Star Trek is a state-of-the art VFX spectacular that retains all the street cred and sophistication of the original series. You could say that it's a film with layers, and lots of them. So many layers, in fact, that the number of "digital artists" listed in the credits seems to outnumber the other crew and cast put together. Like most blockbusters these days, it's not so much filmed as render-farmed.
You know the setup, at least in general terms. A starship and its crew go boldly where no English-speaker has gone before. Trek, being the icon of American culture that it is, posed a challenge for the filmmakers: how do you freshen up something that is familiar to everyone? The answer lies in the solution of the moment: a "reboot". In the lingo of Hollywood entertainment manufacturers, a reboot is what you do when you are done flogging a dead horse; you bring out a new horse tarted up to look like the old one. So get some hip young actors, slap on the snazziest visual effects that money can buy, and hey presto! A franchise is reborn, snagging new customers, opening new revenue streams.
The mentality which reduces storytelling to commodified "franchises" and "reboots" is as right for Star Trek as for anything else. Trek's intergalactic missionizing was a concept that had enough legs to produce a Next Generation; why not The Generation Before The Next? The ideals that shaped Trek were no less enduring than those of America itself. Captain James Kirk was reimagined as everything that Captain James Cook should have been: on the right side, armed to the teeth with hi-tech weapons, and trigger-happy enough to not get speared by savages. Kirk works not for some eccentric, reluctant colonial enterprise, but for a benevolent World Order that lets you crush the rebels without offending your conscience. "We come in peace, shoot to kill" — it's a formula that popcorn-munchers of our time can accept without a second thought.
Then what does the director, J. J. Abrams, bring to the reboot apart from the necessary minimum? Abrams imposes lashings of a visual style drawn from Michael Bay, with its jittery camera, accelerated cutting, and incoherent action substituting more often than not for proper staging. He leans on ILM and a handful of small houses to help create a world which, it must be said, is convincing on a level far above anything churned out for Lucas lately. But to say that the pictures and performances are more engaging than what we've seen before merely confirms that the filmmakers did what they set out to do: take flogging a dead horse to the next level.
So much about this film is predictable, pre-determined by its mission to be a progenitor of sequels. For a moment, it looked like there could be some surprises, when a bunch of Federation fratboys fly unwittingly into a death trap set by Eric Bana's Romulan bad guy. But, as sure as new Starfleet ships get christened, the good guys will prevail; what else do you expect? It's Star Trek; it's Hollywood. That will be enough to get many of us through the door.
For me, too, it was just what I wanted. Once or twice a year, I go see a blockbuster fully knowing that it will suck. I do it knowing that my admission fee will feed Hollywood studios' ambitions to make films which are bigger, louder, stupider and ever more insulting to human dignity and intelligence. And if that's what you want, you should see Star Trek too.
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