Star Trek: A Cool Disappointment

Star Trek, the newly released movie directed by J.J. Abrams, provides an excellent two-hour show and a nice twist of the decades-old series. And it is actually very promising if you think of it as the seed for upcoming new episodes of the franchise. But it is far from being a masterpiece or of creating a superior precedent. Star Trek looks cool because of the cast and the characters, faithful to the original ones and, at the same time, fresh in its recreation without seeming fake or contrived. But to be honest, abuses a little in terms of its action sequences and of a plot that does not make a lot of sense. The failure, though, is in the conception, not in the realization.

Let me explain.

Maybe the coolest thing of the original Star Trek saga (with the remarkable William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) was that the show was a lot about ideas. The idea of a universal Federation that has achieved peace and mutual respect among planets, races and species. The idea of a justice system valid among all of them. The idea of — and this is the coolest idea of them all — that a fabulous starship has been built with the most advanced technology, even for its hyper technological times, with the declared mission to step into the unknown sections of space in search of, precisely, the unknown.

With all its action and cool effects, in the new Star Trek film the U.S.S. Enterprise is just another battleship, not THE extraordinary spaceship made to explore the unexplored. And even if it is brand new and just came out of the factory—not of a General Motors plant, I am sure— it does not have the cool appealing of the original mission: "These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."

I think that Gene Roddenberry and the creators of the old series are still unsurpassed. They had the power of a boldest imagination which is even more powerful than all the especial effects that Hollywood can buy. But that does not mean that I am not planning to see the next movies. I am excited… Who knows if J.J. Abrams is reading this and is planning to do the right adjustments to the cause of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Hope is the last frontier.