Harry's thoughts on the STAR TREK presentation in New York!

I rarely attend these types of events. Mainly because a studio gathers a large amount of Journalists into a room – they’re all shown the exact same footage and then you run to a computer to “BE FIRST” to post the book report retelling of what you just saw. I suppose it is the job, it is the gig we’re all so lucky to have, but what about THINKING and CONSIDERING the footage, what was said and what it means to me as a viewer of said footage. Let me gather up some of the comments I’ve found online, to get the overall sense of coverage from Fellow Online Journalistas… Latino Review’s EL MAYIMBE’s coverage Mike Sampson’s Trek Virgin’s Eye View of the Presentation as a complete Trek Tard Cole Abaius’ Report from FILM SCHOOL REJECTS The ever-present Jeffery Wells’ take NY Times’ ArtsBeat writer Dave Itzkoff’s coverage Wizard’s Andy Serwin’s coverage AccessHollywood’s Jim Kiernan’s take TrekMovie.com’s report And you can find many more at this link The point is – pretty much everyone was impressed by what they saw. As I told you last summer – this is STAR TREK on an entirely different scale of production. Many look at this footage and talk about how glossy and expensive the film looks, but fewer tend to really discuss what is underneath the footage we’ve seen and how it contrasts with the STAR TREK we’ve seen thus far. First off, I like JJ Abrams despite his “I never liked Trek” and “I never really got it” routine. Sure, I can pretty much quote chapter and verse of the Classic Trek, the Animated Star Trek, The Next Generation and the entire film franchise – along with the first 4 seasons of DS9. That said, I’ve always had a very critical eye when it came to Star Trek. It’s a series that has had A-level Science Fiction and Intellectual thought – with B-level or less production values and sometimes far worse execution. I get why, for the much larger audience, STAR TREK didn’t resonate. There’s the whole STARFLEET conceit to begin with. For Fans – we love this ultra-Liberal Military Conservative vision for the future of humanity. The tech has always been inspirational – from the communicators, universal translators, phasers, medical tri-corders, transporters and that elegant and beautiful Enterprise. But for many that never saw their place in a Military Future – where the future of mankind seemingly is in uniform – it felt a bit distant. Is our future just a series of missions, fights and voyages? STAR TREK never could really focus a whole lot on the non-Starfleet aspects. Pretty much all of future Earth we got exposed to was San Francisco based. And it wasn’t really about a world anymore. When Trek visited other Planets – we were always meant to believe that you could beam down to a single point on that planet and the folks our heroes dealt with apparently represented the whole of the planet. And even within that one alien city, everyone was basically dressed in a variation – and aliens tended to have funky ears, brows, chins or nose arches. Most of these aspects had to do with budget & time. The stories didn’t have the money or the narrative ambition to open up their vision to give us a complex vision of the future. Is JJ changing that? From what I’ve seen, absolutely. In the opening scene, he takes us into a future bar. I’m not real sure where all of this fits in, but Chris Pine’s Kirk is non-Starfleet at this point of the story. He spots Uhura and decides he’s going to try to bed her. They’re both at the bar – and sitting on a stool between the two characters is… a character that never utters a word. In someways, this scene harkens to STAR WARS. It isn’t overflowing with Aliens. In fact, I can’t say that I remember any of them other than this one character that was trying to enjoy some peace and quiet along with his drink, while these two talk across him. The CG enhancement to this actor’s face was fantastic, but what was even better was the performance. It isn’t big. It’s tiny. It’s in his eyes and the quiet way his face moves – and often times he’s slightly out of focus. But it’s a completely throw-away effect. It’s just there to be alien atmosphere, it is subtle and exactly the sort of thing that STAR WARS did that STAR TREK didn’t do well. More than that – you had characters not just in Uniform. And not in cheap fabrics that look like they came off the rack at JOANN’s. The vibe felt like an Iowan Future Shit-kicker bar. Kirk felt like a local. The Starfleet types felt like military cadets. And the scene worked. - Now back last summer when I saw the 8 minutes that I saw – it filled some of the gaps from what we were seeing here – and from the recently released trailer. One sequence led exactly up to the point where the second scene began – and that scene was all about how Kirk first got aboard the Enterprise. That initial view – gave me a gorgeous look at the new interior of THE ENTERPRISE – and one of the aspects that I loved was how the vision of the tech and the design aesthetic and how the instrumentality of the ship worked… worked. Here I was given the rest of that scene… and how Kirk becomes a major player in the overall story – and how that story relates to the childhood kirk upon the USS KELVIN and the fate of his father… and how that sculpted the persona of James T Kirk. And honestly, it is kinda real cool. Over the course of the 4 clips we were shown, it takes you from this kind of annoying… “That guy is supposed to be Kirk?” beginning to, “That’s fucking Kirk! Awesome!” vibe. That’s really what I needed to see. My main misgiving about this relaunch was my absolute blank feeling that I had about Chris Pine’s performance of Kirk in that initial footage I was shown. I always said that it simply wasn’t a strong Kirk scene – as that scene had other characters pulling Kirk around in a “helpless” mode. Once in Sick Bay – and on board the ship though – and when he hears something that makes him reflect upon what happened to his father, he’s a bull in a china shop – forcing his way into the thick of things. I love the dynamic of Quinto’s Spock not liking or respecting this ‘instinctive and intuitive human’ that is Kirk. Kirk isn’t exactly a logical model, he’s action given form with great instincts and invention. And when Kirk is trying to convince Greenwood’s Pike of the reality of their situation and does a great job presenting his case, Spock sees the LOGIC of that moment. And that is a great moment – and the ever so slight up-turned corner of a smile belays the “human half” of our favorite Vulcan. It is a great moment. Even moreso, we got a very strong look at the eager and hungry versions of our favorite Star Trek characters. They are not jokey or ridiculous. They’re honorable interpretations of the characters. And through it all – the, “I’ve never been a fan of Trek,” shines through. This isn’t like any Trek I’ve seen before. Seriously. It isn’t on caffeine or speed or anything like that. It just isn’t stuck in the pattern that I’ve seen for the last 40 or so years. This is not ponderous STAR TREK, nor is it just a sit com version. This is an aggressive science fiction action adventure set in a very complex reinterpretation of the Star Trek universe. Not necessarily unlike say… the difference between Tim Burton’s BATMAN and Chris Nolan’s. As geeks, film lovers… I’ve always loved speculative story tellings power to reinvent itself into becoming something that I’ve never seen before. Elseworlds, What If stories, strong creative and narrative story tellers that put a brand on something that perhaps has grown a bit staid. Like when Neal Adams took on BATMAN or Chris Claremont took on X-Men or Frank Miller took a stab at DAREDEVIL. In those three cases – a radical shake up proved to completely redefine the material. Now as a fan of STAR TREK, we know in the books, comics, animation, film and televised worlds – continuity has never been… well, heh… Paramount. Many completely different takes and visions have been applied. I remember how reticent fans were at the idea of a Next Generation. How could you possibly replace everything? No Spock, No Kirk? That’s not Star Trek. But what the NEXT GENERATION proved was that STAR TREK wasn’t simply those awesome classic shows, but a playground for speculative story telling. A wonderful science fiction sandbox. What happens when you invite a kid that doesn’t necessarily know what all the toys are? Well, you can piss a lot of traditionalists off – but traditionalists need to be shook up from time to time. Tradition needs to be redefined and modified. Tones need to be shook up. Ideas need FRESH PERSPECTIVES if they are to survive. I mean… I think a lot of us STAR WARS fans would give our left nut for someone to do to STAR WARS, what JJ is doing to STAR TREK. To come in, play with the original characters and give us new films in the world of the Rebellion versus the Empire. Remember how excited when we thought for a hot second that David Fincher was going to be directing one of the prequels? When a franchise’s BIBLE leaves no room for reinterpretation, when it becomes strict doctrine – it alienates, instead of invites others to the table. And LASTLY – Why is it important that STAR TREK succeed? Well… Let me give a stab at this. At its heart, STAR TREK is a bold vision for the future of we peoples of Earth. It isn’t some fanciful fairy tale in space, it isn’t some dream of humans before they got stuck on Earth. It is supposed to represent where we’re headed. That future shows a humanity working together, that seems to have solved the major problems we have that are plaguing our society today. It’s a future that has inspired innovation and our present – and we need a hopeful vision for the future that we as a people can change and be more than what we have been. I think that’s why Obama likes Star Trek (he apparently once greeted Leonard Nimoy spontaneously with the LIVE LONG AND PROSPER greeting, including the hand thing!) STAR TREK attempts to give us hope that all of us can work towards a better tomorrow and it seems quite evident that THAT aspect of STAR TREK, that core value, is absolutely in place. It’ll be interesting to see of culturally, the world is at a better place to have that message layered into an action science fiction version of Trek. From the reactions in New York, from Fan and Non-Fan, it seems it is possible. On a strictly geek level, damn it sure looks cool as hell! The only real question I have left is this… How long till I get to see the whole thing? I know that prior to this, I was a full on lapsed Trekkie. Yeah, I never really cared for that “Trekker” re-brand. I’ve never had the ears, but I’ve had a lot of the toys… going back to that Flashlight phaser my parents bought me in the Seventies. It sure would be cool to have STAR TREK be COOL in the mainstream. It has only had glimpses of that, this time Paramount is giving the franchise the full A treatment. Let’s see what happens.