arts cover story: Beat #1164 29 April 2009

star trek xi

Really loving Star Trek is like really loving Christ—you’re a social cowpat, your views are fundamentalist and you’ve been waiting 2000 years for a decent fucking sequel.

This is NOT my idea of a joke. Nemesis is my idea of a joke, along with every Star Trek film since 1991, which have been needlessly baked in shit.

“I don’t think people even understand what Star Trek means anymore.” — JJ Abrams

Star Trek—the concept—refers to a) dissecting the cow’s heart of morality in the face of certain mass execution, b) masterminding a suite of spontaneous, unprecedented kill moves in space, and c) successfully uniting the entire human species under William Shatner. This is NOT NEWS. Nor is this rat microsurgery. This is the bedrock of the eternal story of man. Yet not even a rogue nugget of these BASIC concepts can be found in any installment of Star Trek since Gene Roddenberry—the series’ chief architect and eyeball of authority—expired in 1991. Do you even recall what happened in Nemesis? I fucking hope not. All I can recall is Data committing suicide by jumping into a cloud. The fact I recall even that makes me want to cut my heart out and feed it to Hitler, before telling him with my dying breath, “Whatever you do, man, don’t watch Nemesis.”

“He’s beyond a genius. He really is his generation’s Spielberg.” — Lloyd Braun (ABC Chairman who commissioned Lost) on JJ Abrams

I literally threw up when I heard JJ Abrams was employed to helm the forthcoming Star Trek shit festival, since the only thing I could recollect of JJ’s previous $200 million abortion—Mission Impossible III—was Philip Seymour Hoffman exploding, then turning into a pair of shoes. What an artist! Yet I had failed to observe what was both obvious and key—Star Trek had contracted full-blown bowel cancer some fifteen years ago, and officially expired sometime around 2001. LITERALLY NOTHING WAS AT STAKE. In fact, all JJ Abrams had to do was NOT direct the biggest piece of shit of all time, and Star Trek would, by definition, be restored—the inherent obstacle, of course, being JJ Abrams NOT directing the biggest piece of shit of all time.

“How can I make this not suck?” — JJ Abrams

JJ Abrams seemed determined to emotionally wedgie the Star Trek fan continuum in the years preceding Star Trek XI’s release, by repeatedly pronouncing that a) he is not a Star Trek fan, and b) he is not making a film for Star Trek fans—therefore he hates Star Trek and its fans. Great! Presumably Abrams will engineer a giant fart to fill the theatre during the film, so we can all die and make him happy. Obviously, Abrams’ pronouncements effectively guillotined any expectations I had for this film to not suck. I thus entered Paramount’s pre-release screening grateful to see this film before I died, but only in order to be able to definitively say it sucked, then die.

“I actually paid JJ a small fee to be in this film.” — Simon Pegg, to a German press conference

The subsequent 120 minutes redefined the universe as I understood it, wherein JJ Abrams is President Douchebag and I’m sitting in the sixth floor of the book depository. It seems JJ was either lying about refusing to make a film for fans, or he accidentally made the biggest Star Trek fan film of all time. Either scenario would make him a genius. Of course, as an action film, Star Trek XI is stunningly bad; I still don’t know what Eric Bana (the film’s antagonist) was planning to do, how he was going to do it, or what motivated him to do the thing that I don’t actually know of in the first place. But as an installment in Star Trek, Star Trek XI is an outstanding achievement in the field of excellence.

“Getting into Star Trek is like buying a house.” — Tim Finney, to me

Star Trek XI’s perfection can be wholly illustrated by Chris Pine’s portrayal of Kirk. Critics claim the newly installed Star Trek actors are just “characters playing characters”; this is a fallacy. Pine does not mimic Shatner, nor does he betray Shatner’s essence—he IS Shatner, without literally BEING him (a reality which cannot be understood without actually SEEING him). Pine portrays a character which must be fundamentally ridiculous, but believes in that ridiculousness with a raging intensity. Because Captain Kirk is more than a man; he is a symbol. He is Star Trek. And thus Star Trek XI is Star Trek (in concept), thereby restoring Star Trek, thereby making Star Trek XI the greatest film of all time, even though it’s not the greatest film of all time. In fact, in the context of all time, Star Trek XI may not even be remembered as NOT being a piece of shit—but it’s not the BIGGEST piece of shit. It’s not Nemesis—and that’s enough.

This article is mirrored at Beat magazine.