Reviews & Previews - Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest Star Trek Edition

Posted on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 06:00 PM

STAR TREK (*Spoilers for people who only watch movies on DVD)

By: S. Tran

I was excited to hear that JJ Abrams was going to "reboot" the Star Trek franchise. Personally I wasn't a huge fan of the original or The Next Generation or Star Trek: Special Victims Unit. I found the action to be lame and the messages too preachy.

So I was pleased to see that Abrams did a great job with making the movie look so much better than prior Star Trek films, but then things started getting dumb. But surely they would get smarter right? No.

Let us review the holes in this film that would make a Vulcan puke.

1. Unclear on the advantages that time travel can give you.

So the bad guy Nero, who is apparently a futuristic biker/miner, is pissed because his home planet was blown up by a supernova or "anomaly" or something space-y and technical like that. For some reason he is mad at Spock because he couldn't get there in time to stop it. Apparently he gave Spock zero credit for even trying.

But holy moly, Nero manages to go back in time, this is awesome because it means he can warn people about the disaster and save his people right? Hell no! Why do that when you can run around destroying other planets instead. Yeah, Nero's big plan is to get revenge on those losers who couldn't do something simple like stop a supernova thingy and start a war using his surprisingly heavily armed mining ship.

I am no scientist but I think that killing everyone who might be able to stop your planet from getting blown up is probably a bit counterproductive.

2. No concept of multi-tasking

A big part of Nero's revenge plan is to make Spock watch as he blows up Vulcan. The trouble is that it takes Spock 25 years to travel back to the same spot in time as Nero for some reason. You figure in 25 years Nero might start evacuating his planet or maybe take down a few lottery numbers.

Instead this guy is so obsessed with his lame plan that he apparently just waits around until Spock finally shoots out through the worm hole and then captures him. That's right, he stays on a mining ship for 25 years doing nothing because his plan requires Spock to witness his bad-assery. Also, he needs some red explodey stuff that Spock has in his ship.

What do you do on a ship for that long? At some point don't you start to think "Man, I could be a bit more productive." Plus, what kind of guys is he hanging out with who are willing to sit in that ship for 25 years?

3. Strange concept of a good leader.

Check this out. You run a space federation. You have expensive ships costing billions of dollars. Of course you want the best people to be in charge of those ships. Naturally you ignore this requirement and instead pick a loudmouth clown who hasn't actually completed his training.

In the Star Trek universe it seems the best way to get to the top is to cheat on your school exams, lie to get onto your ship and then start loudly questioning every decision made by your superior officers to the point where you have to be removed by security.

Despite acting like a typical frat boy douche-bag with a questionable criminal record, Kirk somehow manages to secure field promotions and gets picked for the most dangerous assignments. Meanwhile everyone else who actually knows their stuff gets left behind and forgotten. Then when he sneaks back on board after being tossed by security instead of being hauled away again he's allowed to do the same stuff that got him removed the first time.

There are also plenty of technical geeky things that are dumb but I'll leave that stuff to the nerds. As always I managed to find a part of the original script that was left out of the movie.

Scene: On board Nero's mining ship

Nero: Yes! We have traveled back in time!

First Mate: Amazing!, We should go warn our people about the supernova.

Nero: No! I have a better plan, we will destroy Earth and Vulcan because they could not save us.

First Mate: Yeah but they tried right, I mean...your plan kind of sucks.

Nero: Try schmy!! They failed and so the only reasonable thing to do is kill all of them!

First Mate: Yeah but our planet is still there so, you know no one has to die.

Nero: No we will wait for Spock!

First Mate: OK, how long do we wait though?

25 years later....

First Mate: This sucks.

You can check out more writing by S. Tran at Cracked.com
http://www.cracked.com/article_17573_7-fatal-injuries-that-people-somehow-survived.html