STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS: The Bromance of Kirk and Spock

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) – Directed by J.J. Abrams – Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Karl Urban, John Cho, Alice Eve, Simon Pegg, Peter Weller, Anton Yelchin, and Bruce Greenwood.

Here’s the deal, readers. SPOILERS follow. Lots and lots of spoilers follow. I don’t hold anything back, so don’t read forward if you don’t want to read a full discussion. One last time, SPOILERS AHEAD.

For the love of Odin, will someone give Captain Kirk a man hug?

Because if no one gives him a hug, he’s likely to steal an object of worship from a non-industrialized society, drop his first officer into a volcano, violate the Prime Directive to save said first officer, file a false report, get demoted, get almost instantly promoted, fire his Chief of Engineering, almost start a war with the Klingons, side with a war criminal, put his damaged ship on a collision course with Earth, and then commit certain suicide by sacrificing himself to save said ship just so his best friend in the whole world will confess his bro love for him.

It’s a bit exhausting and STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS gets a bit exhausting in the final act; this is a film that is both highly enjoyable and oddly frustrating, a film that encourages you to not think by giving you a headache whenever you do. INTO DARKNESS comes from the Abrams/Lindelof/Orci/Kurtzman stable and it feels more like a Lindelof film in that narrative logic is sacrificed at the altar of emotional logic. Such a process can work beautifully, but it is storytelling as the mechanism of grand illusion and Damon Lindelof is its Grand Master.

I’m pretty sure you could write the entire screenplay of INTO DARKNESS in an afternoon. This is a film with big CGI pieces, a bit of yelling, and very little story. One of the things I loved about Abrams first STAR TREK film (links to all my STAR TREK reviews can be found at the Star Trek Index page) was how it felt like everyone had a purpose for being there, that every character was an actual person in their own right. I found this to be an immense improvement over the old days, which I have chided for being The Adventures of Kirk, Spock, and the People Who Push Buttons. Unfortunately, we’re right back to the old days. INTO DARKNESS is a movie about the bromance between Kirk and Spock and the People Who Say 4 Things Apiece. Bones, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu are here either to further the Kirk/Spock bro issues or handle the plot things that Kirk and Spock can’t do in that moment, like handling an engineering crisis or talking to the bad guys on the viewscreen phone or flirting with a new female officer. Only Scotty feels like an actual other character, which has nothing to do with the importance of Scotty and everything to do with the importance of being Simon Pegg.

Lindelof seems to care little for the narrative logic of his stories, and so INTO DARKNESS has little narrative logic. When it’s revealed that the bad guy isn’t actually a guy named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) but a guy named Khan, Spock’s “logical” decision isn’t to check the Enterprise’s data banks, but to call Original Spock (Leonard Nimoy) just to ask him if he’s ever heard of a guy named Khan.

Just so we’re all clear: the Enterprise doesn’t have the internet but it does have a direct line to Spock’s secret hideout.

Just so we’re all clear #2: to get information, Spock’s decision is to call a dude from ANOTHER TIMELINE.

Lindelof’s scripts (and whatever the actual breakdown of writing credit, this feels most like a Lindelof script) tend to favor the emotional logic (and yes, those terms are often at cross purposes). All of this madness and chaos and destruction is a result of Kirk wanting Spock to admit he is, and will always be, his bro. And let me be clear – I know it sounds like I’m dogging Lindelof, but I usually enjoy the movies created around his stories quite a bit. I like INTO DARKNESS, but it’s not a smart movie and it’s not a strong screenplay. Compare INTO DARKNESS against Joss Whedon’s Avengers, and Lindelof comes off like a guy in danger of failing Whedon’s film class. Whedon gave every Avenger an arc in the movie – not huge arcs, necessarily, but everyone had a beginning, middle, and end that was separate from the film’s beginning, middle, and end. Lindelof either isn’t smart enough to do that or doesn’t care to do that or is working for people who don’t want him to do that. Whatever the case, those individual arcs don’t make it into the script. How is Uhura or Scotty or Sulu or Chekov or Bones different at the end of the film than they were at the beginning? They have experiences and they perform admirably, but they are all secondary to Kirk and Spock’s evolving friendship.

James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) love each other deeply, but while Kirk is willing to commit to Spock, Spock keeps getting cold feet. He loves Kirk back, but he loves him so much that he can’t allow himself to love him or else he might hurt his wittle feewings. (This is the way I feel about Hostess Fruit Pies.) What we have in STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is two immature dudes involved in a serious enough bromance that they prove they’re bro love to each other by adopting the other’s main attribute: the emotional bro (Kirk) is willing to think logically and the logical bro (Spock) is compelled to act emotionally: Kirk’s act of bro love is to not fire any of the Enterprise‘s 72 missiles in order to kill one dude, while Spock’s act of devotion is to try and kill that same dude all by himself. For Kirk and Spock to come to a mutually contented location of bro love, all we have to experience is lots and lots of mass destruction.

To the disappointment of slashers and shippers everywhere, Kirk and Spock’s relationship contains none of the homoerotic playfulness of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law’s Sherlock and Watson. It’s just an actual, if emotionally disconnected friendship. In the service of telling this story, however, the women in their lives are pushed to the background. While Kirk is shown in bed with a pair of “cat women,” he shows nothing more than a passing interest in Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve). I don’t know which is the bigger surprise – that Kirk barely looks at her when she strips down to her undies or that he completely misses the fact she bluffs her way onto the ship for the uber-important mission to kill John Harrison, who’s hiding out on a Klingon planet.

That’s right – on a hugely important mission, Carol Marcus sneaks aboard the Enterprise by calling herself Carol Wallace and hitching a ride in Kirk and Spock’s shuttle. Later, Spock realizes this but doesn’t say anything because in a Lindelof script, even the most logical of characters is a f*cking moron forced to adhere to the needs to the script.

Carol is a new character and the script gives her some things to do, and there’s no reason why it has to put her and Kirk into a flirtatious relationship, but she doesn’t do much of anything else, either. Her whole reason for being here is the “big” reveal that she’s the daughter of Starfleet Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller). She gets a nice scene with Bones (Karl Urban) but that’s what INTO DARKNESS does instead of giving people an actual arc – they get a scene so people leave the theater going, “Oh yes, Carol had a scene with Bones and the missle and Sulu got to sit in the captain’s chair and Chekov said funny words in engineering and Bones did a, ‘I’m a Doctor’ line and Uhura got emotional over Spock 17 times.” But little of it means anything.

It’s a grand illusion – there’s little story, little movement, little nuance. INTO DARKNESS is bright and loud and fun and the cast gives great performances in nothing roles. Everyone, in fact, is good at their job: the cast, the crew, the effects people, the director, and even the writers, but the sum of their talents is far inferior to their last effort with the TREK franchise. If the goal is to give you two hours of fun at the movie theater, they succeeded, but almost all of it (and definitely everything non-Kirk and Spock related) is just done to hit you in the eyeballs and then move on to the next thing: Kirk disobeys the Prime Directive! Kirk is demoted! Robocop! Pike is killed! Kirk is promoted! Mickey! Sherlock! Kirk is going to kill Harrison! Tribble! Harrison is Khan! Nimoy! Super Big Enterprise painted black! Spock yells, “Khan!” instead of Kirk! Kirk dies instead of Spock!

In fact, when Khan is Harrison, he’s psychologically interesting. When Khan is Khan, he just punches and kicks people. Blah.

If I think about this movie as a story, it’s a wreck, but if I just want escapism, it’s a pretty good time. But just pretty good. It’s not a great time because so many of the character moments that I loved about the first movie are completely missing here. The best parts of INTO DARKNESS are the small moments when Kirk and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) commiserating over Spock. I would understand (but not agree) with the decision to make this the Kirk and Spock Bromance Show if Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto had become major stars over the past few years but they haven’t. They’re no more famous than Pegg or Saldana, and for my money Karl Urban is the best acting/star combo on the Enterprise, but his great performance is wasted because it’s so small and so insignificant. I like Chris Pine and he does a great job playing the bullheaded Jim Kirk, but put Urban in that role and there’s way more nuance and complexity to the character.

Nuance and complexity … two things that aren’t welcome in INTO DARKNESS.

Contrary to what it may sound like, I had a good time. I even went and bought a $4 commemorative cup after the movie, even though I had already bought a $4 commemorative cup for the superior Iron Man 3. I watched it at a drive-in, I had good popcorn, and I was entertained, although the drive-in experience, the popcorn, and the film all deteriorated as they went. About 30 minutes into the film I was already trying to figure out when I could see it again, but by the time the Super Big Enterprise appeared and Spock calls Spock on the phone … I was ready for the movie to be over.

That’s the thing about illusions – they’re showy and they’re fun, but their entertainment value is brief and fleeting and I end up appreciating the skill in pulling it off more than the illusion itself.

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When he’s not using a tribble a dead tribble as a lab rat, Mark Bousquet is doing some writing himself. He is the author of multiple novels and collections, including the recently released The Haunting of Kraken Moor, Gunfighter Gothic, Stuffed Animals for Hire, Dreamer’s Syndrome, Harpsichord and the Wormhole Witches, and Adventures of the Five. He has also published a review collection entitled Marvel Comics on Film, which covers every cinematic and TV movie based on a superhero from the House of Ideas. A complete listing of all his work can be found at his Amazon author page.

SUPER 8: That Was Mint

Super 8 (2011) – Directed by J.J. Abrams – Starring Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Amanda Michalka, Glynn Turman, Noah Emmerich, and Ron Eldard.

Critics have rightly noted the similarities between J.J. Abrams SUPER 8 and many of the classic films in the Steven Spielberg (E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, most prominently), but the film also brought me back to the Three Investigators mysteries, to Encyclopedia Brown, to Scooby Doo. This is a monster movie but it’s a monster movie about solving a mystery, about kids being smarter than adults give them credit for being, about kids wanting a better connection with their parents than they have.

It’s that last point that really elevates SUPER 8 from being merely a fun, nostalgic romp for those of us who grew up with Spielberg, on the “wrong” side of cool, and WLVI’s Creature Double Feature and into a special film in its own right.

The story centers on Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a kid in small town Ohio, whose mom recently passed away, whose dad isn’t a very good dad, and who’s coping by helping his friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) make a zombie movie. I love the passion Charles has for his film and the way all of his friends are committed to the cause. They sneak out in the middle of the night to do their filming, a wonderful nod to how parents never seem to pay attention to their kids in stories like this.

Charles has convinced Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) to be in his movie and she picks them up in her dad’s car and takes them to the train station, where they’re filming for the night. Elle Fanning is really quite amazing in the film. When she does her first scene and blows the guys away with her acting ability, it is something to behold – you can see the guys both falling in awe of her and being intimidated by her. They spot a train approaching and Charles wants them to start filming immediately to take advantage of it. “Production values!” he yells, worried about how his film is going to go in an upcoming competition. As they’re filming the scene for real, the train rushes past and Joe (who’s the sound guy in addition to being the make-up artist) turns away from the scene to follow the train. He sees a pickup truck hurtle onto the train tracks and wreck the train.

What follows is the single greatest train crash I’ve ever seen on film. I’m not drunk on hyperbole. This train wreck is simply epic. It’s a loud, angry, snarling, exploding mass of metal and fire. The kids take off running and the train comes crashing down all around them. Once the wrecking stops and the kids have checked to make sure they’re all good, they find that the guy who drove the truck is a teacher at their school. Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman) used to work for the military and he wrecks the train to let the monster out.

That’s right – SUPER 8 is a monster movie, but it’s a monster movie in the vein of Alien, Cloverfield and The Troll Hunter, which is to say that while there’s a monster here, the emphasis is on the characters and the monster stays largely hidden. I think if I had to high concept SUPER 8, I’d say it’s Stand by Me meets Cloverfield because of its emphasis on the young kids figuring out the mystery. It’s so nice to see a monster movie played more for the mystery than the monster. SUPER 8 treats these kids – really, Joe and Alice – as really smart kids. They’re not perfect but they are smart, well-rounded, emotional beings and it’s their relationship that makes SUPER 8 such a great movie.

Joe and Alice aren’t supposed to hang out because Joe’s mom died in a freak factory accident when she was filling in for Alice’s dad. Alice’s father Louis (Ron Eldard) is a drunk and a screw up and Joe’s dad Jack (Kyle Chandler) is the straight-laced deputy sheriff. They’re opposites but they both insist their kids have nothing to do with one another. It’s a bit heavy-handed and if the emphasis was on the parents it might rob the film of some of its magic; the focus is on Joe and Alice, though, and how this shared tragedy affects them. There’s a scene about midway through the film (after we’ve heard the obligatory “stay away from that kid” speech from both Louis and Jack) where Alice sneaks over to Joe’s house and climbs into his room. They hang out, watching an old film reel of Joe’s mom and the truth comes out from Alice that it was her dad’s shift that Joe’s mom was taking on the day of the accident.

Fanning and Courtney are really great together. Alice says she sometimes wishes it was her dad that died that day, and it’s such a powerful line because not only does she harbor some guilt over Joe’s mom’s death, but her dad is such a drunk jerk that her line has all the pathos of a kid struggling with the fact that her parent isn’t perfect and can say hyperbolic things. Amazingly, Joe catches this and tells her not to wish that because, “he’s your dad.” The kid who’s missing his mom knows in ways that Alice doesn’t (even though she’s missing a parent, too) that you need to appreciate your parents because they’re your parents.

While all of this is happening, the monster is on the loose and the military is clamping down. Joe’s dad is much more comfortable being the deputy sheriff thrust into a leadership role than he is being a dad, which again allows Joe the freedom to do what he does in the movie. Jack drops into Joe’s life on occasion to issue orders, but Joe realizes that listening to these commands isn’t what’s best for him, so he keeps making the movie and keeps hanging out with Alice.

The monster ends up not being a monster, at all, but an alien that’s been trapped and abused by the American military. Dr. Woodward wasn’t trying to wreck the train, but let the alien free. I love the scene in the school when the kids are going through all of his notes and film; this is the big infodump moment when we find out the true back story of the film, and I love that the kids find this material and then figure the mystery out because they’re smart.

The final act centers on Joe’s drive to rescue Alice from the alien’s clutches, and his showdown with the alien is pretty darn great. Joe rescues Alice by using his brain, and then “defeats” the alien through an emotional appeal. It’s important that the film offers a non-violent solution to the problem given how anti-military the film has been, and SUPER 8 delivers the appropriate ending.

All told, SUPER 8 is a simply wonderful, highly enjoyable film. It’s got it all – it’s a monster movie that’s really a mystery that’s really a drama about kids and their parents. There’s great action, plenty of humor, great characters, and a decent monster. Good stuff.

STAR TREK (XI): And the Big Red Superball Shall Save Us All

Star Trek (2009) – Directed by J.J. Abrams – Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Ben Cross, Winona Ryder, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Morrison, Eric Bana, and Leonard Nimoy.

After having watched all of the Star Trek movies (minus the Netflix-challenged Insurrection) leading up to the J.J. Abrams relaunch, I can certainly understand why long-term Star Trek fans might despise this movie.

I am not one of those people.

Abrams’ relaunch is the Star Trek movie I’ve been waiting my whole life to see, and while it is certainly not a perfect movie, it is a big, slick, fun, emotional rollercoaster ride of a sci-fi action thriller that opens with engines on full and doesn’t stop until the end credits roll. There are some holes in the plot, some missteps with characterization, but this is spectacularly good filmmaking.

Though flawed, STAR TREK is the single most enjoyable pure action movie since Die Hard. And yes, I’ve seen Drop Zone.

Having only a limited interaction with the franchise (you can read about that right here), I always found the Trek universe to be a bit cold and clinical. Maybe part of this was just me being a stupid kid and wanting to see more stuff done get blowed up, but I don’t consider that to be a bad thing if the explosions are built on and around emotions. (Nothing wrong with the occasional supercool visual, either.)

Abrams TREK is completely designed to stand on its on, forging ahead in an alternate timeline to “boldly go” and all that. There are plenty of nods to the cast and crew of The Original Series that even I could spot, but the look, the pacing, the style, and even the characters are crafted more to be contemporary and forward looking rather than traditional and building on the past.

Which, after all, isn’t a bad idea when relaunching a series that had been worn into the ground.

There’s a lot going on in TREK – far more than I want to get into in a couple thousand words – and while some narrative logic is lost to Abrams almost crippling need to keep throwing the movie forward (a move he probably would’ve pulled off in he had a compelling villain), TREK is eminently rewatchable. While the characters are mostly types instead of actual people, almost all of the actors (even that annoying Charlie Bartlett dickhead) give solid, enjoyable performances.

I should probably restate here my position that I don’t care much for comparing the movie to the source material as a means of passing judgment. It’s unavoidable, to a certain extent, but I’ve got the original stories and no new interpretation is ever going to take them away from me, so if some new whippersnapper of a filmmaker wants to radically change things, I’ll give it a look on its own merits. I’ve never really understood the animosity towards cinematic remakes, either; humanity has been doing and redoing plays for centuries, but somehow movies are sacrosanct? Why? Why does William Shatner’s James T. Kirk have to be the only interpretation of this character we ever get to see?

Honestly, I’d rather see Chris Pine do Pine-Kirk than see him attempt to redo Shatner-Kirk.

Movies are different animals than novels or comic books or television shows and if a new interpretation wants to change up what exists in that other format I’m more than willing to give it a shot.

For someone with little investment in the Trek franchise, I found Abrams movie to be a completely satisfying experience. Unlike previous movies, which often felt like longer-form television shows (especially the three-”episode” arc between Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home), TREK feels like a contemporary summer movie from start to finish with its hyper-focus on delivering thrills over character development. Abrams gives a brief nod to the childhoods of Kirk (Pine) and Spock (Quinto) but it’s done more to establish their types (Kirk the Rebellious Youth; Spock the Nerdy Loner) than it is to set up any kind of real movie-long character development.

The childhood scenes are fairly silly. In Kirk’s sequence, his pre-teen self has stolen his step-dad’s (or guardian’s) Corvette and gone for a joy ride through the lonely and dusty highways of Iowa as the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” cranks out over the car radio. It’s an odd set of audio and visuals designed to make Kirk look both like the bad boy and to give him an old-school masculinity. Abrams has cherry-picked the old school reference points – we’ve got a signature Vette from the most-classic of Vette eras (the 1950′s) and a signature song from the integration of rock and rap era (the 1990′s) – in order to craft his bad boy/future Captain. Both the Vette and the song make infinitely more sense for us than it would for someone a couple hundred years in the future – it’s not like there’s very many people in 2010 stealing their step-dad’s horse-and-buggy and cranking the medieval ballads of Tristan and Isolde.

Abrams sets this young rebel, with his ’57 Vette and ’92 rap/rock song against a futuristic cop on a sky-cycle, but Kirk wants to drive the car off a cliff as he jumps out of the car in slow-motion and The Man ain’t gonna stop James Tiberius Kirk.

For Spock’s half of the childhood portion of the film, we see him on Vulcan doing logical nerd stuff and then he gets picked on by some full-blooded Vulcans who want to pick on the small half-breed in order to get him to be emotional. So he gets emotional at hearing his mom called a whore and kicks the crap out of one of his tormentors. This leads to him having a “heart-to-logic” chat with his dad (Ben Cross), who’s all “I married your human mom because I was Ambassador to Earth and it was the logical thing to do; she was, after all, something of a celebrity, allowing me to receive a plethora of free press for Vulcan on TMZ, which is where Americans received all of their news on the important issues of the day. Our coupling name was ‘Winorek,’ and while not as popular as something called ‘Brangelina,’ we had a much higher Q rating than ‘Bennifer.’”

“I have no idea what you just said, father, but the entity known as Q has little to do with the hierarchy of culturally-driven human popularity.”

“Date a human, son. Emotions make them much better in the sack. It is a logical conclusion.”

“I fail to see what this conversation has to do with potatoes, father.”

“You will, my son. You will.”

The scenes establish them as more similar than dissimilar in their emotional make-ups. Kirk is the rebellious youth lacking in proper maternal supervision (his mom was off looking for Thor) and Spock is the rebellious youth lacking in maternal influence (his human half is suppressed). They start to diverge as Spock successfully turns to logic and academics, while Kirk turns to women and beer, but they each display a bit of what the other has in spades – Spock never quite loses his rebelliousness and Kirk isn’t fully capable of suppressing his intellect.

As actors in these specific roles, Chris Pine is much better suited to playing the hardheaded Kirk than Quinto is to playing the intellectual, aloof Spock. (This is not to say Pine is a better actor – I haven’t seen enough of them to make that decision – but that his talents are better suited to the role he’s being asked to play.) Pine has that corn-fed All-American look, and he’s able to pull off a stubborn confidence quite effectively, whether he’s getting shut down by Uhura at a bar or arguing with Captain Pike on the bridge of the Enterprise or insisting to Spock that their long-shot plan is going to work. Quinto, on the other hand, often seems uncomfortable as Spock, like he doesn’t fully have the character locked down. Maybe having Nimoy in the movie effected either his performance or the conception of the character but Spock, as a character, rarely pops in this movie. Maybe that’s what he’s supposed to be, but I was rarely moved by him.

Both Kirk and Spock have their Starfleet epiphanies depicted. In the bar scene, Kirk is hitting on Uhura when some Starfleet meat-head steps in to defend an honor she doesn’t want defended, and the Academy recruits kick the crap out of Kirk. (Kirk basically spends the entire movie getting his ass kicked, and then getting up, and then getting it kicked again.) The fight is broken up by the arrival of Captain Pike, who sits down to have a heart-to-heart with Kirk. Pike clearly has a bit of hero worship for Kirk’s dad (whom he studied for his dissertation) and challenges Kirk to step up to match his father’s legacy. “Your dad was captain of a starship for twelve minutes,” he tells the bloodied Kirk. “He saved 800 lives. I dare you to do better.”

The sequence of Kirk’s dad getting command of the Kelvin and sticking with the ship to the end as he orders the evacuation of his very pregnant wife is absolutely fantastic and more emotionally gut-wrenching to watch than anything in the preceding ten movies – with the possible exception of Nimoy-Spock’s death back in Wrath of Khan. It’s top flight filmmaking across the board and, flat-out, is one of the best singular sequences in the entire Trek movie franchise. Chris Hemsworth and Jennifer Morrison are wonderful as Kirk’s parents, and the death of Kirk’s dad contrasted with Kirk’s own birth is stunningly good.

Another highlight is Bruce Greenwood, who is, in many ways, the best part of this movie. (He’s certainly the best actor.) His Captain Pike is smart, experienced, and willing to think outside of the box. He’s all about giving people a chance to prove themselves without ever losing sight of the mission, which makes him the perfect captain for a starship whose primary mission is to explore but often runs up against.

Or, as it happens, the captain of a starship stuffed with inexperienced cadets. Funny how that works out sometimes.

Pike has enough intellectual confidence to stay focused and not get rattled but that also allows him to listen to the crazy, suspended cadet that comes barging onto the bridge with a harebrained story about a mysterious Romulan spaceship that killed his daddy. It will never happen, of course, but I’d pay cash money to watch a show or movie with Greenwood playing Pike.

Greenwood certainly isn’t an action hero, which makes him the perfect link between Shatner-Kirk and Picard and Pine-Kirk. As such, there’s not much room for him in the picture, but Greenwood makes the most of his brief screen time to get Kirk into Starfleet and then get him into the Captain’s chair.

Spock’s decision to join Starfleet comes when he’s brought before some Vulcan bigwigs to be told he’s been accepted into the Vuclan Science Academy despite his disadvantage. This gets Spock all pissy and it’s Quinto’s best scene in the entire movie; he asks the high-and-mighties if they could clarify what they meant with just the right amount of restrained anger in his voice, knowing full well they mean that he’s half-human but wanting them to say it so they know exactly why he’s turning down their science academy in order to go to Starfleet.

So Kirk and Spock go to Starfleet but they don’t interact until Kirk cheats in order to pass the Kobayashi Maru test that Spock designed to be impossible to defeat. It’s probably Pine’s best scene as he smugly goes through the test, unworried about the no-win scenario because he’s rigged the computer program to turn out in his favor. (Apparently, in scenes that were cut, this was the genesis of his interest in sleeping with She-Hulk – she works in computer programming. And the woman playing the green-skinned hussy also plays Scarlet in GI JOE: The RISE OF BILE INTO YOUR MOUTH. Which brings up an interesting question for actors – would you rather be unrecognizable in an epically good movie, or have your face plastered all over an absolute stink-bomb?) Kirk’s cheating gets Spock all uptight and bothered but before the trial can come to a conclusion Nero’s ship is all up in Vulcan’s business so everyone has to scatter to their starships and get on with the blowing up of things.

And the blowing up is impressive. The battle scenes are like nothing the Trek movies have ever attempted. When the Enterprise comes out of warp drive to find themselves in the middle of a battlefield littered with destroyed Federation ships, Abrams puts you right in the middle of it all, dodging debris, fighting the enemy, trying to survive. Finally, after ten movies, the Enterprise doesn’t just look cool, but is cool.

The final fight sequence between the Enterprise and the Whatever Nero’s Ship is Called is blisteringly awesome visual filmmaking.

Abrams does a fantastic job giving everyone something small but significant to do. Okay, so Uhura’s “something to do” is basically to stand there and look hot as dudes fight over her, but Zoe Saldana does it very well, and her one scene with Spock (who she’s romantically involved with) is pretty well done. Everyone gets a scene, something the early Star Trek films neglected. Sulu gets to jump out of a space ship and sword fight some time-lost Romulans. McCoy gets to drug Kirk to get him on board the Enterprise, and then try to make him better as Kirk runs around trying to test out his hypothesis. (It is a bit weird to give Urban the funny scenes since he’s not very funny.) Chekov gets to pull off a daring teleport maneuver. Scotty gets to, um, pull off a daring teleport maneuver.

All of the non-Kirk and non-Spock actors do a fine job of making their characters work despite their somewhat limited screen time, so kudos to the casting department.

Sort of.

Eric Bana’s Nero is a bit of a wet sock, spending most of his time sitting and moping, and the film never really capitalizes on the fact that Kirk is fighting the guy who killed his dad. For whatever reason – perhaps to show that he’s focused on the mission – Kirk never gets that scene where he tells Nero, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

There’s a whole wants-to-be-complicated-but-isn’t plot in the center of the film about how Nimoy-Spock has this big red ball of super energy that he’s going to use to save Romulus but doesn’t that results in him being imprisoned on Hoth, where Quinto-Spock just so happens to exile a dismissed Kirk. It’s the kind of coincidence that if you like what Abrams is doing, you’re just going to roll with it, and if you don’t like the movie, you’re going to roll your eyes.

I like the movie, and we get some cool Abrams Monsters and Leonard Nimoy and Simon Pegg out of it, so I’m not complaining.

All-in-all, STAR TREK is one big, slick, popcorn ride.

More, please.