Star Trek
Posted on June 12, 2009 1 Comment
Star Trek remains my favorite franchise in all of entertainment – fmor the wild-eyed idealism of Star Trek, the future-pointed brilliance of The Next Generation to the dark, war-tones of Deep Space Nine – the series in unmatched in depth and breadth of ideas and tones.
The franchise has definitely had its pitfalls with the odd-numbered films, horribly directed combat in most series, some poor special effects, awkward writing and masturbatory self-reference . . .
And not every Trek series was as strong . . . Voyager suffered from a severe lack of lasting story consquences, despite the edge of space setting. Enterprise, terribly casted, defaulted to rehashing old plots or reintroducing enemies from other series. There were rumors of a TNG follow-up series being developed, focusing on Riker and Troi during the collapse of the Federation, but basing a new series on two of the worst characters in the previous (one of which has not aged well) was folly.
With the final two Trek shows being canceled and fans signing petitions to have the franchise’s helmsmen banished from Trek forever, it seemed that Trek would have to go into cold storage for a while . . .
And then JJ Abrams signed on to direct a new Trek film, and the fanboys rejoiced.
But when it was announced that he would ‘reboot’ the original characters . . . there was much fear.
JJ Abrams Star Trek is not Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. It’s more hyped, more hyper-active, more aggressive, less introspective. The characters retain their basic threads but have been woven into a new, shinier tapestry. And there are not Shakespeare quoting Klingons in this one . . .
The Good
JJ managed dodged canon-heralding trekkies by creating an alternate timeline in which to play and reinterpret original Trek elements. His properties are not new to time-travel subterfuge, if you’ve been keeping up with LOST . . .
Fans are already lobbying to see Abram-ized Klingons or, strangely, Gorn.
The villian, Nero, is the opposite of the previous Star Trek villians. He is not secretive, intelligent nor dramatic. He does not wield an expansive vocabulary and an English accent. He is not an unfathomable floating-head space being, nor a murderous race of robotic hive-logic automatons.
He is a man who has lost his family and his planet, and he wants the perceived perpetrators to experience the same.
The ship is fantastically rendered, battles are less chess and more dodgeball. Just think, it’ll make sense.
There’s a real sense of scale and position in space. While space in older Star Trek films felt formless and without scale (why do you think so many battles happened in orbit of a planet?), JJ Abrams uses nebula, camera work and movement to create dynamic movement.
The GUI and design work on the Trek interior is fantastic and balances realism between the 60′s Trek’s bo-beep knobs and 90′s Trek’s featureless, personality-less touch pads.
It helps that the actors were interacting with actual real Adobe AIR applications designed by OOOiii. (also responsible for the heralded Minority Report virtual interfaces)
Chris Pine as Kirk was pretty much note-perfect. He had enough touches of Shatner’s Kirk to link the two – but also is a bit more believable as a rebel and a brilliant prodigy. Overly confident, cocky, and yet charismatic.
The ‘root’ story of the film is a bit fuzzy in the end. It’s about destiny, and the past and future fueling the now . . . but it was more a setup movie for future films more than anything. And that’s what’s most exciting and also risky – bringing this shined up, ‘modern’ Star Trek into the classic root of what Star Trek really was about – ideas and hope.
That’s what I’m more excited about – seeing where JJ will take them and what else he’ll do in the Trek World.
1 comment so far
About this Blog
Variegating
1. Having streaks, marks, or patches of a different color or colors; varicolored; mottled; dappled
2. Distinguished or characterized by variety; diversified.
Drew Pickard is a graphic designer employed at Pop in Seattle WA. He is an amateur photographer, a collector of Galactic Heroes, big-picture obsessor and has a lot of opinions about stuff.
Flickr
Search
The Family
- 7two
- iterator
- Limbotext
- Luke Asa
- MustWarnOthers
- protoculture
- Thoughts Spoken
- unformatted
- waves
- WeLivedAsKings
Cousins
- Belle & Wissel
- entrauge
- Gabe Kean
- Hans Krebs
- Invisible Creature
- Jordan Butcher
- Lite Fuse Design
- Peter Dawson
- Sccottt
- site06
- workplaydream
no “the bad?”
I totally agree w/ the space battle thing. Great observation. I think Battlestar’s aesthetic may have helped with that. Have bullets and shells in space instead of just “ray guns” made things so much more physical.