Arrested Development

Rating: 5/10 (26 April 2010)

I had very low expectations when the current ST-movie was announced and when I read, that it was meant to show the academy- and early years of the TOS-crew and ship.
And the point-of-critic still remains valid!
The makers and cast delivered a good SciFi movie. Nothing less and nothing more. That's all, folks. Throughout the entire time since the "Next Generation", even a blind could see that the execs in the company and the creative staff behind the whole franchise didn't have neither the guts nor the creative potential to evolve, cultivate and develop the franchise forward. That they completely lacked the pioneer's spirit which all ST-series ever pretended to cherish and portray. Thereby the Closing Argument by "Q" in "All Good Things" was *imho* always an adequate description of the entire franchise's problem as such, surely without any of the addressed executives noticing that.
What this film mainly suffers about is a problem, which already affected two ST-motion-pictures before: the first movie blatantly ripped-off the TV episode with that NOMAD-probe, for part two they revived Khan. Here the plot delivers an enemy-ship, reminding very much of that one in "Nemesis" and just like there the villain is on a vendetta against one of Enterprise's clueless senior-officers who doesn't even know of his opponents existence. The whole thing is a "Dejà Vu". For the climax the two main-heroes have to fight it out over there – again. Before the whole thing blows away - again.
At least they spared us too much idiotic technobabble this time. There's action, good lines, erotic and a logical predesign of the original Enterprise. Unfortunately it's predictable, that the makers will fall back to the old "Patterns of a Dead Horse" after this brief vitalization. But too many people don't want to hear about the Prime Directive anymore, about Klingon honor, technological bullshit, captain's doubts and constructed conscience-conflicts or about ensigns in their pubertous-prime whom the script don't allow to let themselves get laid.
I recall seeing the first three episodes of the last series 'Enterprise'. "Aha... they dress it into a rock-song and think we'll buy it..." Unfortunately that song sucked (Joss Whedon did better!). And again: the same lame dialogs, onedimensional characters (looking concerned all the time doesn't automatically mean good acting) and those crappy Star-Fleet-uniforms I can't bear to watch anymore. And just as "Enterprise", this movie also plays in the past and is the same foul compromise. So all in all this is giant leap back to where everyone has gone before. The only good point (apart of Zoe Saldana) is that they once and for the first time consequently showed, that messing with the timeline ends in irreversible mayhem that even the Enterprise can't fix anymore. But when I think that they only did this to restart an all new timeline with the old crew instead of creating new characters who are truly original and interesting I have to freak out. And you really don't wanna tell me that Janeway was an interesting character do you? That would be like selling Chancellor Angela Merkel as Michelle Obama and you don't really mean that.
This STAR TREK-movie is good and highly entertaining but it also reveals the still unsolved problem of the franchise and –guys at Paramount: you better get it going to the right direction. SciFi-franchises came and went, some better, some worse. Hell, even George Lucas screwed his own one up!
The best in last decade was surely the most short-running: "Firefly"! There's none higher. Make it so.
That'd be all, dismissed!