Can you hear them coming? Are you ready for them to piss you off, to be the proverbial turds in the punchbowls? Yes, the Star Trek haters will be here soon, crapping all over your reasons why it's a great reboot to what had been a dead franchise. And you know what? To borrow a line from Total Recall's Cohaagen, you're f*$#ing making it happen!If you'd like to avoid the practically-inevitable backlash, stop telling everyone how good the movie is - how it's a perfect blending of something old, new, borrowed and blue (by which I mean Spock's uniform, of course). Stop telling them that it's funny and exciting, how the Trekkies and/or Trekkers are weeping with joy at all of the in-jokes and winks that J.J. Abrams and his writers made for them, and how it is that a 78-year old man takes what was already a good movie and makes it great merely by showing up. And by all means, don't tell them that they "have to see it right now!"
No, the proper tactic is of course to downplay the film's success. Tell them that "It's pretty good - better than most of the crap out there right now but nothing worth writing home about." Tell them that the effects looked "okay, but needed some work" or that "Abrams makes it a little too LOSTy...but you might want to see it if you like that show." Certainly don't tell them to go to Rotten Tomatoes, where they're be able to see the 95% Fresh rating that it's sporting, or to IMDb to see the 8.6/10 rating it's got. Tell them anything but the truth - it can only serve to help us all in the long run.
To do my part, I'm going to put on my nitpicking hat (some big nits, some very small nits) and do my best to point out as many of the bad things I can think of with Star Trek, just to hopefully take away some of the ammunition that the haters may bring. If I can, at the same time, somehow dampen expectations for those who haven't seen it yet - well, that's just a win-win scenario, isn't it?
It should go without saying that some SPOILERZ follow below:
* I can't say that I've read a ton of reviews for Star Trek just yet, but I have yet to see a comparison to a film that it sure seems to owe a bit to. That's right - the Casper Van Dien vehicle Starship Troopers. And not just because they each begin with "star_ tr_." Think about it - young, dumb, full of *ahem* go-getter leaves brightly colored future town on the heels of advice from veteran soldier to take his place in space. Gets there and almost immediately becomes the leader of his team, becoming right-hand man to said veteran by virtue of doing almost nothing. Um - are there not tens of thousands of people on the Enterprise? Why is a green cadet being made first officer?
Not that I consider a comparison to be a bad thing, per se; hell, I love that cornball flick. But it kind of is a bad thing.
* For LOST viewers: Spock = Faraday? Seriously, Abrams - you're stealing plot lines for Star Trek directly from LOST, or is it the other way around?
* Typically, action movies are only as good as their villains. Not so the case here. Eric Bana's pissed off Romulan isn't terrible, but he's not developed all that much and frankly, he's just not all that memorable. He didn't hurt the film, but he didn't really help it, either. It felt like a role that had been shot in two weeks.
* It's a shame that the only two examples I can cite of this off the top of my head are both minority characters, but I have to say that the casting of Tyler Perry as some sort of judge/authority figure was distracting (the other example would be Sam Jackson in the first Star Wars prequel). For such a non-role, couldn't it have just as easily been an unrecognizable face? He's just so tied to his work that, in a film like this, he really takes you out of it.
* I won't go as far as to say that the action sequences were nauseating on the level of a Cloverfield or Blair Witch (they weren't even really "shaky cammy"), but there certainly needed to be some better editing going on there. Aside from a nice medium panning shot of John Cho and Chris Pine fighting on the drill, it seemed as though we were never given more than a 2-second shot of whatever action was taking place, and even the longer ones felt hand-held.
* Taken from my friend Alex (aka commentor Nic Cage), the "scary monster chases Kirk on ice planet, only to be swatted away by bigger monster who will now chase Kirk" sequence was wildly unnecessary, and too reminiscent of a similar scene in The Phantom Menace when our heroes were being chased (albeit underwater) by monsters who ate each other. Also, as Mrs. Fletch pointed out, the second, larger animal would not survive on an ice planet - it had no fur/protective coating.
* The music. It's nonstop, too loud, in your face, and cues you what to think/feel as much as it can. Lots of times, I barely notice the score in an action flick; here, it was bugging me.
* Finally...Ok, I understand that it's a mining ship. And that it's been "out there" for 25 years, presumably losing some, if not many, of its members. But exactly how many Romulans were on that ship of theirs? 12? Because it sure seemed easy for Kirk and Spock to just breeze in there and do whatever the hell they wanted.
So that's my contribution to the anti-backlash campaign. Now stop fawning all over it and get out there and do your part, too.
Fletch's Film Rating:
"It's in the hole!"
