If you know me then you know I am not a fan of Star Trek in any way. The newest movie didn’t change my mind on that at all. Let me explain with SPOILERS why. So that was your SPOILER alert.
As the movie opens the crew is on a backward planet trying to stop a volcano from destroying the backward creatures on the planet without having their futuristic equipment spotted. Spock is being lowered into the volcano to blast it with a “cold fusion bomb” to freeze the lava. Apparently none of the writers took 2 seconds too find out that cold fusion doesn’t involve freezing anything and does not result in lower temperatures. The “cold” in cold fusion means room temperature. It should also be known that freezing the top layers of lava in a volcano would also not stop the underlying forces from building pressure and making an even larger eruption there or even in a different location with less resistance.
Also I have a problem with the crew being required to not be seen by this backward race of creatures. Why not teach them a few things and give them stuff that will help them out, you know maybe help them survive, if that’s your concern. Add to that the fact that Spock was willing to die so that the “don’t be seen” rule would not be violated and I am extra annoyed. It gets even dumber when you find out that Spock was already breaking a rule by being in the volcano trying to stop the eruption in the first place. So which is it, Spock will die for the rules or Spock has no problem breaking the rules?
We also find a situation a little later where someone says, after an attack at an archive, that war has been declared on the Starship Federation. If war has indeed been declared then why in the world would you gather all of your top people into one room protected only by a large glass window. Come on people this is basic “war” stuff and a very tired writing device.
Then there is the bad guy, Khan. He has been frozen for 300 years but has more technological knowledge than anyone alive in the future. Hard to swallow that one. Then there was a moral dilemma about killing him without a trial, but in a different scene someone says he had been condemned to die which removes the need for a double jeopardy trial and brings up the question, why was he not executed, but instead frozen? We also have Khan taking on the Bin Laden role of someone who was once supported by a government for purposes of fighting an enemy who then turns on that government. He even flies a starship into American buildings, apparently destroying half of San Francisco. Before being captured and…refrozen?!? WTF?!? Just kill him already!!!!! If they want to study his magic universal donor blood they have 72 other frozen people who have the same blood.
Next we move on to the problem of the other bad guy. The admiral, (I’ll call him George Bush from now on) who wants to militarize the starfleet. What?!? The starfleet is not militarized? Then why in the world do they have torpedo tubes, shields and phasers? If their weapons are weak then it does not mean they have no military capabilities, it means they have been sent out ill-prepared for whatever they may encounter. The Klingon army is apparently chomping at the bit to go to war with Earth or something and “George Bush” wants to hasten this war with a whole race of violent warriors because…drum roll…he has ONE special “militarized” starship, with a light crew of private contractors, that eventually gets overtaken by a small fraction of the crew from one of those ill-prepared “non-militarized” starships. Also he apparently raised a weapons expert daughter (who has the ability to create a fake identity and get onto a super-secret assassin-mission starship using the later easily-debunked identity) without passing on to her such basic traits as a similar moral code or a non-British accent. Also very believable.
In one scene a torpedo is about to blow and someone has his arm caught in it so the computer can’t distinguish between him and the torpedo in order to beam him up. If that’s the case wouldn’t everyone have to jump and touch nothing else in order to be beamed up, since touching something confuses the computer?
Then we have the standard problems of things like “Hey how the heck did that skinny Russian dude make his way over here, through all this rotating mayhem, to catch the Captain’s slipping hand in the nick of time?” or “Why is that skinny Russian sliding across the now sideways floor when everyone else who just left his side 2 seconds ago is standing up?” or “How did ‘George Bush’ sabotage the ship’s core when there is a crew of engineers assigned full-time to making sure it is working properly?”. Then there’s “How many freaking manual overrides are there in the future, why does it take so long for everyone to think of them and why are they all so hard to operate?”.
We also have the movie credit dedication to post 9/11 soldiers which is kind of a spit in their face if the Bin Laden/Bush comparisons in the movie are purposeful, since that would be saying they are dupes fighting Klingons for someone who had a hidden war agenda. If the comparisons are not on purpose then that is a huge coincidence that the movie has a haphazard, warmongering leader who wants to fight the savages and uses terror attacks by someone his government once supported as an opportunistic chance to start his beloved war involving private contractor soldiers. Couple that with aircraft flying into buildings and the direct mention of September 11th in the credits and the coincidence gets spooky.
Lastly, there is one scene that was supposed to be emotional and touching but I wanted to just laugh through the whole thing. They had lines that sounded like they were straight out of Galaxy Quest like, “You saved the crew” and “I’m scared Spock”. It took everything in me to not laugh hysterically through the whole death scene.
Like I said, still not a fan.
This movie may have had a lot of continuity issues and a good deal of lazy writing, (both of which I was still able to suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy the movie) however those infractions pail in comparison to the overwhelmingly annoying commodious happenstances that filled the first movie. e.g. in all the known universe, Kirk just so happens to be banished on a planet and roll into the exact cave where Spoke just so happens to have been marooned. As if that was not bad enough, both just so happen to be on the exact planet with in walking distance from where Scotty just so happens to be stationed on while he is conveniently working on just the exact equation needed to teleport them back onto an moving target i.e. the enterprise.
I consent the cold fusion bomb was ridiculous. Your telling me you can get a ship to go into warp drive, but you cant figure out how to rig up a remote control helicopter that can fly the cold fusion bomb down into the volcano or at the very least lower the bomb down itself on the tether and use a remote to detonate it. But you must at least agree that at least by comparison, the 2nd movie was much easier to stomach, and by todays sloppy movie standards not too bad.