[falstaffe]

The new Trek is a fun film, and does preserve and re-package the mythology in a new and interesting way, featuring a WONDERFUL cast.

However, it did bother me that they were catering so much to the non-trek crowd by making it a frenetic, over-the-top roller-coaster ride a la Raiders of the Lost Ark. The camera doesn’t sit still for a second and the screen is always full of action, explosions, blinky lights or cheesecake (cue the green Orion chick.)

Neither do the actors stand still: the first time we meet Spock (as a child) he’s getting into a fistfight, immediately followed by Kirk trashing his stepfather’s car, driving it off the edge of a cliff!!!

Even in little details they’ve sought to amp up the action: phasers do a whirly-whizzy thing as they switch from “stun” to “kill” and they don’t shoot in long streams, they go Pew! Pew! Pew! (Like the guns in Star Wars. Speaking of which, there’s a chase-scene gag lifted directly from The Phantom Menace. Y’know, if you’re making that movie look leisurely, you might be over-doing the action.) This movie has serious attention-deficit disorder issues.

I’d always thought of Trek as “drama” with dashes of action, comedy and adventure thrown in. I’d rag on the score (forgettable) or the set design (weirdly uneven—the bridge looks like the Apple Store while Engineering looks like a sewage-treatment facility), but they’re minor nitpicks. Is the new Star Trek enjoyable? Yes. Am I eagerly waiting to see where they go with it? Yes. Just be ready for the roller-coaster ride. (Oh, and don’t expect to see Nimoy until late in the game.)