Star Trek

So literally everyone I know, including all the film reviewers have been going on and on about how great Star Trek is. I saw it yesterday and they are absolutely 100% wrong. I should point out that this isn't me being mindlessly contrarian, The Dark Knight and Wall-E got much the same reaction from critics and my friends and I loved both films. Star Trek is awful though, and here is why, in order of importance:

1. Kirk is a dick

So they introduce this character by having him drive a high powered supercar through the desert at 80 miles an hour. Whilst this kid is around 10 years old. This was a really fucking bad idea when Episode 1 did it, and it's a bad idea here. The kid is being a petulant prick and the film seems to think this will make us warm to him, rather than pray for him to go over a cliff in the ensuing car chase.

Things only get worse when Kirk grows up. He is an arrogant narcissist who never actually demonstrates all the skills he claims to have. The one time he demonstrates any insight is when he realises they are warping into a trap – which they then do nothing about as Sulu has all ready saved them there, by making them late. Literally all they do is raise shields and go to red alert, which I'm pretty sure they would have done anyway, after seeing the hulks of a dozen space ships when they materialise.

2. All the other characterisation is terrible

The characters are either really, really two dimensional (Uhura, Sulu, Bones) or a racist cliché (Chekov & the other aliens in the film – ever notice how there's only ever one representation of every race? That's the Star Trek equivalent of having a token black person. At least they had the good presence of mind to maintain their token black person in the form of Uhura.) Other than possibly the main villain, I can't think of a single character who was more than a string of cliches.

3. The plot makes no fucking sense

I actually quite liked the story of the aliens coming back and re doing time from their perspective. Yes, it's a story that Star Trek has done many, many, many times but the motivation for the villain was probably the strongest here, if a little two dimensional. HOWEVER, explain to me how no-one on the federation flag ship is more qualified than all these people they have just brought on to the ship (who are fucking CADETS). Kirk is the least qualified person available to be captain and he gets made Captain. Despite being a mutineer. No-one even makes him captain, he just says he is. This is the fucking flag ship of the federation, I'm pretty sure they take a dim view of that sort of stuff.

4. I hated the special effects

Now, the effects looked quite good, but they had two big problems. Firstly, there was too much CGI. It's really hard to take something seriously when it looks like a computer game. Secondly, the camera work was far, far, far too modern. And by modern, I mean constantly moving, jiggling all over the place, switching focus, maintaining a kinetic pace, not staying on anything in case people noticed that what's happening on screen is not actually that interesting. I tend to switch off when things are trying too hard to impress me and Star Trek tried way, way too hard. I know it has years of low budget stodge to blast through but the solution to that should not have been to shake the camera to the point where the audience gets motion sickness.

4. The film seemed to be convinced that it was really, really funny.

And it just fucking wasn't.

There were several other small reasons but when your list so far has covered Characterisation, plot, directing and special effects, there's not much more you can do to put a nail in this particular coffin.