2 posts tagged “star trek”
Welcome to episode one in the reboot of the Star Trek franchise. Not just a reference to J.J. Abrams TV roots, but also a frankly unnecessary Lucas-ification of material that once served as inspiration to the less intellectually stimulating, more action driven fun of Star Wars.
The humanist, positivist philosophy of Rodenberry is subdued, and in its place are goofy moments of comedy involving dinky little aliens, sentimental sound cues cribbed from Lost, slapstick transporter overshoots and poor choices in editing cues that turn once legendary catchphrases like, ‘Live long and prosper’ into middle finger one-liners.
More importantly though, replacing the more contemplative moments, the kinds suggested by those pulsating first notes of the classic theme, is a more prosaic questing story, similar to one through which another legendary sci-fi character was brought to our attention.
Luke Skywalker and James Tiberius Kirk, both farm boys, both fatherless. Both unconsciously driven to better themselves. In this film their paths are intrinsically linked. In fact in one scene involving the straw haired moppet Kirk, and some joyriding stupidity, it even betters Star Wars for obnoxious petulance.
And the parallels go on; Luke staring out at the twin suns replaced by Kirk’s pit stop at the shipyard where the Enterprise is being constructed. His Obi-wan, the equally commanding Bruce Greenwood as Captain Pike.
It’s Pike that takes Kirk’s rebellious, bar-brawling energy, and attempts to channel it into a career at the Federation, a kind of galactic UN, that serves as an exploration and peace keeping force. Little of which we see in this film.
In short, the film is far from perfect. In fact at times it battles with mediocrity, the central time travel theme a contrivance rather than an intriguing look at the future and mankind’s greatest frontier. It leaves poor Leonard Nimoy, returning as original Spock, as little more than doddery plot device, slotting the core cast neatly into their respective roles.
This leaves the action as filler. Starship battles that would make Lord Nelson’s eyes bleed replace submarine ping subtlety. All noise, glossy effects and glossy gyroscopic cameras. Without proper motivation and therefore significance, it’s left to the worst kinks of Star Trek, the smoke screen science, to support it. And so transporter signals are jammed, and we get an admittedly thrilling, yet vapid super sonic freefall closely followed by the clash of steel.
What’s worse, amidst these streaks of CGI colour which are, in the case of one heroic phaser battle, nigh on incomprehensible, we realise the movie lacks a decent villain. Eric Bana’s Nero, a petulant, shouty infant compared to the Shakespearean stature of Montalban’s Khan. Seriously, the biggest threat to our new look crew is a stellar miner.
Saying that, as is true for all of Abram’s previous work, it’s the character work that saves this movie. More than that; it manages to turn it into a truly stirring piece of cinema.
Each of the beloved characters are present and correct. Chris Pine displaying all the playboy swagger of Kirk, nailing classic Shatnerian joie de vivre in the film’s final moments, and adding youth and vigour to the role. Quite simply he’s the better actor, bringing an immediate presence, rather than one embellished by time and cult following.
He’s matched by Zachary Quinto, giving a superb performance as young Spock; perpetually in conflict with an emotional spectrum you realise is almost as alien a concept as he is. He shares some wonderfully tender moments with Zoe Saldana as Uhura, who balances vulnerability with nerdy bullishness to perfection.
Likewise, his clashes with the acid tongue of realist Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (Karl Urban as the film’s true highlight) not only give us some of the best lines in ‘green-blooded hobgoblin’, but sells some of the more intrusive classic references the movie throws up.
While Chekov (Anton Yelchin), Sulu (John Cho) and Scotty (Simon Pegg) aren’t quite there yet as characters, Yelchin little more than a comedy accent and Pegg a slightly less demented Sick Boy from ‘Trainspotting‘, you can’t help but be charmed by these characters interactions and altercations. The movie managing to capture some of the elusive, swashbuckling heart of the matinee.
So exciting, sure. Thrilling, most definitely. But where’s the epic implied by that fantastic final trailer? Where’s the things Roy Batty has seen? The things we wouldn’t believe. Maybe they’ll always be the domain of machines. Us humans are too busy being blinded by 80s strobes, deafened by cacophonous sound effects and seduced by young pups with movie star charisma.
Or maybe, as the pilot episode structure suggests it’s all there waiting, ready to be explored. Ready to germinate in future episodes and become far more than streaks of coloured, magical light going at warp speed.
It’s awards season and as good a time as any to take a look back over the releases of 2008 and then peek into the future at the coming movies of 2009.
I’ll quickly preface this by saying that unlike most movie audiences, the burden of expectation on critics and movie buffs is equivalent to Atlas with a full bladder and jock itch during mosquito season. Thanks to the trailers, TV spots, script reviews, production art, set photos, test screening reviews, we’ve seen 60% of the movie before its hit the cinema and as you’d expect it almost never matches the one you’ve got playing in your head.
A Knight to Remember….
What a shock then that not only was 2008 an upturn in movies, I’d be surprised if it didn’t warm the hearts of even the most inveterate cynic.
To really credit the comic book film as a genre, it reached its apotheosis this year, but most importantly, in the form of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’, received much deserved critical acclaim. Building on the promise of the first film, ‘Batman Begins’, that breathed new life into the stale superheroics of the once great ‘X-Men’ and ‘Spiderman’ franchises, Nolan and Warner Bros brought an edgier crime noir feel to the next in the series. Immersing us in a crafty marketing campaign and waking us to the idea of a comic villain, in the form of Heath Ledger’s menacing Joker, snagging Award nominations.
If ‘The Dark Knight’ was the dark, scuffed side of this cinematic coin, John Favreau’s ‘Iron Man’ was the light, irresistibly bright reverse. Coming second only to Bats as the biggest US grossing film of 2008 and giving us yet another wonderfully charismatic performance, this time from the now redeemed actor, Robert Downey Jr.- matched only by the one he gave in ‘Tropic Thunder’.
While some of the other movies in the genre didn’t do quite so well filling the studio coffers, ‘The Incredible Hulk’ at the very least, realised the potential of a 9ft tall Emerald powerhouse that uses cars for sparring practice and puts out a Chinook engine fire with some mild applause. Similarly, while not breaking big at the box office, ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ surpassed its predecessor for breadth of imagination and wit.
I could go on to discuss the relative merits of Angelina Jolie’s tattoos in the absurdly enjoyable ‘Wanted’, the disappointment of ‘Indiana Jones and the Empty Skull’ and ‘Hancock’ or the ridiculously violent fun of Rambo’s return, but besides all that, the other great thing about 2008, is that while the Oscars have become, and almost certainly always will be, a soulless, glad-handing vacuum of a personality contest, this time around we have a raft of movies to actually cheer for.
A number have been critiqued on this very site, and whatever your thoughts on ‘Milk’, ‘The Wrestler’, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, ‘Frost/Nixon’ and ‘Benjamin Button’, you couldn’t call them boring. Each one, a burst of diversity, accomplishment and entertainment. Something that we now have to cross our fingers will be repeated as we move ever further into 2009.
Watchmen will be the movie of the year……
Considering I’ve discussed the success of the superhero in such depth above, it seems necessary now to tear it apart with fine textual scalpels.
Not that I have much work to do as coming in March (and that seems a sure thing now, as I’ll explain in a moment) we have Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s ‘Watchmen’. A seminal masterwork of the comic medium, as deconstruction of the superhero, a movie version has been gestating for years and recently hit what can only be described as a legal clusterfuck as the production studio Warner Bros came under fire from Fox over rights issues.
I’d very much like to bore you to tears with an overview of what will probably go down as a neat bit of publicity (and quite frankly, I can’t think of a movie more deserving of it) suffice it to say, a suit was filed, a court date booked and thankfully, after much legal wrangling and expensive lunches later, we have a positive result.
In short, ‘Watchmen’ will be the movie of the year. If everything onscreen matches the quality of the stuff drip-fed from the production over the past couple of years, this will be both an astonishing creative accomplishment, vindication for the studio after they bravely took on a property no-one wanted to touch, but most importantly, a movie that combines the depth of thought of a literary novel with the lavish production values of a Golden Age epic.
Set in an alternate America where superheroes have been outlawed and political tensions with Russia have set the Doomsday Clock at 5mins to Midnight, the uncompromising vigilante Rorschach brings together his former teammates over the savage murder of a former colleague, the resulting investigation revealing well kept secrets that could have a catastrophic effect on our world. Alternatively you could call this a movie about a luminous blue penis, attached to an atomic God, but that’s kind of the point. The movie’s got something for everyone. Check it out over at:
http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/
and
http://rss.warnerbros.com/watchmen/
and for the ultimate Watchmen resource, check out this site:
http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/
Terminate the Transformers? Make it so…..
After gushing for far too long over that movie, I’ll get right into the next couple of picks, sidestepping, with a neat dismissal, another big movie hitting in June. Michael Bay’s ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’ or ‘Transformer 2: Because You Mugs Paid For the Last One’ will hopefully fail big time in the action department, bringing an end to this rape of our respective childhoods. It’s the only way this won’t drag millions into the cinemas to see another round of shallow characterisation, lame jokes, and non-existent story. Just because it vaguely resembles the vehicle/robot couplings we zoomed across our living room floors as kids doesn’t make it Transformers. Avoid.
Instead, get your fix of hyperactive camerawork, glossy visuals and gung ho patriotism from the far less obnoxious, though dumber sounding McG and ‘Terminator: Salvation’ (subtitles are for morons). Not only is this a continuation of one of the most beloved science fiction franchises of all time. Not only does this have Batman himself, Christian Bale, as one of the most recognisable names in cinema. Get this; it also has a load of new, and Transformer-resembling, machines for you to rush out to the shops and buy in toy form on the movie’s release. The footage looks promising too, albeit with a rather unnecessary reprisal of the classic line, ‘Come with me if you want to live’, voiced by what looks like a prepubescent (Anton Yelchin) playing the legendary, Kyle Reese.
Jumping from Kyle Reese to yet another beloved genre character, Mr Yelchin is also playing the vowel mangling security officer Chekov in J.J. Abrams reboot of the Star Trek franchise in May. Long overdue would be the best way to describe this, and based on the trailer, that both grounds the story and then sends it rocketing into a new frontier, it looks set to appeal to both old and new fans alike. There’s also that cameo that’s sure to send the partisans into paroxysms of geekgasms.
Sam Worthington, another face from ‘Terminator: Salvation’, stars in the new James Cameron epic out in December. The sci-fi ‘Avatar’ sees him in the lead role as a paraplegic marine forced into a mission of exploration and exploitation on an alien world. Looking set to push the boundaries of cinema far beyond anything we’ve seen before, it’s sure to be a breathtaking mix of pioneering 3-D action and memorable characters. A ‘Blade Runner’ for the new Millennium?
From Wizards to Weepies…..
Powering down for just the sake of word count rather than quality, we have a raft of other releases to pique your interest.
After being pushed back from its usual Autumn slot, the next entry in the Harry Potter series, the Half Blood Prince, is released in July, and based on the almost exponential growth in both maturity, level of performance and effects work; this too will prove to be a smash hit.
Two films that might never have hit the cinemas: ‘The Wolf Man’, the reimagining of the Lon Chaney classic (November) and the perennial childhood favourite, ’Where the Wild Things Are’ (December). The former due to a director walk-out over creative differences. The latter down to bizarre studio pressures. Fan favourites, it looks like both will do their source material proud.
Moving into edgier genre territory we have Vampire myth revision in the shape of already cult Swedish horror, ‘Let the Right One In’ (April) and the surprise return of Quentin Tarantino (surprising only because he seems more interested in collecting projects than actually filming them) with the knowingly misspelled WWII Men on a Mission flick ‘Inglourious Basterds’ (August).
With trepidation I include ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’, slashing through cinemas in May. While it has the talented Gavin Hood at the helm, it has had a very troubled production history, including reports of the infamous Fox Studio head, Tom Rothman, getting involved. And while the recent trailer shows some potential, it looks a little too bargain basement. Adamantium claws crossed for this one.
Other than that, it’s a burst of bare knuckle boxing sleuthing, as Robert Downey Jr. returns to this preview in Guy Ritchie’s, no doubt, cockneyfied ‘Sherlock Holmes’ (November); a no doubt heartbreaking take on loss in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s excellent ‘The Lovely Bones’ and finally the Heath Ledger’s last film, ‘The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus’ (TBC). Directed by the legendary Terry Gilliam, it also stars Verne Troyer so Big Brother fans are catered for. In fact, if there’s not a movie for everyone this year, I’ll eat Michael Bay’s hat.
Please note that some of these release dates are TBC in the UK and subject to change.
