The Forceful Relationship Between Entertainment Cinema and Its Audiences.

Rating: 7/10 (28 July 2009)

J.J. Abrams is, as has been made quite evident by now, a time traveler at heart, a heart which loves everything old: old faces, old times, old manners, old franchises. In an age when cinema has become entirely its own storytelling beast, its own approach to manifesting drama, the more accustomed acting for the camera being less and less drawn from the theatre, one greatly admires the work of actors like Chris Pine, the malleable concrete which forms the basis of Captain Kirk's reconstruction, and Zachary Quinto, who has a look of infinite dexterity in his obvious physical proclivity for Spock, who don't have to bounce around and reel off monologues ridden with words accentuated on paper with all caps, instead utilizing the great amount of character in their faces. They are never uninteresting. But before I allow you to conclude that my point is that this new Star Trek reboot is a unique, unadulterated piece of talent free from its interrelations of media bondage, it should be made clear that it is a big "Hey, how ya doin'?" for Trekkies, much of the impact of the story being implicit to followers of the half-century franchise. To boot, the film's highly creative director J.J. Abrams, perhaps due to the lion's share of his career having been spent in epic TV projects, directs this starter-up as if it were the pilot to an all-new Star Trek TV series. I have never been more conscious of the fact that the story arch will not conclude here but in multiple sequels to come.
The pre-title sequence is incredible. The intensity of the action and the emotional impact of the scene's progression are not taken for granted, as Abrams makes great use of the music score and manipulation of sound to augment it all to full effect. Flash-forward to the rebellious youth of angry, reckless, fatherless James Tiberius Kirk. This segment is just about the only one in the whole film that loosens up within the iron grip of a domineering fan base. Once again, the music choice is interesting, the scene is loaded with action and implications of the futuristic setting, any and everyone is enjoying themselves.
Writers Orci and Kurtzman seem to fully understand that genre films often include clearcut plot assurances like moral certainties and action set pieces so that solving the film's conflicts can be submitted to the genre. Even parodies or criticisms of a genre rely on the audience's acquaintance with it. Thus, J.J. Abrams' Star Trek succeeds within its genre. I suppose what makes me less than partial to this film is the general ideological notions of the world of Star Trek.
Where Star Wars presents a story of intelligence in the universe existing a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, full of interplanetary travel on an everyday, almost casual basis, suggesting the fascinating notion of life on Earth possibly in the prehistoric era, Star Trek suggests that humanity on Earth, primarily Americans with the exception of a few token foreigners with characteristic specialties, is the ennobled savior of the universe against countless other forms of intelligence which learn more from us than we learn from them. I believe that if Romulans can emerge from the future to create black holes out of planets and Vulcans can live for hundreds of years and share thoughts, experiences, memories and knowledge through physical contact, not to mention live by the phrase "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," which we still have yet to discover, it is not likely that they are the less evolved or efficient beings in comparison to humans.
Both films and their audiences are culturally operated. What a film means can and does change, but basic idealized views are taken for granted by the story. These conclusions are rooted in reiteration, which leads us to assume things unless they are outwardly countered. But that alone is not the mark of the text. It may assume particular messages and inferences, but it exists to take risks, to work through theoretical dilemmas, the purpose of the movie hero breaking new ground in relation to such things. In part due to this movie in particular being a franchise rejuvenation, they are not reproduced so much as refreshed, not so much repeated as reworked.
The fascination of film is reinforced by initial fascination already at work within the subject and the social establishments that molded it. Indeed, the filmmakers would've found their balls in a salad shooter if they disappointed enough fans. I believe that there is a lot about this movie's creative process that I have yet to know, hence I am sure that this film is more of a success than I realize.