Star Trek Kelvin

 In 2009 Paramount relaunched the Star Trek movie series with director JJ Abrams at the helm.  Abrams had created a terrific Mission Impossible film for Paramount in 2006 and been a showrunner on Lost and Alias which had loyal viewers.  Abrams agreed with the condition that he could use the characters from the original series.  The opening sequence of the first film has an event that changes the timeline from the date of James Kirk's birth which freed Abrams and his writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman to reference situations from the old TV show and movies without being beholden to them.  

Abrams also has the job of recasting the iconic characters.  He wisely avoided trying to replicate the look of the original cast and instead selected mostly unknown performers who could give their own interpretations of the characters.  Chris Pine looks more like a young Harrison Ford than William Shatner but this allows us to see Kirk without picturing Shatner. Kirk is still recognizable with a strong rebellious streak, an impatience for protocol, an eye for the ladies, and a gradually developing sense of duty and leadership.  Zachary Quinto takes over the role of Spock.  I remembered him as a snooty techie from the third season of 24 and he brings a lot of the same qualities to Spock.  Quinto's Spock is more actively struggling to suppress his human side than Leonard Nimoy and delivers his lines faster, probably due to Abrams direction.  Karl Urban has a more brawny physique than DeForest Kelley but complete captures "Bones" McCoy nerdy penchant for melodrama.  Zoe Saldana's Uhura is more of an action hero than Nichelle Nichols but it is an effective reinvention of her character.  I particularly like the romance with Spoke, which I presume never occurred in the TV shows, as it feels believable, and allows both actors a chance to play a different side to the character.  Simon Pegg, who plays Benji in Paramount's Mission Impossible series, brings similar qualities to Scotty, a comic befuddlement at all the craziness along with technical expertise, but with a Scottish accent.  The dynamic between Scotty and Kirk is one of the most enjoyable elements of those films and in the second film, Star Trek Into Darkness, Scotty serves as Kirk's conscience.  Anton Yelchin has a naive charm as Chekov.  Despite Yelchin's Russian background his accent sounds a little rehearsed in his first scenes in Star Trek, perhaps since he came to the U.S. at a young age.  John Cho has a nice even voice as Sulu, different from George Takei, but recognizable.

As of 2022 there have been three films.  I had hoped for at least one or two more but three factors that I can see have prevented more from being made.  First, Star Trek Beyond, the third film, grossed more than $100 million less than the second film, Star Trek Into Darkness.  Second, the tragic accident of Anton Yelchin right before the release of Star Trek Beyond meant that the third film would not have Chekov since Abrams said he would not recast the part.  Thirdly, salary negotiations to bring Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pine into the fourth film broke down and there have been a lot of false starts since then.  Paramount was probably looking for a big hook and bringing in the actor who plays Thor to pair him with his onscreen son played by Pine, who has become the franchise's biggest breakout star, might have brought back audiences who skipped Beyond.  I think if it does come back it will likely be with a different cast but time will tell.

Spoilers below for the Kelvin trilogy

Star Trek (2009)

Star Trek was brilliantly marketed, first with a teaser trailer showing the construction of the Enterprise, and then with a final trailer with an excellent music cue by the Freedom Fighters that suggested both excitement and depth.  The opening sequence brings us right into the story with the birth of Kirk on a Federation ship that is being attacked by Nero, played by Eric Bana.  Nero is a Romulan who blames the original Spock for the destruction of the planet Romulus 150 years in the future.  Both Nero and Spock were sent back in time (but Spock arrives 25 years later) by a black hole that was created by Spock's failure to save Romulus.  Chris Hemsworth plays first officer George Kirk during this sequence which disrupts the timeline, due to the arrival of the Narada, Nero's ship.

Hemsworth played Kirk prior to Thor and is only in this sequence so although I remembered the character I forgot who had played him until I saw the film again several years later.  Hemsworth is terrific, though barely masking his fear while sacrificing himself to save the crew of the ship (the Kelvin) he quickly learned to captain, and giving up the chance to meet his newborn son, especially the tightly edited moment in which Kirk and his wife discuss the baby's name as he is headed toward his demise.  The entire sequence serves as a powerful gateway into the new series.

The film quickly skips forward to show how Kirk and Spock make their way into Starfleet.  Kirk, who in the original series had grown up with his parents, is now living in an unstable home and it is hinted that he is mistreated by his now stepfather.  Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) sees his potential and recruits him into Starfleet.  Spock chooses Starfleet because he feels slightly out of place as a half-Vulcan on his home planet.  Greenwood's strong and smooth voice helps make Pike the fatherly figure Kirk desperately needs.  I remember the first time I saw Greenwood he played an absurd villain in a thriller called Double Jeopardy.  I kind of blamed Greenwood at the time although the real problem was the things his character does in the film were cruel but so foolish that I could not even love to hate him the way you want to in that type of film.  I warmed to him a little more when he played a credible JKF in the Thirteen Days.  Interestingly Greenwood has played the President twice since then, in National Treasure: Book of Secrets and Kingsmen: The Golden Circle.

Abrams uses the fun Kobayashi Maru sequence, which was referenced in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, to introduce Spock and Kirk to each other.  It turns out that Spock wrote the program which adds immediate tension between them.  Pine has one of his best moments as the immature Kirk mocks the training while eating an apple.  

When the cadets go on the Enterprise after graduating we get to see them in action and tested more, though Pike's crew seems to only have people at least a generation younger than he (clearly set up for Kirk to take over).  In a nod to the red shirt motif from the original series (a never before referenced crewman is killed on a mission to illustrate the danger while the main characters survive) Abrams throws in a sequence in which a crewmember in a red shirt dies during a space jump.  Abrams big moment in this section of the film is the destruction of Vulcan by Nero, in which Spock's mother just misses being rescued. Since Vulcan featured in the original series and movies I expected the heroes to save it.  At this point we realize that this is not a prequel and that Nero's arrival at Kirk's birth has adjusted the timeline.

Abrams and the writers add another entertaining wrinkle by having Spock Prime (played by Nimoy) arrive in the past exactly 25 years after Nero even though he left 2387 at the same time Nero did.  Nero has been biding his time and instead of killing Spock he makes Spock watch Vulcan perish.  We never see what Nero was like beforehand but if he was a decent character this illustrates the way revenge can eat at the soul.  Eric Bana makes this tattooed baddie unhinged and menacing but if there had been a flashback of his life previously it might have made more use of him.  Bana plays conflicting emotions brilliantly, if given the opportunity especially in Munich (though I would skip his repressed Bruce Banner in Hulk).  It might have helped a little if we had seen him in a setting other than his dark ship.

Kirk's encounter with Spock Prime allows Nimoy the exciting chance to revisit his signature character at a different point of his life and fully comfortable with both the Vulcan restraint and the emotion that would come from losing his planet.  It also gives Scotty a big introduction. Since we see all this from Kirk's perspective I was wondering what it would be like for Spock to worth with the younger version of his best friend from an alternate history.

The climax in which the Enterprise faces off against the Narada top Nero from destroying Earth delivers the requisite excitement, but I saw room for improvement.  This film is about Kirk learning to be a competent leader and I feel he should have stayed on the Enterprise while Spock rescued Pike with another crewmember.  Kirk does not need to star in every fistfight.  The scene with the two Spocks is touching without being overly sentimental.  It says a lot about Quinto that he can share the screen with Nimoy with both playing the same character and neither dwarfs the other.

Abrams keeps the pace moving, Orci and Kurtzman have put together an intricate but not convoluted plot with some sharp dialogue (especially in the debates with Spock and Kirk) and Michael Giacchino produces an energetic score inspired a little by the original series.  There is an overuse of lens flare that makes everything look a little bright, especially on the scenes of the Enterprise but the film successfully brings us back into the world of Trek.  This is my favorite of the three films.  ****  

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Star Trek was a big success and revived the brand after the lackluster reception of the last Next Generation film.  Abrams became an incredibly in demand filmmaker.  For that reason, the second installment was eagerly awaited but the team took their time preparing it.  Anticipation was sky high when the film was released with rumors that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing the Kelvin version of Khan, the villain from Star Trek II.

At the time I had seen Cumberbatch as a sleazy character in Atonement and also in a small role in The Other Boylen Girl but after this film I became hyper aware of him, as I think audiences did.  Taking over a role like Khan is risky but Cumberbatch is certainly up to the task.  Khan is strong, capable of powerful moments of rage, loyal to his people and often thinks several steps ahead but is blinded by his own arrogance.  I did not understand why Cumberbatch was billed as playing John Harrison as if to keep Khan a surprise.  Using this iconic villain should be a selling point.  The remainder of the task was to build a film around him worthy of it since Star Trek II is often seen as the high point of the series.

Into Darkness opens on a red hued planet with a similar aesthetic to the opening of the Abrams directed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The crew is attempting to avert a natural disaster but in doing so has to expose the Enterprise to a prehistoric people.  This is a violation of the Prime Directive which prohibits Starfleet officers from getting involved with other cultures.  The philosophical debate, with Kirk representing one side and Spock the other is played in the background of first a foot chase and then the crew trying to save Spock from certain death.

The aftermath of this incident, in particular the scene in which Pike dresses down both Kirk and Spock is both funny and thought provoking.  We learn Spock reported the incident in the interest of full disclosure but also at the expense of the very person who saved his life. Both points of the debate are presented and no clear answer is given.  I feel Kirk is more likely in the right but he is also far too callous with the Prime Directive.  If he is going to violate it, he should prepare a more compelling argument for doing so, and be prepared for the consequences which shows the growth he still needs.

The bar scene, in which Pike reveals he has installed Kirk as his second in command shows how much Pike still cares about Kirk but it also brings Kirk back into the fold too quickly after what he has done.  If Kirk is going to lose his command we should feel it when a ship goes off without him and we never do.  Alternatively if Kirk had saved several people in the subsequent attack in the conference room, I believe that might have been a more justified reason for reinstalling him.  The attack itself is fantastic, reminiscent of a helicopter attack in The Godfather Coda.

The nearly wordless sequence in which Khan blackmails a father desperate to save his ailing daughter  into bombing a Starfleet office is efficiently directed and scored and feels original and gives us our first look at Khan, who we hear before we see.  It is clear the father is making a deal with the devil though I wonder what the daughter he saved would ultimately think of her father's decision.  I am always impressed with how quickly Abrams is able to move through exposition.  This sets up the end and but also activates the plot in which Khan is trying to recover his fellow Earthlings.  At the same time Kirk sets to kill Khan to avenge Pike, egged on by Peter Weller's Admiral Markus, who wants Khan dead to cover up his own crimes.

The sequence on Klingon is exciting and gives Uhura a chance to show off her language skills but is marred a little by Kirk's attack on Khan at the end.  It is supposed to be demonstration of Khan's strength that he is not hurt by Kirk's blows but it weakens Kirk as a character who is supposed to have gotten control of his anger by now.

The film surprises by having Khan be a willing captive for the second act but leads to some philosophical debates between the two opponents which would be different than if they had been battling in different starships as in Star Trek II.  However for this section of the film the real antagonist is Markus who continually threatens the Enterprise because Khan is onboard, complicated only by the fact that so is his daughter Carol (who is the mother of Kirk's son in Star Trek II).  The highlight of this section is another space jump Kirk and Khan make to Markus' ship, punctuated by Kirk introducing Khan to Scotty.  While I enjoy the idea of a combative Starfleet officer causing trouble, I think it does work against Khan.

The final act does put Khan in charge and leads to a good dialogue with Spock over the hostage terms.  Spock Prime appears unexpectedly (which turned out to be Nimoy's final appearance a Spock) to tell the story of Khan offscreen to his younger counterpart.  But Abrams and his writers make a critical miscalculation in reworking Spock's big sacrifice from Star Trek II to having Kirk do it instead.  If you have seen Star Trek II this version holds no power at all.  I knew there was no way Abrams was going to kill of his lead two films into a rebooted series so it is just a question of how Kirk was going to be revived.  Admittedly the revival was cleverly done by combining Khan's blood and using the tribbles.  Spock's gutteral scream of "KHAN!!" is out of character for him (he did not shout like that when his own mother died in the previous film) and plays like a parody of the original Kirk scream.

I love the first act of Into Darkness, liked the second and despised the third.  This could have been the best film of the new series but the weak third act actually makes it the worst.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

The development of the third film took some interesting turns.  In late 2012 Disney acquired Lucasfilm and hired JJ Abrams to direct the first new film of the relaunched Star Wars series.   Ironically Kathleen Kennedy, the new president of Lucasfilm, was so impressed with Abrams' relaunch of Star Trek she wanted him to create the same magic with Star Wars, which made him only available as producer on the new Trek.  Roberto Orci, who had been a writer on the first two Trek films and had a long history with Abrams, signed to coscript and direct the third film but Paramount declined to film his script so he also became a producer in now December 2014.  I expected the film would be delayed from its 2016 date but Paramount went in-house and hired Simon Pegg who was a screenwriter and also the current Scotty, and Doug Jung to cook up another story.  To direct, after reviewing several candidates, Paramount hired Justin Lin, who directed several of the Fast and the Furious movies.  Into Darkness ended with the Enterprise crew leaving on the five year mission from the original series so the storyline was wide open for the new film.

The writers start by exploring the wearying effect that such a long journey would have on the crew in a montage narrated by Kirk into his log and leads to him requesting a reassignment when the ship stops at a Federation base called Yorktown.  Things pick up quickly when the Enterprise is destroyed by drones and the crew is separated and stranded on a planet called Altamid, near the base.  A villain named Krall is seeking a device that Kirk has called the Abronath to launch an attach on the United Federation of Planets.

Pegg and Jung come up with some innovative ideas to service the large cast after the crash.  The main members of the crew are split into two (Kirk and Chekov, Scotty and Jaylah-a new character Scotty encounters on the planet, and most entertainingly, Bones and Spock, who is injured) which forced each one to deal with separate challenges using their specific dynamics.  The planet environment uses woods and a mountain, which although it looks Earthly (it was filmed in Vancouver) gives it a different feel than if it were on soundstages.  The destruction of the Enterprise, while a horrifying scene (it has a sense of someone being swarmed by bees) no longer has the impact it should because it was also wrecked in Generations and Star Trek III.  We know the crew will get another ship so it is just a matter of seeing how they will survive and regroup.  In the moment it leads to a late second act moment in which the crew restarts an abandoned Federation ship, the Franklin, which Krall had been the captain.

Idris Elba, who is unrecognizable under a heavy makeup job, is a powerful enough villain as Krall and he and Kirk have a gravity challenged fight during the climax of the film in Yorktown.  Shohreh Aghdashloo offers a soothing presence as a senior Federation officer in Yorktown.  Sofia Boutella has a nice energy as Jaylah which compliments an impressive makeup job.  Michael Giacchino again does the score and a highlight is his first act piece Night on the Yorktown.

Lin's tone is looser than Abrams' and there is a sense of the Enterprise as a family similar to the Fast crew.  Lin stages a fun opening scene in which Kirk is being threatened by creatures that due to their framing appear to be enormous but once they attack are about the size of a small house cat.  The montage of the narration shows some of the geography of the ship as well as the lives of the crew.  The motorcycle scene feels both appropriate to Kirk but does not quite fit Star Trek, though I think they get away with it since it is outside as to on a ship.  Lin's use of the Beastie Boys' song Sabotage to destroy the drones is fun but is also a current touch that comes too soon after the motorcycle chase.

Pegg and Jung also work the death of Leonard Nimoy in 2015 into the film.  Spock ends his relationship with Uhura because he plans to continue Spock Prime's work in rebuilding the Vulan society.  The scenes of Quinto reacting to and processing the death of this other version of him are tastefully done.

All in all, Star Trek Beyond is an enjoyable entry in the series, neither as good as Star Trek nor with the weaknesses of Into Darkness.  I am impressed that the theam put together such an entertaining film so quickly. Unfortunately, as mentioned before it did not perform as well at the box office and as of now this version of the series seems to be done.  ***