So, I saw the new Star Trek movie. I wasn’t going to (J.J. Abrams is not what I would call a draw), but people loved it! People insisted! People told me it would be amazing!

All those people were high!

Talk about amok time, damn.

Okay, first blame first:

The writing. Flat, obvious, and more holes than a block of Swiss.

Absolute old-boy’s-club colonialism. Women exist to give birth or to make themselves available for men’s comfort. Thoughtless, ridiculous cockheads are recruited from bar fights they are losing badly because someone recognized that their dad accidentally got put in charge of a spaceship for twelve minutes that one time. Cadets fill up the flagships because the entire fleet is busy in another system (really, J.J.? The entire fleet? I mean, it’s certainly some ambitious handwaving, but come on).

A Romulan ship has come back from the future to make Spock sad. (The man in charge of the world’s spiniest ship decides not to save his own planet but instead blows up Vulcan.) Nobody really cares except Spock, and he only cares because his cameo-appearance mom died. Luckily, his human half wins out just in time for him to accept humanity as the only way to survive, which would be a totally racist philosophy if anyone was paying attention.

Also, that kid who got flunked from the Academy for cheating and broke laws to get on board because he was pissy about staying home gets to be the flagship captain forever.

The “big twist.” Ten seconds into the movie, Abrams decides he is already tired of recreating the original series and turns it into an alternate universe (his favorite!) by blowing up Kirk’s dad. This turns Kirk into an even more useless douche than normal. It also means that the villain has to hang around for 25 years picking his teeth with one of the prongs in his ship before he comes around to menace our hero again.

Our hero in this case is Spock, which would be an interesting twist except Kirk keeps photobombing the frame and running away with the plot, so forget that. Basically, when Vulcan explodes (spoiler!), Spock gets to emo around about his mom while Kirk does all the charge-taking. Now J.J. has made a huge AU high-school fanfic where he can do just as he pleases! Well done, J.J.

I mean, for real?

The aesthetics. You can try to explain to me why a backwoods mining vessel would have reason to look like a spiny sea anemone. You will not succeed.

Oh, and here’s a drawing I made of the new Enterprise, based on how the ship is presented in the film.

That is all.

The bridge. The first time I saw the bridge, I thought, “There are way too many people in this shot.” Then I realized that it was for the best, since they needed the coverage: that movie was 40% “people leaving the bridge when they’re not supposed to.” I mean, fewer people left the TITANIC than left that bridge.

The ladies. You can explain to me how we only rate four ladies in this movie:
- mom who gives birth and then goes “offworld” so her son can rebel
- mom who is quietly supportive and then dies so her son can rebel
- skanky chick who sleeps with Kirk so he can be in the room for an important piece of exposition
- Uhura, who sleeps with an Academy teacher and then spends the rest of the movie with her face turned towards him at all times like she’s a fucking sunflower.

You will not succeed.

The performances. Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood – job well done. You may go home. The rest of you better be in acting bootcamp this second.

Its success as Trek. They used the same character names and costumes as the TV show. That’s…about it. (Fun fact about the bridge crew from TOS: a Russian, an Asian, and an African-American were groundbreaking IN THE SIXTIES. The fact that we have apparently not come any farther is just sad. Also, playing a character’s accent for laughs is sort of uncool in this day and age, I thought, but what do I know?)

Also there are Vulcans. For forty-five minutes.

I actually think the lack of thematic connection (not even talking about canon) to any existing Trek was intentional – aside from the minimal fan service, this movie was clearly made to attract people who would never otherwise have stooped to such a geek level. Mission accomplished! Lensflare!

Its success as a reboot. Well, I’ll say this much: now that J.J. has jettisoned all that canon, nobody even has to worry about watching that geeky TV show any more.* Well done, J.J.!

* Except for the people who are walking out of the theatre like, “Man, Kirk and Spock were really giving each other the eye!” and want to check out that hoyay for a while.**

** There is a squad of middle-aged women with back rooms full of mimeographed Kirk/Spock ‘zines who are going to strangle you in your sleep. Have fun with that!