Why I hated Star Trek Zero - Welcome to the era of Remakes
Be warned, honored reader and true believer, the following polemics will contain a lot of spoilers.
First some sort of Disclaimer about myself:
What I always liked about the show was that it gave the opportunity to outline totally different forms of living, of societies, of philosophies and have them confronted with again other perspectives and lifestyles. And sometimes those opportunites where even used!
By no means I am an expert on Star Trek. I have seen all the movies, the original series in the 1980ies when I was a kid and I really liked TNG. I had mixed feelings about DS9 and did not see the last seasons, mainly because they were not shown in Austria (Buuhhh, ORF). I did not like Voyager and just saw a few episodes and I have not seen a single episode of Enterprise (or whatever it was called, again Buuhh to the Austrian TV stations for not showing).
I will start with "non spoiler" stuff first:
The cast ist well casted.
Most of the actors look at least somewhat like the actors looked, who played the older versions. (That means, Chris Pine looks somewhat like a young - and slim - Shatner, Karl Urban like a more muscular, younger DeForest Kelley etc).
And most play their part really well, besides Kirk being too arrogant and too womanizing.
Anton Yelchin has not much similarities with Walter Koenig (Chekov), and, well, trying too hard to be funny just does not work.
The new, young Uhura is more emancipated than the original was, but that is okay, as the original Uhura was a very emancipated character for her time and served as a positive role model to many.
The movie itself is made the way which is considered modern nowadays:
One-liners, machismo, explosions, action, sex, CGI, a poorly motivated villain who wants to commit genocide etc.
I suppose in 20 years it will look as old as any movie from the 1970ies does nowadays.
So, now, why did I hate it?
First, I really dislike all that creating alternative timelines by unrealistic time travel (outside "Back to the future", that is).
That is simply cheating and lazyness by the script writers.
Second, they just totally overthrow the whole Star Trek continuity. 10 movies, 4 TV shows (the pre-Kirk one, I never saw ,should be valid still) - all kicked out of existence, by a little time travelling through some magic red-black hole.
40 years of work of probably 1000s of people totally debased with about 126 min of a movie, which was average at best. (No wonder, more money was used for marketing than for the movie itself).
And for what?
Well, I do not know, but of course I have my assumptions:
Star Trek has made less and less money. On the other hand, Kirk, Spock and the others are probably the most well known characters in the history of TV (maybe there's James Bond and Bambi, but you get my drift). But as the Star Trek universe has developed, the actors got older, some even died, and the continuity is full. So what to do to appease the shareholders?
Just kill off the continuity, introduce new, younger - and sexier - characters and they can do Star Trek all over again.
Hell, they can even reshoot the old episodes, just add some explosions, CGI and sex and leave out some of that boring dialogue - it's a complete new continuity after all. Voila, a complete new TV show, and no writer's strike can stop it (as long as the producers can strike out all references to Vulcan and Spock's mother by themselves).
It's not like they could not have done all that, say, 50-100 years after TNG with a complete new crew. But, boohoo, you could not name them Kirk, Scotty and Sulu. And they would have had to think of something completely new.(Somehow I imagine, they even thought to do it in the future - with clones. That might have been even mildly better).
Kill off the continuity and you can use the brand value of the names of the crew to sell your shiny remade Star Trek to a whole new generation. It worked with Marvel Comics "Ultimate", did it not? (Well, it did not work for me, but again you get my drift).
Welcome to the era of Remakes. Why think something new up, if you can just kill the old, say it was never there and do it again - with slight alterations - and more revealing uniforms of course.
Besides that, some other stuff disturbed me as well:
- Olson kills himself just by stupidity. Guess they will never give a brand new ship to a bunch of red-shirts - in this continuity at least.
- Nero steals a mining ship. A mining ship. If I steal a garbage truck today and travel with it to WWII, will I be able to defeat a armada of Soviet tanks? No? British or US tanks maybe? No? Really? Maybe in WWI, an infantry batallion? No? In Königgrätz 1866 a bunch of canoniers - with canons? No? Well, then it must be Neros superior tactics which helped him wipe out several Federation ships with his freaking future mining vessels. (Maybe the mines in the future are dangerous?)
- Why the heck does 9 year old Kirk steal (!) a historic (!!) car of his unloved stepfather and almost kills (!!!) himself while destroying it deliberately without any purpose? As protest against our oil consuming way of life?
First some sort of Disclaimer about myself:
What I always liked about the show was that it gave the opportunity to outline totally different forms of living, of societies, of philosophies and have them confronted with again other perspectives and lifestyles. And sometimes those opportunites where even used!
By no means I am an expert on Star Trek. I have seen all the movies, the original series in the 1980ies when I was a kid and I really liked TNG. I had mixed feelings about DS9 and did not see the last seasons, mainly because they were not shown in Austria (Buuhhh, ORF). I did not like Voyager and just saw a few episodes and I have not seen a single episode of Enterprise (or whatever it was called, again Buuhh to the Austrian TV stations for not showing).
I will start with "non spoiler" stuff first:
The cast ist well casted.
Most of the actors look at least somewhat like the actors looked, who played the older versions. (That means, Chris Pine looks somewhat like a young - and slim - Shatner, Karl Urban like a more muscular, younger DeForest Kelley etc).
And most play their part really well, besides Kirk being too arrogant and too womanizing.
Anton Yelchin has not much similarities with Walter Koenig (Chekov), and, well, trying too hard to be funny just does not work.
The new, young Uhura is more emancipated than the original was, but that is okay, as the original Uhura was a very emancipated character for her time and served as a positive role model to many.
The movie itself is made the way which is considered modern nowadays:
One-liners, machismo, explosions, action, sex, CGI, a poorly motivated villain who wants to commit genocide etc.
I suppose in 20 years it will look as old as any movie from the 1970ies does nowadays.
So, now, why did I hate it?
First, I really dislike all that creating alternative timelines by unrealistic time travel (outside "Back to the future", that is).
That is simply cheating and lazyness by the script writers.
Second, they just totally overthrow the whole Star Trek continuity. 10 movies, 4 TV shows (the pre-Kirk one, I never saw ,should be valid still) - all kicked out of existence, by a little time travelling through some magic red-black hole.
40 years of work of probably 1000s of people totally debased with about 126 min of a movie, which was average at best. (No wonder, more money was used for marketing than for the movie itself).
And for what?
Well, I do not know, but of course I have my assumptions:
Star Trek has made less and less money. On the other hand, Kirk, Spock and the others are probably the most well known characters in the history of TV (maybe there's James Bond and Bambi, but you get my drift). But as the Star Trek universe has developed, the actors got older, some even died, and the continuity is full. So what to do to appease the shareholders?
Just kill off the continuity, introduce new, younger - and sexier - characters and they can do Star Trek all over again.
Hell, they can even reshoot the old episodes, just add some explosions, CGI and sex and leave out some of that boring dialogue - it's a complete new continuity after all. Voila, a complete new TV show, and no writer's strike can stop it (as long as the producers can strike out all references to Vulcan and Spock's mother by themselves).
It's not like they could not have done all that, say, 50-100 years after TNG with a complete new crew. But, boohoo, you could not name them Kirk, Scotty and Sulu. And they would have had to think of something completely new.(Somehow I imagine, they even thought to do it in the future - with clones. That might have been even mildly better).
Kill off the continuity and you can use the brand value of the names of the crew to sell your shiny remade Star Trek to a whole new generation. It worked with Marvel Comics "Ultimate", did it not? (Well, it did not work for me, but again you get my drift).
Welcome to the era of Remakes. Why think something new up, if you can just kill the old, say it was never there and do it again - with slight alterations - and more revealing uniforms of course.
Besides that, some other stuff disturbed me as well:
- Olson kills himself just by stupidity. Guess they will never give a brand new ship to a bunch of red-shirts - in this continuity at least.
- Nero steals a mining ship. A mining ship. If I steal a garbage truck today and travel with it to WWII, will I be able to defeat a armada of Soviet tanks? No? British or US tanks maybe? No? Really? Maybe in WWI, an infantry batallion? No? In Königgrätz 1866 a bunch of canoniers - with canons? No? Well, then it must be Neros superior tactics which helped him wipe out several Federation ships with his freaking future mining vessels. (Maybe the mines in the future are dangerous?)
- Why the heck does 9 year old Kirk steal (!) a historic (!!) car of his unloved stepfather and almost kills (!!!) himself while destroying it deliberately without any purpose? As protest against our oil consuming way of life?
pantywaist - 10. Mai, 18:17
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