho, the Asian half of the Harold and Kumar movies, playing Sulu, and Karl-Heinz Urban, best known as Éomer in the Lord of the Rings movies, is cast as “Bones” McCoy. The casting seems squarely aimed at a young audience raised on television — the new television, not the old clunky kind with commercial interruptions and bad hairpieces (though Spock’s hairpiece continues to puzzle and distract). Fans have complained that Abrams abandoned the TV show’s philosophical musings, focusing more on the humor and buddy-buddy story of Kirk and Spock. Maybe so. But he gets the tone just about right, and it’s a lot more fun to watch than, say, the dreadful Lost in Space movie. It may lack the skillful balance of sci-fi, action and humor that made TV’s rebooted Battlestar Gallactica superior, but it’s certainly more welcome than a handful of cookie-cutter comic hero blockbusters.
All in all, Abrams treats Star Trek like a fan, even if he isn’t one, and what really comes to mind is Jim Carrey’s character in The Cable Guy — the TV-raised mutant who spouts sitcom references and gets to enact his own real-life version of “The Gamesters of Triskelion” fight sequence, complete with sound effects and groovy camera angles. Revenge of the nerds, indeed.