If a piano was about to fall on my mom and a bunch of
bystanders tried to push her out of the way but were too late, then the same
piano that crushed her also sent me back in time for some reason, the first
thing I would do would be to eliminate everyone who tried to help her rather
than tell her what was going to happen so I could prevent it.
If you had no problem with the logic of that story, you will
have no problem with the logic of Star Trek.
The basic plot is this: In the future the Romulan sun is about
to go nova and ambassador Spock rushes to try and save
Romulus. He comes equipped with "Red Matter"
which can create a black hole that Spock plans to use to absorb the
sun’s…deadliness I guess.
Anywho, Spock arrives, but just a little too late; the Romulan
sun Novas…oops.
All the while a Romulan commander of a mining ship sees his
planet destroyed and witnesses Spock trying to escape. Based only on the
knowledge of those two things he naturally assumes Spock and the Federation are
responsible for the destruction of his world. Lousy Federation, always trying
to help people but can’t get there in time; shame on them.
Lo and behold it turns out that the same black hole that was
suppose to have enveloped all the energy of a sun is also a portal in space
time which accidentally sucks both Spock and the Romulan commander back in time
(don’t ask me).
As soon as the Romulan commander arrives in the past he
naturally begins hunting Spock down to exact revenge for Spock’s…trying to help
his planet.
He eventually captures Spock but doesn’t kill him. You see,
it wasn’t just Spock that was responsible for trying to save his world; the
whole Federation tried to help too. So naturally, he must destroy them all. The
Romulan commander then begins methodically imploding every Federation planet in
the galaxy beginning with
Vulcan.
Logical questions? There are so many to choose from.
First, if this Red Matter can cause
time travel on accident, shouldn’t it be able to cause time travel on purpose?
If so, you’d think the Romulan commander would spend his time researching the
time travel properties of the Red Matter to send him back and forth whenever he
wants. After that it would just be a hop skip and a jump to about ten minutes
before his sun went nova and he could create the black hole to envelop the sun
him self. But even if it’s true that this guy
is stuck in the past…he’s still in the past.
Romulus is fine. All he has to do is inform
the Romulans of what’s going to happen in the future and prevent it from
happening.
But what am I talking about? It
makes much more sense to start murdering people in the past for something they
weren’t responsible for, and for what their future ancestors didn't to.
In short, the story of Star
Trek…sucks.. Oh it sucks hard!
It may seem like I’ve spent a lot
of time on the Romulan Commander and that is only because his storyline takes
up %90 of the movie. The remainder is filled with the new crew of the
Enterprise running,
shooting, falling off of things and making a lot of noise along the way.
The pity is that this is suppose to
be the launch vehicle for the new crew, and yet the film can’t take the time to
get to know any of these people. Every character introduced in this story is
shallow and just underdeveloped.
About the best you can say about
them is “this guy is doing a passable Bones” or “This guy is doing a passable
Scotty”. But what do any of these characters have to say for themselves? Almost
nothing that the original characters didn’t say before; half the characters
dialogue is just recycled lines from better Star Trek movies. It’s always nice
to see writers profiting from someone else’s hard work.
We have only a moment to learn
everyone’s names and then we’re whisked away to witness the previously
mentioned shooting and falling off of things. I’m serious; no one can manage to keep their feet on the ground in this movie.
In one scene, three characters must
skydive down to a drill to disable it. Granted it was explained that the
transporters were offline but, it made me wonder why the
Enterprise didn’t just shoot the dam thing. And
this confusion is only added to later as the same drill attacks Earth and the
Enterprise does end up
shooting it down.
Most of the scenes are just excuses
for people in colorful uniforms to make noise, and there really isn’t much more
to say about it than that. This is by far the least ambitious story ever to be
written for Star Trek, and also the one with the most plot holes and least
motivations. All the explosions in the world can’t make up for a bad story, and
this has one of the worst.
This film is getting rave reviews
in the mean time; though most of them boil down to: “Stuff blowed up– moviegood”.
When you boil off all the fluff,
this movie amounts to nothing more than noise. And in the words of the late –
great – Gene Siskel:
“When the noise doesn’t mean
anything to you, then it doesn’t work”
