Bottle Shock

Written at the time of the film's uncorking.

Bottle Shock (Randall Miller, 2008) Miller has been making cheap, exploitation comedies (Class Act, Houseguest, The Sixth Man) for awhile now—alternating with some TV-directing work on shows with more on their mind ("Northern Exposure," "thirtysomething,") but Bottle Shock was made with his own money and he distributed it himself. One can imagine why: it's an intelligent, slightly loopy movie about pursuing your dreams despite being told (by the entire world) that you can't achieve them. It's also about wine—a sort of Rocky of the vineyards. But, it's also a fictionalized version of true events.

The occurrence was a tectonic shift in the wine industry, which was monopolized in terms of quality by the French vintners of the Bordeaux region. In 1976, a wine connoisseur and merchant Steven Spurrier, conducted a blind taste test between various products wine-producing areas. It was assumed that the French would, of course, come out on top, but when labels were revealed, the clear winner of the competition were upstarts, from, frighteningly, California. The wine-world was shocked (aghast!) that the center of the world vineyards became the neighborhood of Gallo (now owned, by the way, by Francis Coppola).

The facts are loose, and Spurrier has gone on record saying that he is less than thrilled with his portrayal—with sly, and, dare we say, dry alacrity—by Alan Rickman (personally, I'd be honored, but then I guess my taste is questionable) and with how the film tinkers with them, but Miller managed to make an okay film about grapes, waiting, sugar-chemistry, waiting, snobbery, waiting, and...obsession.

The main subject of the film (which might have spit in Spurrier's chardonnay) is Jim Barrett (played by Bill Pullman), a financial guru who has tired of dollars and sense to concentrate on nose and bouquet. For the youth market, there are the required diversions of the chances-taking son (played by Chris Pine), who is not sure of following in his father's grape-stomping foot-steps, but is sure of making time with the UC Davis student (Rachael Taylor) who's decided to Summer working the fields...and playing them. While wine-inspired lust simmers in the background, Pine's restless son manages to smuggle Dad's wine into the competition, a move the father staunchly disapproves of, despite being leveraged to the cork.

It's amiable, pleasant, with no harsh after-taste (despite the squabbling that was going on in the background of the film's making among the subjects and film-makers), and will more than satisfy any film-watcher's desire to see sun-dappled vineyards in long-shot.

Grin and Barrett

Don't Worry Darling

Perfectly Frank (Without Benefit of Distraction)

or

Who's Afraid of Olivia Wilde?

 

"You have a lovely home," murmurs Frank (Chris Pine) as he's welcomed to a dinner at the Technicolor dream-house of Jack and Alice Chambers (Harry Styles, Florence Pugh). And of course it is. It's a vision of America right out of TV sit-come 50's-60's, where the wives wear make-up all day, make a multi-course meal and go skipping to the door with a drink in their hand to greet the man who's come home from work...of an unknown and not-talked about nature.

 

It's a man's world, even if the shows made a pretext that the woman was secretly in charge (Really, do you think that Elizabeth Montgomery's all-powerful witch Samantha would really put up with ad-exec husband Darren's boobish "Sam, I'm the man of the house and what I say goes" before turning him back into a chimpanzee?) And Jack and the rabbit-holed Alice live in a cul-de-sac community in a desertish sub-division surrounded by mountains. The husbands drive off in their dream-cars, while the women do their house-work, listening to lectures by Frank about achieving the dream-existence, the perfect life, outside of the chaos everybody else puts up with. The men are off working on Frank's "Victory Project" off in the mountains doing...something...but every so often their world is rocked by temblors, which are dismissed with an off-hand "Boys with their Toys" remark to go back to sunning themselves and sipping their scotch-and-sodas.

It's all as fake as the blue on Jack's business-suit, but nobody questions it. Nobody asks questions. Life is good. Don't rock the boat (even if the ground does rock from time to time). At the neighborhood ballet class, the mantra is "there is beauty in control, grace in symmetry, we are as one". But there are cracks showing up in the veneer of this world just like the cracks in the sun-baked asphalt of the community streets.

Little things, like the rumor about the neighbor who walked outside the Victory City limits with her son, and only she returned. I mean there were the "Warning! Employees Only Beyond This Point (Hazardous Materials)" signs, that are ubiquitous beyond the trolley route (the trolleys have signs that say "What you See Here/What You Do Here/What You Hear Here/Let's Let It Stay Here") and the bad dreams that Alice has of dilating eyes and chorus-girls in Busby Berkley-like dance routines—that turn nightmarish. Sometimes, the eggs that Alice cooks for her Instagram-perfect meals are empty. Walls start closing in during the daily cleaning, to the sound of Frank's "Shatnering" (Pine really gets into it a couple of times).

And then, there's the plane. Alice sees it—a vintage red prop-plane—that flies overhead one day, shimmers in the air, and starts to spiral down into the hills surrounding the enclave. Alice runs out into the desert, past the warning signs, up to the prominent hill where "the boys" go to work and bangs on the structure trying to get help for the crashed passengers, but, no one answers her call. Instead, a bunch of beefy security guys in red suits appear out of nowhere and haul her away...to be corrected...before returning her back to the neighborhood.

Just what is going on in Don't Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde's sophomore directorial effort (after the hilarious and hyper Booksmart) is teased for the first 2/3 of the movie with the too-slick veneer of the film constantly being smudged by the encroaching feeling that something is "terribly, terribly wrong" (as they say in the "True Crime" docs)...but what? Is it the demands of satire, or some Shyamalanian twist that will sneak up on you at the end? Don't Worry Darling is full of incident that makes you wonder what's real, what's a dream, and what's a delusion while rarely giving you a focal point of where the truth lies.

We've seen this game-plan before. "Wandavision" did it recently. For those with more media savvy, there are doses of The Matrix and The Stepford Wives with doses of "The Twilight Zone"(s), "Black Mirror," and "The Prisoner" TV show (both versions, in fact) mixed in. It has the disadvantage of being feature length (half-hours are ideal) with the burden of wrapping things up at the end (which it does, probably not to everyone's satisfaction...but, as a "Prisoner" fan, I don't mind a little ambiguity), but doesn't take the cop-out of cliff-hangers, or taking the "X-Files" route of just ending without explanation. 

But, it also hints at elements in "the real world" (such as it is) like any "no, really, we're helping YOU" cult—along the lines of Synanon, EST, Scientology, Jonestown and Trump-land—that promises some sort of fulfillment, when the only thing that's being filled is the leader's bank account (we never know Frank's last name...it could be "Ponzi"). One could see it as a comment on "crazy cures" and conspiracy theories and their influence on a gullible, privileged society—it certainly fits—especially in regards to people who spend endless hours watching the latest News from Wackyland (or long-winded movie reviews) on their computers. Don't Worry Darling is merely an extension of that.

But, with all those references to hold a broken mirror up to, there is one more comparison to a movie (based on the play) that I want to make—Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Both films deal with the lengths—bordering on control games and shared illusions—that a troubled and failing couple might go to in order to maintain the relationship, whether for personal need or in order to just maintain a semblance of an easier status quo. There is desperation there and Don't Worry Darling maintains a constant feeling of desperation...and unease.

The third act also has some desperation problems, as well—trying to create an action-filled third act (which, unfortunately, undercuts some of the movie-logic needed to gird the film), but as long as one isn't a stickler for continuity's sake, one will find Don't Worry Darling a finely crafted tale of "disturbia" with impeccable direction and design—the music choices are inspired and John Powell's music, superb—all supported by a plucky "in-every-frame" performance by Florence Pugh that is brave, believable, and, at times, horrorific. The movie is worth seeing, just to see her.*

* Notice I haven't mentioned any of the garbage about the premiere publicity from the entertainment press and (worse) social media? The reason is it's worse than irrelevant, it's distracting. Which, in a wonderful irony, only makes the movie's point.

Unstoppable (2010)

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Braking of Pelham 4-5-6"
or
"So...Now What the Hell Do We Do?"

Tony Scott's last film was the very "meh" update of The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 with Denzel Washington as a harried subway supervisor on the day that crazy terrorist John Travolta decides to take a train (and its passengers) hostage. The movie was hysterical in the "hair-on-fire" way (and not in the "ha-ha" way) where the earlier Joseph Sargent-directed version was cleverly funny, the film-makers leaching colors out of the picture and backing it with a hip-hop beat. It was a dull and lifeless movie with all sorts of editing tricks and false drama trying to make the thing seem more like an action movie than the material had the capacity to fulfill. So, what you got was a movie that felt like it was suffering from inappropriate  'roid-rage.

Perhaps they should have skipped Pelham and gone straight to Unstoppable (called that because, presumably, Andrey Konchalovskiy already made Runaway Train in 1985!). Based on the "Crazy 8's" incident in 2001, where an engineer-less train—train 777, making it, apparently, that much closer to "the Choo-Choo of the Beast"—carrying dangerous chemicals (the "molten phenol" used in the film), moved unimpeded and under power at speeds up to 48 mph, it has, like Pelham, been ginned up with drama and death and derring-do, and the inevitable "countdown to disaster" that could end Scranton, Pennsylvania as we know it.

"Hello, do you read?"

Everything that can go wrong can and does. The train is under power due to an operator error—he was under pressure from co-workers to move a heavily laden train quickly, and left the cab to try and move a track-switcher—with its brakes disconnected, on a collision course with another filled with school-kids on a "train-safety" field-trip (Oooooh, the irony!), but there seem to be enough Pennsylvanians on the track that you suspect it was "Go Stand on a Railroad Track Day" in the state (at least, the film-makers kept it free of nuns, widows, orphans and puppies—although one shot of a raccoon crossing the track with the train hurtling at us in the background provoked an inappropriate fit of the giggles). It's carrying the afore-mentioned molten phynol "used in the manufacture of glue"—and in case we don't get it (a problem with this movie) it is reiterated that it is "very toxic, highly volatile" and the place the train will most likely derail is in the middle of Scranton on a curve that overlooks (conveniently) a large collection of fuel oil storage tanks. Now, ladies and gentlemen, that is bad city planning.

"Yeah, I read. I CAN read. Are you talking about genre?"

On top of that, the corporate heads irresponsibly want to stop it in the least expensive way possible, meaning that it probably won't work, and the two engineers also on a collision course with "a missile the size of the Chrysler Building" consist of a bitter company vet and a kid on his first day on the job with a court appearance that he has to make.

This is one over-loaded train. Scott pulls out all the stops—he doesn't have any brakes, either—skip-and ramp-editing the train footage to move it faster, swooping around the trains to give everything more momentum, constantly changing perspective to keep one ill at ease (until the two Mutt and Jeff engineers—Denzel Washington and Chris Pine—share a laugh—and a frame—half-way through the film, their conversations consist of separate shots of each speaking their lines from opposite perspectives of the engine compartment), it is a busy, busy movie. Credit to Scott, he keeps you informed what's going on so you never get lost in the spinning images. If anything, there is too much information—needlessly identifying various locations at the beginning when they're all 200 miles of each other, and not trusting any piece of information to not be re-iterated (after a terse conversation with the corporate HQ, do we need to have the gal in charge (Rosario Dawson) call her callous supervisor "an asshole?"). The entire plot is summed up a couple times during the movie ("So, what you're telling me is....") to the point where you're feeling slightly talked down to. Still, it is a bit of a fun ride for all the lapses in passenger-service.

"What is this, a book-club? Stop the damn train!"

One funny aspect of the film is its constant thrusting of Fox News coverage of the event (the film is a 20th Century Fox release and both entities are holdings of News Corp.). But it may be a bit of a miscalculation: the circling news helicopters buzzing the train seem to not only distract, but also interfere with the rescue efforts, to the point where they're actually one of the things hampering the struggles of the people to resolve the situation. Fox runs the risk of making one of their own divisions look poor in their attempt to cross-promote, derailing their own efforts throughout the film.

Wonder Woman 1984

For the Wonder Woman Who Has Everything

or 

"Cheetahs Never Prosper" (Despite Magical Thinking)

In 1985, DC Comics published a "Superman Annual" (#11), that contained a "Superman" story that was much beloved of comic fans called "For the Man Who Has Everything." It was commissioned by Editor Julius Schwartz and the rumor is, he merely wanted the artist Dave Gibbons to draw it and Gibbons had the choice of who to write it.

He chose Alan Moore, who had been writing comics in Britain in 1984 and had achieved acclaim for his work cross-pollinating the "Swamp Thing" comic series and allowing its fortunes to bloom. Moore would go on to write "Watchmen" for DC Comics and "Batman: The Killing Joke" (two of the most critically acclaimed stories in the DC history) when he was allowed to play with "all the toys" in the DC Multi-verse cast-list, but for this "Superman" one-off he wrote a melancholy and savage story of Superman on his birthday being "gifted" by a villain with a present ("The Black Mercy," a telepathic, parasitic alien plant*) that granted whomever it latched on to their heart's desire, lulling them into defenselessness—in Kal-el's case, it is a mental fantasy that Krypton never exploded and that he has grown up on his home planet with his original parents—only to find that, in his fantasies, an un-cracked Krypton is not all it is cracked up to be.

Director Patty Jenkins, who directed the first sublime WW movie, and scenarists Geoff Johns and David Callaham—he had a hand in writing The Expendables, the latest Godzilla, and Zombieland: Double Tap (which does not inspire confidence)—have "homaged" that story for Wonder Woman 1984, which finds Princess Diana of Themyscira (Gal Gadot, MVP) working for the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. as Diana Prince and surreptitiously super-heroing as the Amazin' Amazon—we've been told in Batman v. Superman that she's one of the "secret meta-humans" operating under the radar and hasn't been seen since WWI. Not that she hasn't been busy—there are moments (but they are moments) when she takes pains to make sure there's no record of her being there, but they are weak attempts...and one jewelry-heist bust-up is so out-in-the-open that the only way people wouldn't remember it would be unless there was a post-robbery visit by the Men in Black.

The movie proper starts with the by-now accepted Princess Diana foreshadowing voice-over as she recalls her youth in Themyscira: "Some days, my childhood feels so very far away. And others, I can almost see it: the magical land of my youth, like a beautiful dream of when the whole world felt like a promise...and the lessons that lay ahead, yet unseen. Looking back, I wish I'd listened, wish I'd watched more closely and understood. But sometimes, you can't see what you're learning until you come out the other side." 

The Themyscira scenes from both Wonder Woman and Justice League are fondly remembered, but here it's limited to a Themysciran version of "The Titan Games" and Quidditch rolled into one. The ten year-old Princess Diana (Lilly Aspell, also back) is competing against women twice her age and when she gets in trouble, takes a short-cut and is prevented from completing the course by Antiope (Robin Wright), much to her consternation: "You took the short path. That is the truth...The true hero is not born from lies, but patience, diligence and the courage to face the truth."

Okay, then, roll credits.

Zip ahead to 1984 and that mall-heist, the tone of which is rather winky, feeling a bit in tone like those fights in the "Batman" TV-series—or even the "Wonder Woman" TV-series—for all the threatening the bad-guys do, they're by turns mean or comical. It doesn't help that Jenkins piles on the "strange" sartorial splendors of the 1980's here, as it tends to undercut any feeling of menace—it's preceded by some street-action life-saving that reminded one of the Richard Lester-directed "Superman" films. A lot of little girls are shown getting inspired by a strong kick-ass woman, even though the impression is supposed to be fleeting. I mean, Diana tiara-smashes a lot of incriminating security cameras, but she stops to smile and wink at the little girls? It's also where the first brain-disconnect moment occurs: the bad guys rob the mall-jewelry store because there are ancient artifacts being smuggled there on the black market. Really? In a mall? A high traffic area mall?

Anyway, it's always good to see Gadot playing Wonder Woman. She's the best thing in the picture and although the movie doesn't live up to expectations, she's never less than fully committed and pulls off a lot of janky scenes just by her persuasiveness. That's a great component of the "Wonder Woman" persona, even if the movie sometimes forgets what she's all about.

We're given a glimpse of her post-World War I life, literally snap-shots—she lives at the Watergate hotel and scattered throughout are photos: Diana at the double wedding of WWI team-mates Charlie and Sameer, Diana on a New York ferry with an aged Etta Candy, Diana with The Chief comforting a woman at a liberated concentration camp...Diana in plaid flannel visiting Trevor Ranch. Pictures of Steve (Chris Pine). Many pictures of Steve (Chris Pine). That answers some questions—and shows that Diana wasn't just ignoring the ravages of WWII—and instills a certain nostalgic factor.

That mall-robbery sets up the story: among the antiquities housed in the backroom of the jewelry shop is something called "the Dreamstone"—there's one in the comics but it has a different history involving stories from "Justice League of America" and Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"—and everything gets carted away to the Smithsonian for study by their new hire Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), a multi-doctorate but whose low self-esteem makes her nearly invisible to her co-workers...unless they see her as a door-mat. 

Except Diana. The two have a mutual interest in the Dreamstone, but neither realize its importance: It's base has a Latin phrase carved into it—"Place upon the object held but one great wish"—and it gives the bearer it's heart's specific desire...but at a cost not known to the stone-wisher. Diana wishes that Steve Trevor was back. Barbara wants to be more like Diana. 

But, there's another man who covets the Dreamstone and that would be Maxwell Lorenzano (Pedro Pascal), who has changed his name to "Maxwell Lord"** and become a fixture on TV for his company Black Gold Cooperative, hawking the public with the idea that, sure, "Life is good. But it can be better! Why shouldn't it be? All you have to do is want it." Max has bought up a bunch of oil properties that have come up dry holes—and is in debt up to his well-coiffed hair to one Simon Stagg (Oliver Cotton), who up to this point has bankrolled his schemes. But, those debts are catching up to him. Desperate for a solution, he charms and seduces Barbara into getting his hands on the stone and does what every good entrepreneur does—eliminating the middle man by wishing the stone to convey its powers to him directly, so anyone who touches him making a wish will have it granted and, in reward, bestowing him with...something. Certainly power of some kind.

Now, granted, what will stick in people's minds is gonna be that Max Lord is supposed to be Donald Trump in disguise. That will be the people who are "woke" enough to Trump's S.O.P. or those in the Trump Camp who are feeling like Hollywood is picking on Their Savior. Well, Citizen Kane is all about William Randolph Hearst...except it isn't. Similarities, sure, but differences, too. The 1980's has gone down in History as the "Greed" Decade, so any entrepreneur, empowerment coach (Tony Robbins, hello), or televangelist would fit the bill. Jenkins has gone on record that Gordon Gekko—of Wall Street (1987) fame—is a model, but George W. Bush could be, as well, given the oil tactics. Besides, this Maxwell Lord has self-image problems and wants to look like a "winner" to his son. Trump doesn't care what others think about him. All he cares about is maintaining his own self-image. Maxwell Lord is just like his comics character, a snake-oil salesman running a ponzi scheme.

But, he is successful enough with this stone that pretty soon he's a billionaire, has all sorts of mineral rights in the Middle East, has the U.S. and Russia hemorrhaging nuclear missiles and firing at each other, and—via an orbiting communication system—has the entire world making wishes that are destroying the world in an apocalypse of entitlement and self-absorption.

Wait, wait, wait. Which of the screenwriters thought this was a good idea? The scenario would include so many conflicting wishes that literally nothing would work—people's wishes would cancel each other out, negate others, and end up not making anybody's wishes come true. Forget any "monkey's paw" "be careful what you wish for" homilies, the scenario is just blinkerdly stupid, reminding me of the world-"Super-Computer" idea of Superman III or the Riddler's tapping into everybody's brain-waves "Box" in Batman Forever. The idea is "big" enough to sell a Warners Exec, but dumb enough to have no discernable logic to it other than as a polemic against mass-greed.

Oh, along the same lines: Diana's wish is to get Steve Trevor back.*** I can't think of any reason beyond contractual obligation to do that. Wouldn't she wish for world peace? At least an end to war? Isn't that why she's in "Man's World"? How about a little sexual equality—there are enough leering jag-off's in this film to inspire that. How about wishing to go back to Themyscira? See Hyppolyta for a little pep-talk, maybe—a refresher course on the Games competition? A speech is given to Diana: "I give and give and give and all I ask is for this one thing..." Gadot sells it, but I lost a little respect for the character in that one exchange. And Trevor's soul has to inhabit another guy's body to do it? That's a little creepy. But, then selfishness, at other's expense, is what the movie's all about.

If they'd limited it to Barbara Minerva, whose wish turns her into a being as strong as Diana (by decreasing Diana's power), and then into the sub-human Cheetah, then we could have had The Big Lesson, but not the confusion, or the lame "Kumbayah" at the end of it

But, also, the whole movie is about Magical Thinking...even in regards the film itself. If you build it, the audience will come. They may come, but they may not come to buy. There's another significant Latin phrase, not written on the base of any stone that says "Caveat Emptor." And the movie is full of Magical Thinking: Diana and Steve steal a jet-plane from the Smithsonian to go to the Mid-East—the jet is fueled up? Enough to fly that far? And Steve can fly it when the last thing he flew was bi-planes? Diana suddenly can turn things invisible (thus, bringing into the movie WW's Invisible Jet, which she shouldn't need as she's supposed to be able to fly)? Steve's rather vague notion of flying teaches her to do that? I'm all for ideology and visualization, and you can even have "The Secret," but I've seen too many Roadrunner cartoons to teach me that wishing doesn't make it so.

It is such a disappointment. But, then, second films in a series tend to lag. Oh, it has its moments. Gadot, of course, is splendid and her scenes with Pine are excellently played, especially when their roles are reversed from the first film and Diana have to show him the ropes of life in 1984 (I just wish they hadn't been written), and both Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal do terrific work selling their material, as weak and ill-considered as it is. And the movie LOOKS terrific, even if Jenkins seems to have abandoned her wide-screen sensibilities to make this movie look like it was shot to avoid being panned-and-scanned on a square TV (the way directors compensated in the old days before HD TV's). Definitely a big step down.

There is a visual thematic thread throughout Wonder Woman 84 that is used again and again and it's a bit of a distraction—that video "fritz" effect that sometimes transitions scenes, introduces titles, and generally breaks up the picture. I don't know what it's doing there. To show the ever-presence of media in the 1980's? A way for Warner Brothers to unite the latter DCEU movies with obtrusive graphics? Cynically, I see it as a metaphor. You don't get those "glitch" kinds of defects unless there are flaws in the material. There's an abundance of them in WW84.

Stick around for the mid-credits scene for a cameo—not a preview—that will, however, make you smile...another nod to nostalgia. I just wish they hadn't made me nostalgic for the last movie. (See that about wishes?...doesn't work.)

"We can do better..." Yes, you can.

* Fans of the "Supergirl" TV-series will notice that the same plot and device was used in the Season 1 13th episode "For the Girl Who Has Everything."

** The choice of Maxwell Lord as the villain of the piece is interesting for his history in the DCU. In the DC comics, Max was an entrepreneur/con-man who brought together an incarnation of the Justice League called Justice League International, which did not operate on U.S. soil (it included Wonder Woman in its original line-up, but due to her being used for her own book and to avoid any character dis-connect, she was never seen in the JLI). In one of the big "event" storylines for their publishing year—called "The Omac Project"—Lord uses an ability to telepathically control others to make the DC super-heroes look bad in the eyes of the press and public (in Wonder Woman Issue 219). When he takes over Superman, Wonder Woman narrowly defeats S-man by knocking him out, and Lord tells her, when bound by her lasso, that once Superman comes to, he'll just control him again. WW asks him how she can prevent that and Lord says, simply, "Kill me." So, she snaps his neck. *Krk!* Not something the comics-Superman or Batman would do, but then, WW is an Amazon warrior. It was still controversial among fan-boys. Lord's neck is saved, in many ways, in WW 1984.

*** I LIKE Chris Pine. He's a terrific actor. Plus, he and Gadot riff off of each other like nobody's business, and they do so in this movie. They're terrific together. But, he wasn't necessary. And there were better ideas that could be explored for that wish trope.  As good as he is—as good as THEY are—I hope they don't bring Steve Trevor back in the future. As they used to say on Themyscira, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle and Wonder Woman doesn't need a bicycle, either. Or an invisible jet. The woman can fly on her own.

Star Trek (2009)

Written at the film's engagement. Some thoughts follow after.

"I Dare You To Do Better"

I got a call from the Captain about 5 o'clock (that'd be 2000 hours for him) on Friday, and when I saw who it was, I called him back and said "I know what this is about."

The Captain is a life-long Trekker. He knows the arcana of "Star Trek" in its canon, that being the television series—both broadcast and syndicated—and film. Plus, he's a little "inside," having drinks with the late Majel Barrett Roddenberry, introducing Patrick Stewart to "Buzz" Aldrin, and calling up Jonathan Frakes the day show creator Gene Roddenberry died to talk about "what it all meant."

The Captain knows from "Trek." So I was particularly interested in his take on "The New Version" of J.J. Abrams, or "Star Trek Begins" (a version of which producer Harve Bennett had proposed away back in the time-space continuum before Star Trek V—you know, the Shatner-directed one best forgotten). I'd watched the trailers warily, noting the emphasis on disrobing cadets and slam-bang action (not mutually exclusive), but noting a certain underlying devotion, not entirely slavish, to the original. They weren't trying to re-invent the warp-drive, which was a good thing.

"So..." I said, "what'd ya think?"

"This is the way they should have always done it.." he began.

Yeah. It is.

Star Trek is a rollicking world-and-expectations-shattering version of the Gene Roddenberry original, and most niftily, done in a way that fits within its science-fiction-y concepts. The whole movie is its plot-point and one watches in wonder how the deconstruction happens before one's eyes, while simultaneously nodding acquaintance with the tropes, concepts, and characterizations of the original. One gets the feeling of happy ebullience watching a favorite building imploded with the added delight of seeing it rise simultaneously from its own ashes to be sleeker, shinier and un-compromising.

Part of it is due to budget. Abrams was given a fat check to re-launch Paramount's key franchise (which it had nickeled and dimed into the ground the first time around), so the limitations the creators always had to contend with aren't so apparent. The Enterprise corridors no longer look like motel hallways, Engineering isn't a big space with a back-lit perspective painting behind it, and the aliens restricted to stereo-eyed bipeds with varying head-ridges. No, there's a lot of imagineering going on here in the Enterprise's brave new world of industrial-strength space-faring (at one point the new Captain Kirk sprints—of which he does...a lot—through what I swear was a brewery standing in for some section of the Enterprise's inner workings). 

The creatures have evolved differently* with nonhuman proportions, sometimes tossing out the human baggage entirely. It's a messy universe, but a full one with good ideas and concepts tossed amid the dialogue. It's a "Star Trek" Universe so full of potential, that there's no chance of coming across a creatively bankrupt parallel Earth, although the film manages to do exactly that in its own clever way.

That's the big picture. The question is the actors; the franchise will live or die on how "the New Kids" can portray the old characters. Fortunately, it's where this Star Trek shines. Everyone will have their favorites—mine are Karl Urban's note-perfect blustering McCoy and Simon Pegg's hyper-driven Scotty—but Chris Pine is a genuine find for Captain James Tiberius Kirk, employing none of the Shatnerisms (well, there's one deliberate vocal steal that made me laugh), but supplying the one thing that Shatner always brought to the table—energy. John Cho's Sulu is terrific and it's a hoot to see Russian actor Anton Yelchin employing the wretched "wessels" accent of the original Chekov. 

Zoe Saldana is given much more to do as Lt. Uhura, and given that he had Leonard Nimoy on-set for inspiration, Zachary Quinto might have taken the easy way out with a direct imitation, but his Mr. Spock is far less serene, more volatile and haughty, betraying that human half far more subtly than Nimoy did—and I believe saying that might be a court-martial offense in my house.

Where the other "Trek" movies have fallen down have been the secondary characters, but here they're just as important—Ben Cross and Winona Ryder play the star-crossed parents of Spock, while Bruce Greenwood is a superb Captain Christopher Pike. And Eric Bana, who can be on or off depending on the movie, is terrific as the long-suffering, revenge-driven Romulan Nero.

There will be a lot of sniping from the "Trekkies" who want things their way, or no way—that's to be expected with any "Trek" movie. But in the words of the former Captain Kirk: "Get a life."

Star Trek certainly got a new one.

After-thought: My, my. I did a lot of dancing around on this one because it was imperative not to give too much away (although I was doing some "punning" references to it just to amuse myself). What was wonderful about Abrams' re-boot—far better than his "Star Wars" sequels (although they're entertaining)—was his and the writers pushing "Re-set" on the entire franchise and wiping out the whole old Star Trek Universe in an ingenious time-travel story where another alien goes back in time to kill his version of Hitler, who happens to be Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock.

That's just clever and daring and enough to put the fear of interfering with time into anybody. But, it also wiped the creative slate clean. The Vulcans, on whom the Star Trek Universe became so dependent, became a Universal diaspora. Time-lines could be cleaned up—like the "Eugenics War"—and a better Star Trek could be rebuilt without having to necessarily wipe out "Next Generation" and its successors. And if anybody gripes about it, it's just a parallel timeline; the other one still exists, Ramada-In hallways and all.

It was thrilling—in fact, I did a couple of "Sunday Scenes" around this movie—about aspects that just made me smile.

But, it didn't last. The next Abrams Trek (Into Darkness) did the "Khan" story-line a little too soon and a little too derivatively. As I said in that review, with a new Universe to play with, it was too soon to go back to the well. And the third "Kelvin Universe" story, Star Trek Beyond, attempted to do something a bit different, along the lines of the Original Series, but its dependence on a "movie-villain" and its subsequent disappointment (even Idris Elba couldn't do anything with it) was a let-down, and the film under-performed, perhaps because it was less an "event" film than an "episodic" one.

That was four years ago and everybody's getting older. A new Trek movie was stalled when Chris Pine—and Chris Hemsworth (who played "Daddy" Kirk in the first one, indicating it was another time-travel story and a dull one at that)—had contract demands (money or credit) and it stalled. There's talk of two Treks in the works: one a new production and Quentin Tarantino production of a "Star Trek" movie, which—because QT can't keep himself from talking—was revealed to be merely be his version of a Trek story about the Eugenics War. More time-travel? Tarantino seems to be no longer interested (and I never was).

Whatever the future of "Star Trek" in the movies, one hopes that it will "go boldly"...which means that a bolder studio should take control of it as Paramount seems to be fresh out of ideas.

* There is a wickedly funny bar scene where Kirk tries to pick up the comely Lt. Uhura, while between them sits an alien seemingly modeled on the "Spitting Image" version of Leonard Nimoy, when it suddenly dawned on me what it was doing there: "Why the long face?"