I never talked about the Star Trek reboot movie that came out a couple years ago. The one where time is changed, and Captain Kirk and his crew live their lives in a different time line. It sucked. Really bad. I was a fan of the original series, and I can't believe how bad that movie was. James Kirk is now a delinquent, Spock's planet gets destroyed, Dr. McCoy is the ultimate warrior, Vaako, from Chronicles of Riddick, Uhura is in love with Spock, Scotty is on some obscure planet living a solitary existence with a pet alien, Chekov is some boy genius, the likes of Will Robinson, or even, shudder, Wesley Crusher, who I never could stand, and Sulu is the guy from Harold and Kumar.
It was all a bad joke to me, and to anyone else who was a hardcore fan of the original series. Nor could I stand the stand-in aliens, one in a bar, a la Star Wars, and a spattering of cartoon-like aliens here and there. Again, it was a complete rip-off of Star Wars. And again, it was a bad joke.
All of the characters were miscast, except, perhaps, Spock. Zachary Quinto actually looked the part. But Kirk? Wrong actor. Chris Pine looked just like what they portrayed him as--a delinquent. And that's my problem. Captain Kirk, even in a different time line, was no delinquent. I'm sure the writers will argue that growing up without his father made him into a delinquent, but that's assuming that anyone who grows up without a father is guaranteed to be a delinquent. And I'll never believe that. It's bull crap.
Scotty being played by Simon Pegg, was all right, but being assigned to a solitary assignment removed and apart from everyone else? Nope. His talent was such that he would be heading the most important engineering jobs around at the time. Which was why he was assigned head engineer to the USS Enterprise, and not falling into that job by mere chance as this movie had it.
And Uhura? Uhura was African, not African American, as established at least twice in the original series. Her first language was Swahili, not English and the writers of this movie disregarded that. Which I believe is an insult to all of Africa and all Africans. (It would have been the same thing if they made Scotty no longer Scottish, or Chekov no longer Russian, but they didn't do that, did they?) But Zoe Saldana was no African and she just didn't look the part. She didn't convey the elegance, the dignity that was played to perfection by Nichelle Nichols. And that pathetic attraction to Spock? It's true she flirted with Spock in a very early episode on STTOS, but to anyone who has any perception abilities, she was just messing with Spock,while singing a song. She wasn't attracted to him. Her taste in men was exemplified twice during the original series. First, she was attracted to a strong looking and well spoken African man, as depicted in The Man Trap. Second, she admitted being attracted to Captain Kirk himself in the episode Plato's Children. But she was never attracted to Spock. That was nothing more than a joke.
And Sulu? Harold? Come on.
And Dr. McCoy? Played by the warrior Vaako? Well, actually, he kind of did look the part. But Karl Urban (Vaako) playing Dr. McCoy is akin to Eric Bana, (Hector) playing Dr. Bruce Banner. It's just not him. BTW, Eric Bana, the perennial good guy in all of his other movies, just happened to be the bad guy, Nero, in this movie. Another example of miscasting.
And the guy playing Chekov didn't even remotely look like him. And another thing. Chekov wasn't even around for the first year of the series, which means he wouldn't have been there for the Enterprise's maiden voyage, as he was depicted in this movie. All wrong.
Oh, well. Now the second one is about to come out. I'll see it. And then probably have some more to complain about. It'll give me something to write about.
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