Drive By Review of the Star Trek film
May. 11th, 2009 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pennswoodsNow that I've gotten a bit of the squee out of my soul, I've decided to enumerate what I did and didn't like about Star Trek the film. This is going to be super-spoilerific, so I shall be using a cut.
In the meantime, for those of youlooking for a good time who don't want to be spoiled, here's a link to a LOLarous recap of Amok Time, credited by some as the slashiest episode in all history and the kick-off to all that Kirk/Spock slash. I guess, I should warn that there are lots of spoilers there too for those of you who've been living under a rock for the past 40+ years...
Things that made me squee!!!
1. So much shiny. The ships were shiny and bright, the actors and actress were absolutely beautiful or adorable. Uhura was beautiful to watch with her ponytail swishing behind her, Sulu was a babe, McCoy (!!!!) was quite the dish, Kirk had gorgeous eyes, and even Pike was yummy. But Spock... Ungh!!! I'm a total Spock fangirl now.
1b. Spock's ears... I want to lick Spock's ears...
2. Excellent eyebrow action. Kirk and Spock are particularly blessed in the brow bone follicle department. Yum! I want to lick Spock's eyebrows too!
3. Wee Spock - Awe!!! I loved seeing the Vulcan education system in action, and I loved the occasional shots of Vulcan architecture, but seeing little Spock wail on his classmates and then his wee little green bruised face when he spoke with his father - so cute!
4. Iowa as the site of Starship construction!!!! Can I just say how glad I am to see the awesomeness of Iowa being realized in this film.
5. Every single scene with Kirk and Spock together made my shipper's heart beat faster. There's some amazing fanon fodder in this film, and I cannot wait until the video is released so that its slashy potential can be fully realized. Not only did I absolutely love seeing Spock wail on Kirk (LOL!), but I loved the snarky lines that Kirk seemed to elicit from Spock. And there were several frames in which the two were facing off and standing so very, very close. Those are going to make brilliant fanart references.
6. LEONARD NIMOY!!! Leonard Nimoy is pure awesomesauce - even when his job is to play lame exposition fairy to speed up the plot to leave more time for Kirk to oogle chicks, get into bar fights and engage in highly unnecessary chase scenes with angry snow lobsters.
7. Every now and again I thought Sulu was channeling a bit of Harry Kim and that made me LOL! But I loved seeing him kick butt in hand to hand combat, and I also found the whole rolling around on the transporter pad with Kirk highly delightful. :D
8. Bones shooting Kirk up, and Kirk whining. A-ha-ha!!!!
9. Scotty!!!!!! Scotty!!!!! Scotty!!!! Scotty is love. I'm only sorry we had to wait until the movie was almost over before we got to enjoy his awesome awesomeness. He was almost like a Star Trek fanboy speaking for the fans when he found himself on the bridge. I'd be excited too!!!
10. Winona Ryder forever!!!!!11 She didn't get to do much but be motherly and die, but it was nice to see her in a film again.
11. Spock embracing even kissing Uhura in the lift and then getting all logical again the minute the door opened. That was so hawt.
12. Also, Uhura telling Spock what's what and getting him to assign her to the Enterprise!
13. I really enjoyed the way Pine seemed to shift and truly channel Shatner as he entered the bridge and settled into the captain's seat at the end of the film. It was a beautiful homage.
14. Hearing craggy Nimoy's voice recite those epic lines as the music from TOS rolled in for the closing credits. That gave me chills.
WTF?
1. The ship of angry biker dudes with facial tattoos, I mean, the spacefaring Maori, sorry, I mean the crew of Romulans who ALL shared the same bad logic as their captain and blamed Spock for everything AND had nothing better to do than help their captain avenge the death of HIS wife AND somehow didn't bother to mutiny in the 25 years spent lurking in the past, AND also didn't bother going and hanging out on the now extinct Romulus to maybe warn people about the future/attempt to avert extinction in a more productive manner than did NOT involve GENOCIDE/enjoy some good Romulan home-cooking...
1b. Also, Babylon 5 called. The Shadows want their warships back. KThnx!
2. Just about every single thing that happened on Hoth, er... I mean the icy M-class planet inhabited by giant ferocious lobsters that Kirk landed on where he was conveniently saved by Spock Prime, who just happened to have holed up in the same cave ON THE SAME PLANET that Kirk found himself in and just happened to have scored some wood or something that he could set on fire, and who... oh for heaven's sake!
3. Chekhov's accent. I acknowledge that this is a relic of TOS of the 1960s and therefore a charmingly familiar feature of the character that had to be maintained, but I get irritated when a movie expects us to chuckle at someone's accented English.
In my irritation, I started wondering why Chekhov should have such a marked Russian accent at such a young age (17!!!!) and why he's the only one who seems to have this "problem". And it is a problem if the speech recognition software on a brand new starship cannot process your voice commands. Somehow, Uhura's Orion roommate manages to speak English with a distinctively North American accent. Perhaps she was raised on Earth. Perhaps she's a language genius. Perhaps all Orions are excellent mimics, able to acquire language in minutes. Or perhaps everyone (including the Romulans) are running around using universal translators to communicate, but I'm kind of skeptical about this because it would sort of nullify Hoshi's, I mean, Uhura's awesome mad skillz as an xenolinguist fluent in 5 Romulan dialects. So, I assume that the resetting of the timeline means that no universal translator exists yet. Thus poor, Checkhov, who is only 17, who only spent the past 4 or 3 years in San Francisco, who must have known some English before being accepted into the academy at 13 or 14 is severely challenged when it comes to acquiring English phonology - WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING I FIND FUNNY!!!!
4. Speaking of language and linguistics. I vomited a little in my mouth when Kirk somehow managed to impress Uhura with his knowledge of xenolinguistics. Oh, yeah, as an applied linguist myself, I'd be impressed too if some guy I met in a bar demonstrated superficial knowledge of my field of study by flinging around a few VERY BASIC terms he'd come across while reading wikipedia. Ugh!
5. The new McCoy didn't quite bring the crotchety that the old McCoy did. Maybe it'll come with time - such lines ring truer with a more wizened face and more gravely voice.
6. Uhura stripping down to her skivvies while Kirk gawked from under her roommate's bed was just gratuitous nonsense. However Uhura's nonchalance at walking around nearly naked while her roommate also lounged around similarly undressed seems to have whetted the appetite of femmeslashers in the fandom, so maybe this was supposed to be a gift.
7. I wish Uhura could have been more relevant and awesome. She was sassy, she was pretty, but she didn't even have the same impact that Chekhov did saving lives and such. Again, this is an artifact of the character's role from TOS which was slightly expanded here so that she did more than act as a space operator. Nevertheless, this is one of the problems that is inevitable when rebooting something initially designed for 1960s television audiences and which seemed to have a much narrower scope for women's roles.
8. One minute Spock is too emotionally compromised by the death of his mother and the destruction of his ENTIRE PLANET to captain the ship, but a half hour later (wtf? did he have a good cry or something) he's good enough to return as second in command????
9. And speaking of VULCAN... the destruction of a whole rich civilization and culture will no doubt fuel a flurry of fanfic. However, I left the theater feeling emotionally bereft and angry, and this feeling of loss is growing, not fading. Why this culture? Why?
In the meantime, for those of you
Things that made me squee!!!
1. So much shiny. The ships were shiny and bright, the actors and actress were absolutely beautiful or adorable. Uhura was beautiful to watch with her ponytail swishing behind her, Sulu was a babe, McCoy (!!!!) was quite the dish, Kirk had gorgeous eyes, and even Pike was yummy. But Spock... Ungh!!! I'm a total Spock fangirl now.
1b. Spock's ears... I want to lick Spock's ears...
2. Excellent eyebrow action. Kirk and Spock are particularly blessed in the brow bone follicle department. Yum! I want to lick Spock's eyebrows too!
3. Wee Spock - Awe!!! I loved seeing the Vulcan education system in action, and I loved the occasional shots of Vulcan architecture, but seeing little Spock wail on his classmates and then his wee little green bruised face when he spoke with his father - so cute!
4. Iowa as the site of Starship construction!!!! Can I just say how glad I am to see the awesomeness of Iowa being realized in this film.
5. Every single scene with Kirk and Spock together made my shipper's heart beat faster. There's some amazing fanon fodder in this film, and I cannot wait until the video is released so that its slashy potential can be fully realized. Not only did I absolutely love seeing Spock wail on Kirk (LOL!), but I loved the snarky lines that Kirk seemed to elicit from Spock. And there were several frames in which the two were facing off and standing so very, very close. Those are going to make brilliant fanart references.
6. LEONARD NIMOY!!! Leonard Nimoy is pure awesomesauce - even when his job is to play lame exposition fairy to speed up the plot to leave more time for Kirk to oogle chicks, get into bar fights and engage in highly unnecessary chase scenes with angry snow lobsters.
7. Every now and again I thought Sulu was channeling a bit of Harry Kim and that made me LOL! But I loved seeing him kick butt in hand to hand combat, and I also found the whole rolling around on the transporter pad with Kirk highly delightful. :D
8. Bones shooting Kirk up, and Kirk whining. A-ha-ha!!!!
9. Scotty!!!!!! Scotty!!!!! Scotty!!!! Scotty is love. I'm only sorry we had to wait until the movie was almost over before we got to enjoy his awesome awesomeness. He was almost like a Star Trek fanboy speaking for the fans when he found himself on the bridge. I'd be excited too!!!
10. Winona Ryder forever!!!!!11 She didn't get to do much but be motherly and die, but it was nice to see her in a film again.
11. Spock embracing even kissing Uhura in the lift and then getting all logical again the minute the door opened. That was so hawt.
12. Also, Uhura telling Spock what's what and getting him to assign her to the Enterprise!
13. I really enjoyed the way Pine seemed to shift and truly channel Shatner as he entered the bridge and settled into the captain's seat at the end of the film. It was a beautiful homage.
14. Hearing craggy Nimoy's voice recite those epic lines as the music from TOS rolled in for the closing credits. That gave me chills.
WTF?
1. The ship of angry biker dudes with facial tattoos, I mean, the spacefaring Maori, sorry, I mean the crew of Romulans who ALL shared the same bad logic as their captain and blamed Spock for everything AND had nothing better to do than help their captain avenge the death of HIS wife AND somehow didn't bother to mutiny in the 25 years spent lurking in the past, AND also didn't bother going and hanging out on the now extinct Romulus to maybe warn people about the future/attempt to avert extinction in a more productive manner than did NOT involve GENOCIDE/enjoy some good Romulan home-cooking...
1b. Also, Babylon 5 called. The Shadows want their warships back. KThnx!
2. Just about every single thing that happened on Hoth, er... I mean the icy M-class planet inhabited by giant ferocious lobsters that Kirk landed on where he was conveniently saved by Spock Prime, who just happened to have holed up in the same cave ON THE SAME PLANET that Kirk found himself in and just happened to have scored some wood or something that he could set on fire, and who... oh for heaven's sake!
3. Chekhov's accent. I acknowledge that this is a relic of TOS of the 1960s and therefore a charmingly familiar feature of the character that had to be maintained, but I get irritated when a movie expects us to chuckle at someone's accented English.
In my irritation, I started wondering why Chekhov should have such a marked Russian accent at such a young age (17!!!!) and why he's the only one who seems to have this "problem". And it is a problem if the speech recognition software on a brand new starship cannot process your voice commands. Somehow, Uhura's Orion roommate manages to speak English with a distinctively North American accent. Perhaps she was raised on Earth. Perhaps she's a language genius. Perhaps all Orions are excellent mimics, able to acquire language in minutes. Or perhaps everyone (including the Romulans) are running around using universal translators to communicate, but I'm kind of skeptical about this because it would sort of nullify Hoshi's, I mean, Uhura's awesome mad skillz as an xenolinguist fluent in 5 Romulan dialects. So, I assume that the resetting of the timeline means that no universal translator exists yet. Thus poor, Checkhov, who is only 17, who only spent the past 4 or 3 years in San Francisco, who must have known some English before being accepted into the academy at 13 or 14 is severely challenged when it comes to acquiring English phonology - WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING I FIND FUNNY!!!!
4. Speaking of language and linguistics. I vomited a little in my mouth when Kirk somehow managed to impress Uhura with his knowledge of xenolinguistics. Oh, yeah, as an applied linguist myself, I'd be impressed too if some guy I met in a bar demonstrated superficial knowledge of my field of study by flinging around a few VERY BASIC terms he'd come across while reading wikipedia. Ugh!
5. The new McCoy didn't quite bring the crotchety that the old McCoy did. Maybe it'll come with time - such lines ring truer with a more wizened face and more gravely voice.
6. Uhura stripping down to her skivvies while Kirk gawked from under her roommate's bed was just gratuitous nonsense. However Uhura's nonchalance at walking around nearly naked while her roommate also lounged around similarly undressed seems to have whetted the appetite of femmeslashers in the fandom, so maybe this was supposed to be a gift.
7. I wish Uhura could have been more relevant and awesome. She was sassy, she was pretty, but she didn't even have the same impact that Chekhov did saving lives and such. Again, this is an artifact of the character's role from TOS which was slightly expanded here so that she did more than act as a space operator. Nevertheless, this is one of the problems that is inevitable when rebooting something initially designed for 1960s television audiences and which seemed to have a much narrower scope for women's roles.
8. One minute Spock is too emotionally compromised by the death of his mother and the destruction of his ENTIRE PLANET to captain the ship, but a half hour later (wtf? did he have a good cry or something) he's good enough to return as second in command????
9. And speaking of VULCAN... the destruction of a whole rich civilization and culture will no doubt fuel a flurry of fanfic. However, I left the theater feeling emotionally bereft and angry, and this feeling of loss is growing, not fading. Why this culture? Why?
