The Kelvin Timeline

The Kelvin Timeline

In light of the recent announcement that there will most likely not be a 4th Kelvin Timeline JJ-Verse reboot movie I though I would give my opinions of the Kelvin reboot movies.

Star Trek 2009

Officially just titled "Star Trek" this movie "rebooted" the Star Trek franchise after it's forced hiatus following the cancellation of Star Trek Enterprise 4 years earlier.  This in itself is not a bad thing.  The issues are in execution.  First, taking Star Trek, something that has always been more than a bit intellectual and focused primarily on problem solving and characters and making it into fully action "pew pew" shootemup summer action flicks.  This totally doesn't fit with the franchise.  The biggest explanation for this is that the creative powers and primarily director J.J. Abrams were more familiar with Star Wars and tried to make Trek more like Star Wars.  Star Trek is NOT Star Wars.  The result as I see it in Star Trek 2009 is a movie that is 90% action, "pew pew" ships fighting, at break neck pace, barely ever stopping to actually explore these new versions of old characters and tell a good story.  Another issue I saw with this movie was the protagonist, Nero.  A very weak villain with a weak motivation.  This is a problem I've seen in all three Kelvin timeline movies.  Also way too many lens flares.  Kirk Starting as a cadet, nearly being expelled from the academy for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test, and at the end of the movie being promoted all the way to Captain and given command of the Enterprise really, really, really stretches credibility.  A major sticking point of mine with all three Kelvin movies is the redesigned USS Enterprise.  I get that in this timeline things have progressed and developed differently since Nero's arrival.  That said, the Kelvin timeline JJ-Prise looks atrocious.  JJ Abrams and Ryan Church turned the classic beautiful simple geometry of the NCC-1701 design into an ungainly "space hotrod".  THE ENTERPRISE IS A SPACE SHIP! IT IS NOT A HOTROD!  By that same token THE ENTERPRISE WAS BUILT IN SPACE!  NOT ON THE SURFACE AND LAUNCHED INTO ORBIT LIKE A ROCKET!!  Now that that's off my chest, I think one of the biggest problems with this movie is in it's premise: initially the premise of the reboot was sold as "Nero and Spock (Nimoy) travelling back in time changed the timeline, thus erasing a rewriting TOS and everything after it".  This obviously did not sit well with longtime fans, seeing their "old" Star Trek as having been wiped out, as if it no longer mattered or even existed.  Ultimately TPTB walked this back, admitting that the Kelvin Timeline was an alternate timeline, and alternate reality existing along side the "prime" Star Trek Timeline, not a new timeline overwriting the existing.  By the time TPTB made this admission though, the damage was done, in addition to the fact that Star Trek 2009 and Into Darkness both rubbed the "reboot" concept in the fans faces.  

Star Trek Into Darkness

And that brings me to Star Trek Into Darkness.  An honestly weak, derivative, unoriginal movie, basically retelling Star Trek II in the Kelvin Timeline.  The biggest problem I saw in this movie was trying to do way too much in one 2-hour movie.  This movie tries to retell Star Trek II, events of TOS Space Seed, plus add in the Klingons, Section 31, Captain Pike's death and more.  As a result the movie comes off as incoherent.  It repeats the problems of Star Trek 2009, being too much action, space battles, effects, lens flares, all at a breakneck pace without stopping to breathe and tell a coherent story.  And then there's the weak protagonist problem.  Let's talk about Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonien Singh.  Pasty white brit Benedict Cumberbatch (who at this point was being cast as a villain in nearly everything) as Khan Noonien Singh, an Indian Sikh.  The performance was honestly not convincing.  The movie also has a second "bad guy" Admiral Marcus, the Starfleet C-In-C and secretly head of Section 31, played by Peter Weller in a role he was absolutely wasted in.  Alice Eve plays Carol Marcus, a character that feels shoehorned in for the purpose of the gratuitous underwear scene in the shuttle.  Continuing the theme of poor starship design the movie gives us the absolutely atrocious USS Vengeance, Section 31s super-secret dreadnaught ship.  The pacing issues aside, the other major problem with this movie for me is the unoriginality.  The movie blatantly rips off whole scenes and even lines of dialog from Star Trek II, including turning the famous Spock death scene in engineering into a Kirk death scene, which is undone completely less than 10 minutes later by Dr. McCoy using Khan's genetic augment "super blood" to revive the dead Kirk.  This completely kills any impact the death scene may have had.  Yet another example of poor writing.  Honestly, the whole idea of using Khan in the Kelvin Timeline was not a good one.  Aside from being unoriginal it's actually not very interesting, as we already basically know how this will turn out, seeing how tightly this parallels The events of the prime timeline.  I would definitely call this movie a misstep.

Star Trek Beyond

Finally a truly original story in the Kelvin Timeline.  And one not connected to the prime timeline.  The opening scenes with Kirk engaging in diplomacy with a seemingly threatening species that turn out to be small and somewhat cute is a bit silly, but really no more so than some situations the TOS crew encountered.  The Yorktown Starbase design is interesting and fresh, like an artificial planet with hints of Deep Space Nine.  The idea that Kirk is up for a promotion to admiral this early in his career stretches credibility.  Kralls swarm is an interesting concept (though not the most original is sci-fi).  And that brings me to Krall.  Idris Elba puts in a decent performance, and the character has a decent motivation.  The tie-in to Star Trek Enterprise with The USS Franklin being an Earth Starfleet ship, the crew being former MACOs, and Krall being their former captain Balthazar Edison is definitely and interesting choice.  The destruction of the Enterprise and the saucer crashing on the surface of Altimid definitely echoes the Enterprise-D's demise in Star Trek Generations.  Similarly, Kirk and company using the USS Franklin to leave the planet and get back to Starbase Yorktown very much echoes Star Trek III and IV, with Kirk and company commandeering the Klingon Bird of Prey following the Enterprises destruction at the Genesis Planet.  Sofia Boutella gives a memorable performance as Jayla, the alien girl found stranded on Altimid by the Enterprise crew.  Especially in her scenes with Scotty.  One of the strong points of this movie, and definitely an improvement over the previous 2 is the writing, specifically character moments.  This movie actually stops at times and breathes and tells the story and explores the characters.  The scenes with Scotty and Jayla, with Spock and McCoy, with Spock and Uhura, with Kirk and McCoy, really help to develop the characters and their motivations and better pace the movie.  That said though, as far as the TOS characters (Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, even Pike in the first two movies), I think Star Trek Strange New Worlds does it better.  Of all three Kelvin Timeline movies, Beyond is definitely the most Trek feeling movie to me.  I have no issue with Sulu being gay, despite the opinions voiced by original Sulu actor George Takei.  I think it was done here very tastefully.  As a side note, I did appreciate the acknowledgement of Leonard Nimoy's passing, both in the movie establishing that Ambassador Spock had died, and in the credits dedicating the movie to the actor.  The credits also dedicated the movie to the late Anton Yelchin who played Chekov in all three movies and passed away in a car accident a few months before the movies release.    

Overall I think the Kelvin movies were for the most part interesting, although best seen as their own thing, not compared to the rest of franchise.  Could they have been better: yes.  Did they serve a purpose in the franchise: for their part, yes.  Was it the best approach to new Trek?  Perhaps, perhaps not.  Turning Star Trek into summer action flicks really misses the point of what Star Trek is.  I understand that TPTB wanted to attract new fans to the Star Trek fandom and make the movies more accessible, more relatable to non-hardcore Trekkies.  At the same time I feel it would have been better done without alienating the core fanbase.  As for the on again-off again talk of a fourth Kelvin movie, I have never felt that one was necessary.  The three movies, the "Kelvin trilogy" as it were, is in itself a satisfying enough story.