Top 6 Reasons Why JJ Abram’s Star Trek is Awesome!
Star Trek boldly enters a new future with its latest installment and revision from director JJ Abrams and his writer team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman as well has his producing partner Damon Lindelof. Assembling a cast of unknowns, rebooting an iconic franchise with its most iconic characters, opting to hit the reset button 40 years of mythology creating the JJ Abram’s alternate reality universe of Star Trek and trying to make Star Trek appeal to everyone? This all seems like a daunting task for the young filmmaker who only has TV shows and Mission Impossible III to his directorial filmography.
So what is it that makes Abram’s vision of Star Trek so epic and awesome? I will explore those below with my top 6 reasons why Abram’s Star Trek is a total success.
6. The Perfect Use of the Iconic Crew
Many incarnations of Star Trek from the Original Series and Next Generation to Voyager and Deep Space Nine have had a hard time in using the ensemble crew characters. Iconic in their own right Star Trek has always been about the big three, Kirk, Bones and Spock. In JJ Abram’s Star Trek, Sulu, Scotty, Checkov, Ulhura all played intrical parts to the film and all had their moment of grandeur and exploration. Example - Ulhura has always shown her skills in communication and language interpretation but Abrams’ emphasizes that with her eagerness and confident skill set but he also gives her a perky and lovable feature that may have been missed from the early days of Trek - she no longer stood in the background answering messages. The young 17 year old Checkov really hit home with his humorous accent but also his unique ability to do math very quickly but also beam people quickly as well.
5. The Enterprise - “She’s a Fine Lady Isn’t She Captain?”
As Montgomery Scott would say in any Star Trek, “she’s a fine lady isn’t she?” and mighty fine she is. Abrams’ certainly paid homage to classic nature of the Enterprise while at the same shows a completely new functional ship retrofitted with accurate scientific possibilities. The new Enterprise is something that carries the film like she always has and is the platform for which the series carries itself and its crew but Abrams shows us unique scales of the ship from engineering to the bridge but in a way that you really capture the feel scale of starship that is based on classic naval subs and cruisers. Aye Mr. Scott she is a fine lady in deed.
4. The Humor- “I’m a Doctor not a Physicist”
Star Trek has always had its humor, with comedic exchanges with Bones to trouble with Tribbles but this movie made the humor part of the core of the film. Not just with classic exchanges of “I’m a Doctor not a Physicist” but dialogue was carefully woven and the humorous moments well crafted to entertain and not bring camp or conceal a bad piece of storytelling.
3. Friendship - Spock and Kirk…don’t forget McCoy
The big three back together again and their chemistry doesn’t disappoint at all. Quinto and Pine bring their own style to the characters but never stray from the classic and historical friendship that we know and love. Karl Urban’s Bones McCoy fits right into the fix channeling Deforest Kelley perfectly with exact timing of classic Bones griping or concern about a situation it being handled by Spock and/or Kirk.
2. The Tale of 2 Spocks - Nimoy and Quinto
Rarely do reboots feature a direct passing of the torch but Abrams’ knew bridging the film with Nimoy and Quinto was the core. Guess that’s why they chose to announce them both first as the film’s cast. Quinto certainly benefited from Nimoy’s tutelage of the character embodiying the facial expression to the complex fight between emotion and logic.
1. The Space Opera - Space Battles, Sound and Giacchino’s Score
The film uses its canvas well and with the latest film making techniques at his disposal Abram’s paints a wonderful Space Opera complete with lens flares, panoramic views the ships in orbit of a planet, classic romantic shots of The Enterprise but more specifically the first 12 minutes engage us with a surreal moment of sci-fi. The ships are big beautiful and the battles convey that size perfectly. These aren’t X-Wings moving in and out of a Death Star. These are space boats. It was the Hunt for Red October in space. Along with the perfect nature of the space battles, Abram’s uses of sound is something that hasn’t been on an epic scale sense Lucas’ evolution of it in the first 1977 Star Wars, guess that’s why Ben Burrt (Sound Designer Star Wars and Wall*E) was involved. Booming and intense when it was meant to be but also detailed with the little bleeps of touch screens and all the little functionalties of the film. Again the use of sound mixed with the battles visually create an opera but what is an opera without it’s musical score? Star Trek has that in spades with Michael Giacchino’s beautiful and fluid throughout including his homage to Jerry Goldsmith’s classic theme.
If you like our Top 6 Reasons why Abram’s Star Trek is Awesome! Check out our friend’s over Film School Rejects list of 8 Things About the New Star Trek Movie That Will Blow You Away
