Star Trek Sabotaged

Rating: 7/10 (27 September 2009)

Early in the movie kid Kirk demolishes a classic American muscle car, while listening to Beastie Boys "Sabotage". He does it for symbolic reasons; He tells the audience that the Star Trek as we knew it, is gone. It is replaced with hip, energetic and ultimately empty version of Star Trek.
Having said that, the characters do work quite well. They just don't resemble their original counterparts at all. Kirk for example is brash, arrogant and headstrong. Chris Pine is a charismatic actor and this new Kirk is a fun character. But he is not the Kirk as we knew him. Same goes for the rest of the cast as well; These are all fine characters, but revised versions of the old ones. That's my biggest grudge with the movie: Why the need to make revisions? Why is Hollywood constantly looking at the past? This constant grave robbing of the past is wearing thin. Why not use this great cast and create whole new characters for them to play? Why not move the Star Treck franchise in to a New Frontier? Why waste millions to recreate something that needs not to be recreated?
Cinematography is "updated" as well. Shaky cameras, cgi ships and creatures, signal a new era for Star Trek. It looks more like Battlestar Galactica than Star Trek. Yet despite the efforts, many physical sets are mindbogglingly boring. Ships engine rooms look like contemporary factories. Villains ship interior is just a collection of walkways and ropes. Incredibly dull. I didn't think I saw one impressive shot of Enterprise either. Clumsy directing.
Weakest part of the movie is the script itself. It is constantly turning and twisting, bombarding us with action and snappy dialog, to hide the fact that it is falling apart.On close examination The script does not hold together. The villains motivations are not enough to make us care. The numerous lucky coincidences just don't make any sense at all. Spocks behavior is difficult to explain at times.
Plus the whole time travel plot pretty much destroyed the entire Trek continuity. They are going to have to do some pretty intense time traveling in the next episodes, if they wish to make this mesh with the old Star Trek.
But I suppose they don't want to make this mesh with the originals. If that is the case, why not simply move the story into the future? There's plenty to explore in the universe. There's no need to revamp the past, when you can boldly go where no man has gone before.