Rating:

Star Trek is a movie that takes characters we know and love and reintroduces them to us through a story of their first adventure in space. Some time-traveling Romulans are cruising through space destroying things and ruining everyone’s day. Only our young Enterprise crewmembers can stop them, with a little help from a certain time-traveling Vulcan. That’s all you need to know about the story, so we now present a conversation between Melted Reel’s sexy heroes Eric and Mark, both of whom like Star Trek but one of whom is a total fucking Star Trek nerd. See if you can guess which is which.

ERIC: The very beginning aboard the Kelvin: right on. Then I was less than thrilled with the Kirk stuff. Driving a car (with a NOKIA futurephone) and having a barfight, with stupid music playing during both scenes? No thank you on all that.  But then once the “THREE YEARS LATER” comes on the screen and Kirk is taking the Kobayashi Maru, it starts to pick up.

I definitely felt like it was an enjoyable watch, a good action movie certainly. A lot of the time, though, it seemed that while being a Star Trek kind of story it lacked the questing, exploratory spirit of Star Trek. It was definitely more for new audiences than for old fans, but unlike the turd that was Nemesis old fans were able to enjoy most of the ride, as well. It was overall for the masses, but there were smaller moments that were appealing to long-time fans.

I thought most of the characterizations were good, McCoy certainly, and in particular Spock. The most interesting and most “Star Trek feeling” parts, if you will, were the scenes about Spock dealing with his humanity. Which of course is what the best of Star Trek is always about, what it means to be human. The exception to the goodness of Spock was, of course, the completely fucking insane idea that he should be in a romance with Uhura. [Editor’s note: Don’t worry, that’s not a spoiler. It is a teeny-tiny fraction of the movie that doesn’t make any difference. Which, I’d argue, is why they should have cut it out. In addition to it being retarded, of course.] I though I’d never see an Uhura romance more absurd than the one between her and Scotty in Star Trek V. I was wrong.

Comic relief is something that always bugs me in new entries in long running series after a long gap between movies–Jar Jar, for example, or those motherfucking gophers in Indy 4. But here, it sometimes worked. When the jokes were related to things we know about the characters from watching the original series, they worked (the best example is probably the role-reversed exchange when Kirk and McCoy first meet Spock). When the jokes were just jokes on their own (that little green dude likes to climb on things, Scotty is dismayed by that fact) they didn’t work at all.

I don’t like the idea of reboots generally, certainly not when the thing you’ve been watching was good, because basically they’re telling you everything you watched before was a stupid waste of your time. Reboot something like the Batman movies and it doesn’t bother me too much because nobody is going to tell you that Batman Forever was cinema gold (though I generally like those four movies–I don’t even hate Batman and Robin as much as you’re supposed to). But I was nervous about a Star Trek reboot, because Star Trek is awesome and didn’t need discarded, except maybe “The Way to Eden” with Charles Napier and his space-hippie cronies. So I was pleased with the way they did it in this movie. With the reboot coming about because of an actual altered timeline, those other adventures still “officially” happened, even if they’re contradicted by what happens in this movie. “Balance of Terror” can no longer be the first time anyone sees Romulans and other things like that, but those episodes can still be true anyway thanks to the altered timeline plot device.

So it wasn’t as good as II, III, IV, VI or First Contact, but it was an enjoyable flick for sure. It had stuff for new people, stuff for fans, and even a few things for superfans (when Kirk is marooned on Delta Vega, I wondered if I was the only person in the theater who remembered there was a “lithium cracking station” on the planet).

You can get a word in edgewise now.

MARK:  Basically, I thought everything was as good as it could be given the circumstances. Abrams did a good job not focusing on characterization, because that would just piss off fanboys, no matter how well done, and bore the popcorn audience.

For the record: Spock in a relationship, in general, I don’t dig. I can see that they want him to be just a bit more “human” in this series, but it still just didn’t go well with his general character.

ERIC: Right. I can totally get behind Nurse Chapel crushing on him and him not returning the affection. Well, kinda returning the affection once, but only when under the influence of his crazy mating cycle and desperate for some spacepoon. But kissing Uhura on the transporter pad, in front of people? People he barely knows?

MARK:  On the basis of being a film, independent of its relationship to the mythology, I thought it was very good. Almost pure action, most of which was neat. Very non-stop, which I always like about the well-done blockbusters.

ERIC: I must say, my ass was thoroughly shocked that [SPOILER REMOVED].

MARK: No shit, man!

ERIC: [SPOILER REMOVED] is pretty hardcore.

MARK: I absolutely thought they would get sucked back in time to just before that happened, in time to stop it. But they left it.

ERIC: Speaking of hardcore: References to sex with farm animals? So out of place in Star Trek. However, I didn’t mind the completely gratuitous bra-clad ladies (though I could tell some of the people in the audience were uncomfortable) because it seemed like a fair extension of Kirk’s notorious bedhopping. At least as far as the Orion chick goes. Uhura then taking off her clothes [Editor’s note: That’s right, fanboys] was somewhat less defensible, but whatever.

MARK: Well, bitching about it is more fun, but I have to admit that I liked it a lot. I’ve used this excuse before, but divorced from the originals it holds up well. Some cliches, some plot holes, but characters I care about doing things I’m interested in works for me.

ERIC: Right on.

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• Eric’s Top Ten Star Trek Episodes