Boldly going without a real story

This movie only exists to serve three true purposes: reboot the always stale Star Trek franchise, provide completely unnecessary back story to all of the main characters of the original series and make oodles of money with the least amount of energy.

Note how ‘provide enriching entertainment’ or ‘propagate intelligent screenwriting’ aren’t listed.

This movie is a colossal waste of time that people will likely just throw themselves at. I’d like to say that I saw this one coming from a mile away but for awhile I was actually fooled by the trailers into being interested. I should have known better.

After all, this movie was directed by J.J. Abrams, a man who knows the value of hype over payoff and gloss over substance. His previous directorial and producing efforts include Mission Impossible III (another borefest), Cloverfield (a mendacious eyesore) and Lost (perpetually perplexing).

Star Trek tells us about how Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, and all their pals came to be the captain and crew of NCC-1701 — the USS Enterprise. Let me tell you they are as motley a crew as anything, and none of them (except maybe Spock) deserved their posts. The others mostly seemed to sidle their way in the door, sat in their chairs when no one was looking and never left. That’s pretty much how I imagine the actors got their roles too.

James T. Kirk (Chris Pine, a smiling talentless face) is portrayed as an emotionally fraught young man who never knew his father. So that’s why he gets drunk, hits on girls and is quick with his fists. It’s a good thing he’s also a risk-taking savant who can guess his way to success in the worst kinds of situations. He befriends a snarling McCoy (Karl Urban), gets on the nerves of a stoic Spock (Zachary Quinto), tries to woo a short-skirted Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and the list goes on and on. Be assured every one of these archetypal characters gets his or her chance to spout out a catchphrase or enact their famed mannerism.

Chekov puckers his lips roughly through speaking the letter ‘V.’ A crewmember proves just how expendable all people in red shirts are. He gets burned big time. McCoy explains that he’s just a doctor, not a physicist. This is really just a chance to have a cast of actors do caricatures of past actors who did caricatures of character types.

Strangely though, Pine portrays Kirk as a guy who speaks normally without … his trademark … pauses. It’s all so preposterous, or as Spock would — and did — say, “Fascinating.”

The story involves a Romulan’s (Eric Bana) lifelong vendetta against Spock that deals with some kind of red matter — a drop of this goop creates a black hole. Wow. Really? What is it? Why does Spock have a barrel full of it? Couldn’t they come up with a better name than ‘red matter?’ Is there a better time to use the word ‘gobbledygook’?

Apparently screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman learned everything they needed to know about crafting a story from writing TV shows like Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. We all know how vaunted they were for their authenticity and high production values — not!