McStar Trek

Rating: 3/10 (3 May 2010)

Even with just a passing interest in the Star Trek series it won't be long before you find yourself cringing at this new film version, especially at seeing those old familiar characters 're-imagined' as entirely predictable B-movie goons.
Sorry Star Trek fans, it seems that your beloved crew are actually a collection of spoilt brats, who beat, pilfered, and cheated their way to the top, and your favourite franchise has just gone warp-factor into deep cliché.
Firstly, it's fair to say there are plenty of punches to the new film, by that I don't mean surprises -there are few real surprises- I mean smashing into a person's face with fists if or when they say or do something you object to, like an angry toddler or a thug might, although it appears that in the future this kind of conflict resolution is all just fine.
The first we see of James T Kirk he's stealing and wrecking a car as a boy, then, later in life, we see him boozing and punching people. Far from being shunned as an anti-social man-baby, Kirk is considered 'the right stuff' and welcomed into officer training school. Spock, we discover, also spent his youth rolling around bashing his peers, those who mocked him for his mixed half-human half-Vulcan heritage -a metaphor about dealing with racism? Perhaps, although we never see him, or anyone else, take Dr McCoy to task who constantly refers to Spock as a 'pointy-eared bastard'.
While there are no actual punches thrown by McCoy the poison darts come thick and fast as he clearly has problems mixing-in, however, among the multi-stereotypical crew, Spock is the main recipient of his furtive jibes -perhaps because he attracts too much attention from Kirk, whom McCoy openly refers to as a 'prize stallion'.
In addition to all the space-age punching and name-calling, contact wrestling also features heavily in events. How better to solve the problems of the universe than with some manly wrestling? Kirk gains captaincy of The Enterprise by provoking Spock into a violent rage in order to demonstrate Spock's emotional unsuitability for the top job. He is able to do this as Spock has recently survived a holocaust (with his home planet, his Mother, and most of his race reduced to dust) and is therefore ripe for a bit of teasing about it. With Kirk in a stranglehold, Spock is relived of his post, while Kirk, the brawling-sociopath and stowaway, is considered 'the right stuff' and given command.
Obviously, no big budget Hollywood space epic would be complete without a handgun-wrestling scene. How better to confront a genocidal alien maniac from the future than with a handgun and some wrestling moves? WATCH as the pistol falls to the floor in the struggle, WHO will pick it up?
One way or another the bad guy, of course, MUST be shot to death with guns. In this villain's final moments there is a glib nod towards diplomacy as Kirk offers assistance to the now disintegrating alien ship, the offer is refused, so they duly speed along it's demise by shooting at it with big guns -much to the satisfaction of crazy hot-head Spock who doesn't much like the sound of a pity these days. Stay with this film long enough and you are sure to discover that the real crazed villains are actually the writers, and, in an uncanny reflection of their own storyline, they too worm their way into the past to plunder and destroy.
Without wishing to delve any further into the shallows of the other 'characters' and 'plot lines'- it would be an overwhelming task to chart all the inconsistencies and plagiarisms- the film as a whole can be fairly summed-up as: an indiscriminate collection of second-hand ideas crudely strung together with casual violence, or alternatively as: a homoerotic cartoon of dysfunctional male egos before backdrop of galactic tomfoolery.
Could it be, that when planning this film, Director Abrams and his associates took the view that making a Star Trek movie that appealed mainly to established fans was to miss out on other vast untapped markets? Markets of bullies perhaps, criminals, or wrestling fans? In one way, at least, the film does live up to it's hype: This is not your Dad's Star Trek -because, of course, your Dad's Star Trek had merit, and likable characters, and dramatic aspirations, and amounted to so much more than this, the basest of Hollywood crowd-pleasing.