Reviews

Darth Vader, err, Darth Maul - umm, I mean Nero - has this huge, gigantic awesome Death Star - err, I mean Mining Ship, that can destroy entire planets. So Nero blows up Alderaan - umm, I mean Vulcan, killing Princess Leia's father - I mean, Spock's mother. And then the Death Star homes in on the Rebel Base - Umm, I mean the mining ship homes in on Starfleet headquarters, and only Luke Skywalker can stop it by ignoring orders and turning off his targeting computer and trusting the Force - no, I mean only Jim Kirk can stop it by ignoring Starfleet's orders and trusting his instincts. It's a good thing Old Ben Kenobi was there to give Kirk that fatherly advice earlier - no, wait, that was Captain Pike.

And then they had a big old celebration, and Luke and Han got medals - err, I mean, Jim Kirk got a medal and was made captain.

This movie was terrible.

The sad thing, I was actually loving it, totally suckered in, emotionally caught up in the film, and then it just got really stupid.

The movie totally lost me when Spock threw Jim Kirk off of his ship and made him go down to the Ice Planet of Hoth. Why would Spock do that? Why would ANY Starfleet officer abandon one of their own on a frozen planet full of deadly Wampas during the middle of an interstellar war - err, interstellar terrorist event?

Spock should have been court-martialed for that. No commanding officer in any military organization would ever do that, anywhere, any time, for any reason.

Luckily, the evil tattoo-faced bad guy, Darth Maul - umm, Nero, did THE EXACT SAME THING to his sworn enemy, Old Spock, who showed up just in time to save Kirk, which was really lucky, because Kirk didn't have his lightsaber handy to cut off the snow-monster's arm.

So Spock and Nero are morally equivalent with each other, both banishing their enemies to a frozen wasteland. How symmetrical.

Thankfully, this happens to be the exact same planet that Montegomery "Scotty" Scot was also unfairly banished to! What a lucky coincidence!

Old Spock knew Kirk and Scotty in the future! And in the future, Scotty figured out a way to magically beam onto a ship moving faster than the speed of light half a galaxy away! And Old Spock remembers how he did it! Yay! Magic!

Now, smart people would have used this trick to beam the bad guys off of their own ship, and into the vacuum of space, where they would have died, and Earth would have been saved.

This movie is not about smart people.

The villain is a coal miner from the future. He hates Spock because Spock tried to save his homeworld from destruction. So it's Spock's fault? Why? Because Spock got there too late - did Spock stop off for some fast food or something? Why is it Spock's fault?

I mean, if I my planet were destroyed, and I got sucked a hundred years into the past, I would warn my planet, so they could start evacuating. I would use my enormous mining ship to start ferrying off the billions of refugees to a nice safe planet, not go around the galaxy destroying all of the most habitable worlds.

It's not just Nero who is mentally challenged, though. Old Spock needs only a few drops of "Red Matter" to turn a supernova into a black hole - but he's got like fifty gallons of it on board his ship. Why? Is that smart? Is that safe? What if a bunch of terrorists were able to get hold of all that Red Matter by capturing your puny little vessel? Duh! I think Old Spock is a bit senile.

Let's face it. Most of the Star Trek movies have sucked. And sadly, so does this one.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Logan 5 sure messed things up. Everybody living in that domed city had it made. Food, shelter, casual sex - the only bad thing, of course, was that you had to go on to the Carousel when you turned 30 and be "renewed."

Actually, you COULD blame it on Jessica 6. She's the reason Logan went outside the city in the first place. Thru a series of misadventures outside of the city, Logan and Jessica come to believe in some truly stupid things. They decided that that wanted to get married and grow old together, after meeting a crazy old man who lived with a bunch of cats. Possessed by these crazy notions, Logan beats his best friend Francis 7 to death with the American flag(!), and decides to go back to the domed city and tell everyone his warped version of the "truth."

In the end, driven by his madness, Logan 5 destroys the benevolent computers that run the domed city. As the city explodes, hundreds of thousands of people escape. Who will feed them? They have lived in the protective confines of the city all of their lives. They don't know how to grow food! (The old man even said earlier in the movie that all the fish in the rivers and lakes outside the dome were dead!) Winter is coming - who will clothe and shelter all of these people? All they have to wear are their colorful-but-thin satin togas! (And you know, the world is probably still radioactive outside the dome.)

Of course, the movie ends before all of these poor people die of starvation and exposure. As the credits roll, Logan 5 is revered as some sort of hero. I guess you have to end the movie somewhere.

But a couple of months after the movie ends, I'm sure the remaining survivors came to blame Logan for destroying their paradise, and Logan was probably forced to run again - from a lynch mob.

I am going to go buy an Audi. These cars are fantastic! Did you know that the famous singer Pink drives an Audi? Audi's four-wheel drive cars can drive up the sides of mountains, fly through the air, and even drive across the surface of a lake! Not only that, but the on-dash display can show the car's wry comments! (This car is funnier than Knight Rider's KITT!) Okay, so some guys are riding their motorcycles, trying to get to the top of the peaks at Aspen, but the bikes malfunction, and explode, and it's up to mega-rock-star-diva Pink to give them a ride to the top of the peak, where women ski with poodles off the sides of the mountain, only to para-glide to safety. In addition to music by Pink, the soundtrack features a bunch of Euro-pop sounding anthems that make me yearn for the good old days of ABBA. The mountain locations are really pretty, and are inter-cut with a cityscape (Denver?) in a hallucinogenic fashion suggesting that this whole movie may just be the fantasy of a guy stuck in traffic, who just WISHES that his motorbike would explode so Pink would rescue him with her flying car. As such, this film becomes a cautionary tale on the dehumanization of our society by urban environments and its potential redemption by the power of winter sports.