In speaking of Star Trek, JJ Abrams’ origin story prequel designed to sex up the venerable brand and relaunch it as an again-viable film franchise, I can’t speak for the fans, and I probably shouldn’t risk inciting their wrath by regurgitating the plot. Suffice it to say, all the familiar characters are rendered here as 20-something and absurdly attractive; they all end up on the Enterprise, from which they fight a Romulan who blows up a planet; there’s some time travel mumbo-jumbo that complicates things just enough to allow for a cameo from Leonard Nimoy; the sexual tension between Young Kirk (Chris Pine) and Young Spock (Zachary Quinto) is the stuff that viral video makers in the “1 + 1 = GAY = LOL” mold dream of.
Fans and critic-fans will be predisposed to liking this film more than I, because they have more invested. Though I have a working familiarity with both the original TV series and The Next Generation, I didn’t walk into the film with opinions as to how something like the Kobayashi Maru test should have been handled, and I didn’t walk out anymore convinced that it matters one way or another. I can only offer the perspective of a viewer who walked in not really giving a shit about Star Trek, and from that perspective, Abrams has done a sufficient job. After all, the reason Star Trek exists is to support the theory that more Star Trek films should exist, and in painlessly demonstrating how the motley, almost incredibly diverse crew of the Enterprise fits together, in convincing that it wouldn’t be unpleasant to watch these seven space soldiers take on further missions, and in setting up a soapy workplace love triangle that will require sequels to resolve, Star Trek does that job. I walked out still not giving much of a shit about Star Trek, but at least I didn’t resent the expenditure of time, and though the central mythology of the series still fails to get a rise out of me, the pretty faces assigned to mobilize that myth offer their own rewards.
Feminist film theory exists because of Hollywood’s reliable persistence in ensuring the attention of the male audience by stressing the physical charms of women on screen. It’s a requisite of the summer blockbuster movie formula to offer the male viewer opportunities for sexual fantasy within the proceedings in the most unremarkable fashion, if for no other reason than to guarantee his continued interest. So I feel no guilt or shame in saying that whenever my attention started to drift from Star Trek’s march towards inevitability (in this origin story context, it should not be a spoiler to reveal that the core crew of the Enterprise survive their mission intact and ready for a sequel), I was soon drawn back in by a new opportunity to appreciate Chris Pine’s sheer hotness.
It may be true that boredom begets boy craziness, but I don’t think that’s the beginning and the end of it. Each time the pristine youthful beauty of his face is marred by a new fist-fight scar, Pine seems to take a step towards fuller immersion in the passionate but detached persona of the eventual Captain Kirk; as his cockiness makes him a target for one set of fists after another, his physical stamina becomes increasingly part of the point of his character; in film without any real sex and minimal romance, he gets closer to naked than anyone else. A compactly built Ken doll with lips fixed somewhere between a pout and a smirk, and sky blue eyes fixed in regulation smart-ass position at the top of their sockets, Pine effortlessly embodies the bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold allure that survives as an echo within William Shatner’s standard-bearing rendition of the same character. Within the effort to remake Star Trek as something young and sexy, it feels like there’s been an honest attempt to not only wind each character’s clock back a decade and a half from the youngest we’ve seen them previously, but to also bring them down to earth, to offer cause for later effects, and we see this most clearly in the way Pine finds and plays a nugget of something real that can easily be seen as an ingredient to Shatner’s puffed-up self-parody.
On the level of craft, it’s either a sign of his limitations or fitting considering the images of Star Trek with the greatest pop cultural endurance, but Abrams shoots most of the action on the Enterprise in TV mode, with a wideangle-lensed camera whipping from side to side on a single set, facial close-ups interrupted by blinding light flares. In thematic terms, Abrams’ most notable contribution is a demonstrated interest in the plight of college girls caught between cute brainiacs with a yen for common sense, and brooding blonde hunks with a knack for instigating sloppy hand-to-hand combat. In applying this to Kirk and Spock’s classic conflict between passion and logic, Abrams is to a large extent remaking his own Felicity (coincidentally, the same dynamic animates Reality Bites, which like Star Trek features Winona Ryder as an archetype over which a nerdy brunette guy attempts to exert control), and in a way, Star Trek allows Abrams a second chance to overcome that series’ inherent limitations. Eventually Keri Russell’s Felicity had to choose one male polarity over the other, and live a life deprived of the charms of the second place candidate. But being that the boys of Star Trek will ultimately choose each other — er, their common mission — over womankind, space can benefit from both, while the question as to what type is more desirable can remain infinitely unresolved.
Whether or not it all of this works as a movie-movie is an issue that critic-fans won’t be able to fairly assess, and critics who are not fans may feel unequipped to care. I’ll gladly give Star Trek a high grade for its eye candy and sugar-shot power of diversion, but I’m hesitant to give it too much credit for breaking the mold of the summer blockbuster. With its wise cracks, its cast of exaggerated characters, its indulgence in majestic moving paintings of intergalactic battle, and its insistence that it takes a wacky bunch of misfit stereotypes to keep space a safe place, Star Trek is structurally not much different from something like Armageddon. Michael Bay gets no respect, and it’s probably fair and right that he shouldn’t, but it’s hard to put a point on what JJ Abrams brings to that formula that’s uniquely his, other than that which seems an artifact from his previous work for TV.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth