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Star Trek: Warp Speed Ahead, Mr. Abrams!

Seriously, why do you keep asking if we work for Benetton?

Rating: 9 out of 10

Forty three years ago, Gene Roddenberry created the legendary universe of Star Trek and the realm of Sci-Fi was forever altered. Thirteen years later, George Lucas unleashed Star Wars onto the world, proceeded to become a one-man space behemoth and a long standing feud was born between the two franchises. For the last thirty years Trekkies and Jedi Warriors have battled over which universe was better and more futuristically accurate (as if that debate is somehow winnable). In Hollywood the feud took on a different form, the face on the dollar bill. Star Wars cranks in with six films, while Star Trek has racked up eleven (including this latest effort), but I would wager Star Wars still holds the title for most money earned. So, do the Trekkies have to crawl back into their pods and weep in defeat? I think not, because there is one other fight to be had and that is in the realm of quality. While the original Star Wars trilogy is a stunning achievement, with Empire Strikes Back as the shining jewel in that crown, the recent prequel trilogy lacked almost everything that made the originals worth watching. On the other hand, Star Trek has stumbled back and forth in quality throughout their run, with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan setting the bar in the minds of many Trek fanatics, but this new reboot by uber-director/producer J.J. Abrams does exactly what it sets out to do. Star Trek introduces the franchise to a whole new audience, while simultaneously giving the die-hard fans new faces to attach themselves to, on top of managing to not ruin any of the previously cemented rules and storylines in the Star Trek universe. Trekkies all over the world can hold their heads high, prick up their ears and say, “Hey Lucas, that’s how you make a real prequel!”

Star Trek follows the origin stories of the crew of the new Federation flagship, the U.S.S. Enterprise. It brings together the two worlds of Kirk, a young ruffian with a penchant for challenging authority, and Spock, a half human/half Vulcan child forced to prove himself over and over again due to his mixed heritage. As the crew ventures out on their maiden voyage, they find themselves at the center of a destruction plot created by a delusional and time-traveling Romulan named Nero. Faced with a situation far beyond their training, the crew must make their choices, form their bonds and trust their instincts if they stand any chance of coming out alive.

Launching a reboot is always a dangerous game because while you stand to gain new viewers and fans, you equally stand to cause die-hard fanatics violent and vitriolic reactions, which can take a gnarly chunk out of your box office returns. With those cliffs looming in front of him, J.J. Abrams directed a brilliant beast of a film, packed with action, comedy and historically accurate references to the original canon. The overall story might be a touch contrived and not incredibly complex, but the point of this movie was not to unveil entirely new Sci-Fi concepts or storylines. All Star Trek needed to accomplish was the introduction of the main crew of the ship to a whole new audience without alienating the previous one and I think Abrams nailed it.

The movie definitely centers around our two heroes, Kirk and Spock, played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto respectively. Both roles are truly daunting to step into due to the sheer weight of the cultural impact from the characters original performers, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (Nimoy gets to reprise his legendary role with a part in this film, while Shatner was left out). For them these roles became their entire lives and while they both were able to continue their acting careers, they will never be separated from what they helped evolve in those early years. Much to their credit, Pine and Quinto stepped right up to the plate and gave respect to the original portrayals, while finding subtle and poignant moments to make their own. Pine showed the brashness and lecherous nature of Kirk, but also found a playful, caring side which wasn’t previously explored, and all of that without falling into the trap of Shatner parody. Quinto slipped into the cool and logical exterior of Spock, yet managed to remind people of his human side and embrace the youth the character still had. In the realm of performance, this role continues a strong public presence for Quinto, who was unleashed on the TV audience as Sylar in the once-mammoth Heroes. Credit being given where it is due, Quinto provided one of the few remaining reasons to continue watching the show (although I believe they are on an upswing heading into Season Four with the return of their original show runner). Returning to Star Trek once again, the entire movie might have fallen off into the land of big-budget parody had these two actors not given such believable and stellar performances.

Spreading the spotlight around, Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Simon Pegg (Scotty), Anton Yelchin (Chekov) and John Cho (Sulu) all got their moments and kept the bar raised quite high all around. Eric Bana, who played the revengeful Nero, also showed more layers than we are used to in our Sci-Fi villains, even though his storyline was a touch weak. The one person I wanted to make sure and give a special mention to is Karl Urban, who played the much mocked and constantly troubled Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy. This character gave us one of the most quoted lines from all Star Trek history, “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a [fill in the profession here]!” Sitting in that darkened theater you know the line is coming sometime and when it finally jumps out of that massive bank of speakers, you smile, you laugh, but Karl delivers it in such a way that you believe it too. This was yet another moment when the whole project could have slipped into mockery, but survived on the shoulders of its dedicated and convicted cast. Kudos to you, Karl. Well played.

If you’re wondering why this isn’t a perfect 10 on the ratings scale, my only real big gripe would be near the opening of the film. While the scenes of Spock as a child are useful and informative, the scene of the young and rambunctious Kirk played much worse and really needed to be rewritten from scrap.

Recommendation: Umm…GO SEE IT! I think I’ll be heading back for a second viewing just so I can experience it in IMAX.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Lost Hopes

“Why does there have to be protesters at every premier?!”

Nineteen years. That’s how long we waited for this movie to come to fruition. Nineteen years. Someone born after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade left the theater is no old enough to vote, get married and fly halfway around the world to fight for the right for this movie and many others to be made. For their sakes, I seriously hope they don’t see it. They’ll all go AWOL instantly.

Yes, I’ll get right out there and say it, I did not like the movie. In fact, I was fairly offended by time it was over. I’ve read a number of reviews that are cutting the movie a ton of slack because it’s an Indy film and we all just love him so much and we’re so glad to see him back, but there is only so much slack in the world and it must have gotten used up in the mere hours before I got to see it on opening day. I guess from now on I should keep an extra helping of slack in an airtight jar in my closet, just for these occasions. (There are spoilers from this point on, so if you still want to go in untarnished, stop here. Just know deep in your heart that I tried to stop you.)

Let’s see if I can list out just a small helping of the problems with this flick:

- The magnetism of the Crystal Skull (and other alien body parts): This little tidbit of information was brought out pretty quickly in the film as one of those cool tricks only Indy seem to know about, but for the rest of the film the magnetism became a choice of each individual scene. You could feel George Lucas think, “Should we have it attract metal here? Yeah that would be cool” or “Nah, that doesn’t seem cool here. Let’s not make it magnetic at all. Or how about we stop it’s magnetic powers with this mystical hemp cloth!! God, I’m a genius.”

- CGI – Spielberg has a well earned place in cinema history for pushing CGI to it’s limits and making it work. On the flip side, Lucas has an equally well earned place in cinema history for pushing CGI to the other end of the spectrum where he think he can just replace real actors from this point on. The quality and usage in Crystal Skull was borderline childish. The duck boat effects over the waterfalls, the unnecessary CGI in the jungle chase, the mind numbing alien ship evacuation, all of these felt like a freshman in animation school could have been impressed by his work, but not coming from Spielberg, who previously with War of the Worlds actually made me a tad skiddish going outside after the movie was over since I believed those things could be there.

- Indy’s age: Harrison Ford reportedly waited for a long time to find a script that he was happy with and took a respectful look at his age and the age of his character. This is what he agreed to? I can’t think of a fight scene where he got more beat down than in this chapter during the ant hill sequence, adding the fact that he is about twenty years older now. We needed Indy to be smarter, more clever, using that intelligence that he cultivated over a quarter of a century as a professor, but instead we get a completely ludicrous senior citizen MMA match in the dirt. Even the slightest touch of realism here would have seen Indy with a broken hip.

- Shia, the Monkey King: This almost ranks as the most disappointing part of the movie because they were just starting to win me back when Shia gets sucked up into the jungle trees. He gets wrapped up in a piar of vines that decide completely on their own to retract and pull him up into a mystical monkey kingdom, where in three agonizing seconds of screen time, Shia learns to swing through the trees like Tarzan and lead the monkeys on an all out assault against Cate Blanchett. If they had made a point earlier of saying all the monkeys in that region of the world were strict haters of Communism, maybe I could have joined in the fun, but they happen to leave that out.

- Indy vs. Nuke: Yep, why not? Let’s open this movie big since people have waited so long to see it hit the screen. What could possibly be bigger than showing Indiana Jones survive a nuclear blast in the first 20 minutes of the film? What could possibly not make sense about there being random lead lined refrigerators in a fake town? What could possibly not seem plausible about that same fridge being magically vaulted by the blast miles away, with Indy not only able to walk afterwards, but just plain able to get out of the fridge at all? Didn’t kids lock themselves in those and die all the time in the 50′s?

There are more things I could go into, but I’ll just leave you with those few bullet points. I’m all for continuing franchises and moving the story along as long as they are treated with the same intelligence and respect as the previous versions. This was not only denied the respect of a well written script, but it also managed to deny the respect of its audience. My advice now is for Spielberg to slow his downward spiral by moving as far away from George Lucas as possible, and if he likes a script from now on (as he supposedly did with the Indy version done by Frank Darabont, which Lucas vetoed), man up and shoot it. It couldn’t have been nearly as awful as what we got in the end.

Even worse is the fact that this will make a retarded amount of money, like previous crapfest Spider-Man 3, and further the studios and other directors to think making movies like this, no matter how bad, is a profitable and worthwhile venture. I’m begging someone with influence and opportunity to sit these people down, show them Once, Lars and the Real Girl, Brick, hell, make them watch the original three Indy films and see if they can’t remember what doing a good job really felt like.