LizstarTrek - JJ Trek Movies

Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!

Note: This isn’t complete yet! We’re watching the first one for now. We’ll watch the others after a few Enterprise seasons.

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Star Trek - 4/10

As we discuss this movie, I want you to forget about it being a Trek movie. Don’t think of it as that. Think of it as JJ Abram’s demo reel for Star Wars, the thing he actually wanted to do.

We start with a ship in the middle of nowhere under attack. The captain is called to the enemy ship, which EASILY defeats them, and he gives command to his SO, a man named George Kirk. The captain is asked a few questions, where is Ambassador Spock, what is the stardate. And when he answers, he’s then impaled. Kirk then needs to stay on board, distracting the enemy ship as escape pods launch. We get a VERY drawn out scene of him sacrificing the ship as his wife gives birth on the escape pods. As George is about to die, he agrees to name him “Jim”. And then his ship explodes. Hell of a gender reveal party.

And then we get the scene made for the trailers. A young James T. Kirk steals his shitty abusive father’s car, as the Beastie Boys blasts out of the car. He’s chased by the cops and drives the car off of uh… whatever the fuck this thing is. The great gorge in the middle of Iowa. You know, what one. Then he says “MY NAME IS JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK.” End trailer! Boom!

On Vulcan, we see a young Spock getting bullied by some very unvulcan vulcans, and he’s beat up by them. He then gets in trouble with his dad for reacting to their bullying, as if them bullying isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that you reacted to it. I fucking HATE shit like this.

Time jump. We get Adult Spock. And if there’s one thing I can say about this movie, it has some AMAZING casting. My only major issue is that the Spock they get is VERY smirky. He’s in front of a board of ministers accepting him into the Vulcan Acadamy of Sciences. He ALSO applied to Starfleet, but they’re like “unneccesary” and deem it dumb to even conside going to Starfleet. Yeah cause Vulcans NEVER join Star Fleet???

We get Kirk being a very uh… “suave” little shithead? He meets Uhura and flirts with her cause of course he does. That alien in the middle should have been one of Morn’s species, tbh. Some Cadets beat the shit out of him for being a little shit, and then he’s saved by… CAPTAIN PIKE! He begs Kirk to enlist in Starfleet, and in 8 years he can captain his own ship. Pretty sure the enlisted don’t… do that. Aren’t they like, O’Brien?

That’s a major thing about this movie. If you peel back the layers and look at it under the hood, even for a fucking MINUTE, it’s stupid and makes no sense. Because JJ Abrahms doesn’t know anything about Star Trek and doesn’t care to make Science Fiction, just Science Fantasy. I could easily whine about shit like… George Kirk’s shitty little ship has the same crew retinue as the fucking Enterprise E. Or “why is the villain’s ship screaming, and why does he not look ANYTHING like a Romulan”. also “Why is his ship FUCKING HUMONGOUS AND POWERFUL BUT A MINING SHIP”. (it’s like if a bulldozer went back in time and blew up the British navy). But it doesn’t matter. This is a late 2000s action movie. Who the hell cares.

We jump through a lot of scenes. Hello, Bones. Karl Urban is good casting. We get more of the villain, Nero, who wants to “make him watch”. Kinky, dog. We also get Kirk fucking a green space babe, and he wins the Kobayashi Maru by hacking the test. It’s like someone read a wikipedia article about Captain Kirk and tried to distill him down in 4 minutes. Keep in mind that, IMO, that’s impossible, because Kirk in the original series is a mad man with four distinct personalities that depend on who writes him through the episode. You either remake Kirk with SOME of his traits, or make him a madman. They kinda went with madman.

While Kirk is getting yelled at for cheating at the Kobayashi Maru by Spock, the maker of the test, they get a distress call from Vulcan. And apparently the only ships in the sector who can reach Vulcan are…. the fucking Cadets at Earth? WHERE ARE ANY OF THE OTHER SHIPS?! Everyone is split off into different ships. Kirk is left at home cause he cheated, but Bones is a bro and basically sneaks him on board. While the ages don’t really fit for making them all be cadets together, I kinda like the Bones and Kirk “roommate buddies from college” energy. Not ALL the characters are perfect here. I don’t like overly confident Uhura here, SNW self doubt but very good at her job Uhura feels more believable to me. Sulu is also here, piloting the Enterprise, but he’s young and inexperienced. And also Chekov is here, again, age problems. And his whole thing is he talks weird. Nurse Chapel also gets mentioned, cool.

Nero, the villain, is attacking and blowing up Vulcan. They think it’s something natural, but they’re being attacked, and Kirk knows this because its the same thing that happened when he was born. If he can coem to that conclusion anyone should, because it’s not like it was a small problem, lots of people died. We get Kirk, having an allergic reaction, running through the Enterprise screaming and trying to communicate in a funny way to Uhura that they’re about to witness an actual genocide. This movie has a tone problem. Trek has always toed the line between humor and seriousness. It does that well. But it usually doesn’t involve ACTUAL PLANETARY genocide.

Pike leaves Chekov in control of the bridge to go be a hostage. What the fuck? Why him? Chekov is only like, 6 years old. He was just born yesterday, and you’re putting him in command? He also promotes Spock to Captain and Kirk to first officer. Why? Who the fuck knows. Bones is also now chief medical officer cause all the doctors fucking died. Pike sends Kirk Sulu and some shmuck to do an orbital fall to Vulcan to try and destroy this thing they’re using to destroy the planet.

Oh no, one of the people Kirk is going with on this mission is wearing a red shirt. Dude, I’m so sorry for you. There’s like 6 things JJ knows about Star Trek, and that’s one of the top ones. He died because he’s being a fucking idiot. It’s okay, I saw his parachute. Like, literally.

We get a fight scene on this orbital platform that’s moving to the planet’s code. Sulu apparently brought a MOTHER FUCKING KATANA to this fight. Why? Because he’s Japanese of course!! This is the scene I remember from this movie most of all. I remember thinking it was sick as hell.

This movie is very loud.

The Romulans are making a black hole at the center of Vulcan, which is of course, destroying the planet. He goes to the planet and evacuates his parents, though his mom dies in the process. The temple they’re all in appears to be a Sith Templ- I mean uh, the Katric Chamber. Yeah. Holy shit we finally get silence in this movie, and it’s to mourn Spock’s mom’s death. For like 20 seconds, then it’ll be loud again.

A whole hell of a lot of people are dead now. Also Uhura makes out with Spock. It’s literally a student fucking their instructor, don’t worry about it. We all consume questionable stuff. But it wouldn’t be MY ship. Spock needs his lips ready for Kirk.

We find out Nero’s purpose here. He’s from a future, and his super ship nothing can beat is a fucking mining vessel. In the future, Romulus blew up, and he blames the Federation for not helping, especially Spock, so he decides to go back in time and get revenge.

Spock and Kirk get in an argument so Spock literally jettisons him off his ship to an ice planet (that claims is M class, it’s not) onto a fucking ice floe. Was Spock trying to literally murder Kirk? Because he nearly succeeded. Kirk is freezing to death and gets hunted by some alien beasts. What the FUCK, Spock??? You’re the good guy?! Also for some reason there’s an M Class ice planet that’s right next to Vulcan. Okay.

Congrats Kirk, you were saved by a 150 year old Vulcan. Kirk just RANDOMLY runs into Spock on this fucking planet. Why? I dunno, JJ Abrahms wanted to make a part of this movie that’s very reminiscent of Star Wars Episode 5. Old!Spock teaches Kirk what happened in the past/future. This part is canon. This movie? Not canon, it’s an alternate universe. But a supernova happening to Romulus DID happen. This causes a lot of awful prime timeline shenanigans. Also there’s a Federation outpost nearby. Why wasn’t Spock ALREADY THERE???? WHY WAS HE JUST LIVING IN A CAVE?!

Sorry, I am TRYING to ignore the stupid bullshit in this movie but it is very, very hard.

Anyways we’re about to get to the best casting of this movie. Karl Urban is #2. This is #1.

Scotty’s actor is the only person here, other than Nimoy of course, who knew fucking ANYTHING about Star Trek before joining this crew. And he fits this perfectly. He’s pretty great.

Old!Spock demands that Kirk not tell Young!Spock that he exists. Because it’s his Destiny. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHY DOES THAT MEAN? Whhyyy? Spock also claims he learned how to cheat from an old friend. I bet he’s gonna teach Kirk about Fizbin sometime.

Oh you know what, it’s been a while since we’ve had some scene where people run around with slapstick! We get a scene where Scott is beamed into Enterprise’s water tubes, and there’s some giant chopping blades that the water flows to. Good thing there’s no one currently in Engineering???????

Under Old!Spock’s suggestion, Kirk just pisses Young!Spock off enough to make him attack him, which will make it obvious he’s not fit to lead. He relinquishes command and now NO one is in command. Why are the only people on the best ship in the fleet Cadets? Well, we DO have a captain now. Kirk WAS made the acting first officer, so now he’s captain. You know, Spock was removed from captaincy cause he was emotional compromised, but this Kirk is ABSOLUTELY not emotionally compromised.

Spock comes to because his dad said he loved his wife, and sets himself as the new first officer. Status quo achieved!

Loud flicky pew pew action scene, oh boy. Scotty beams them to what he thinks is an unoccupied part of the ship. It’s not. Fight time. Luckily all these enemies are very bad. They’re attacking JUST as the ship starts to bore a hole in Earth like it did for Vulcan, almost blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge. Been a while since we saw it blow up! Also now that Spock and Kirk have fought together in a SINGLE fight, Spock is on a first name basis with Kirk and calls him Jim. This movie has some problems with pacing.

Nero: “I WILL DEPRIVE YOU OF YOUR LIFE, JUST LIKE I DID YOUR FATHER”

How the shit did you know that you killed his dad, you never interracted with him. Okay, man. It’s not like I’ve never made writing plothole mistakes before but whoof. This villain isn’t TERRIBLE, but I don’t like him that much. This is what everyone thinks Shinzon from Nemesis is.

Spock is going to sacrifice himself and blow up the red matter, but the Enterprise comes in like Big Damn Heroes to save the day. He crashes the ship with the red matter into Nero’s ship, creating a black hole, just as Kirk saves Pike and Spock is warped away. Was Spock trying to kill Kirk again while doing this? Yes. Yes, he was straight up going to kill him.

Wow this movie has a lot of flashing effects.

THey eject the warp core, and by that I mean like 8 of them, I dunno why they have 8 of them, and let the blast carry them away from the singularity. What if we had more flashing and more shaking effects? Lovely. And then they surfed the wave while listening to rock music. Wait, wrong movie.

We get a goodbye to Old!Spock as he meets Young!Spock. He explains he lied about it, because it’d make Kirk and Spock be friends. Fair enough.

All the cadets are still there, despite the fact that ALL of the ships they were all put in were blown the fuck up earlier in the movie, sure, okay, that’s fine. They make Kirk captain, give him a medal, and all cheer him on. Also Pike is in a wheelchair now! All is right in the fucking world.

The movie ends with them blasting off. Punch it chewie, etc. And then we get Old!Spock doing the voice over. These are the missions of etc etc. That’s pretty emotional. And we get a reprise of the original theme! Cool.

Obviously this movie is like, not great. It’s kinda bad, in many ways. But it’s not unenjoyable? My friend Elle in my group watch said it best. “This movie is a 40 minute carnival ride that lasts for two hours”. It is shlocky action that is poorly directed, because JJ Abrahms is not a good director. Also we all make fun of the lens flares and weird scaling but the REAL problem is that it was loud, too fast, and the fucking flashing was nuts. This movie is so bright, and so loud. It’s like getting flashbanged by a mediocre book.

At least the soundtrack is pretty good.