Star Trek

You've got to admire J J Abrams' balls, and possibly not the for the reason the girls think. If someone said to me, "We'd like you to make the eleventh movie in a flailing franchise, of which, tradition dictates the odd numbered films tend to be shit, AND we'd like you to reboot said franchise which has tens of thousands of fans, of which thousands of those are raving obsessives, AND, just in case you haven't shat your pants yet, we'd like you to recast the original characters which are much loved by generations and played so iconically by a very well respected group of actors," the follow up to that request would be "Ryan? Ryan? Are you still there...I think he hung up on me." Because seriously...that is one tall order.

What has impressed me about this film, though, is that Abrams hasn't just given a general two-finger salute to the fans. In point of fact, he's rather held out an olive branch to them, unlike one Zack Snyder to Watchmen films. No, Abrams has given a little way out for the fans - yes, this is a reboot, but *actually* there's this whole time travel aspect to the thing which has changed the future so this is an alternate reality. Oh yes it is...Uhuru actually says it at one point. But, just to make the fans a little happier, says J J, listen out for some choice catchphrases (did I hear "I'm a doctor not a physician" and "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain"? I believe I did), some classic costume design (though those mini skirts look a little longer than they used to) and, of course, Leonard Nimoy.

Because, the geeks have inherited the Earth. That, or Hollywood has finally got the idea of how to make a geek film and make it good - and by good I mean one that appeals both to the fans and the mainstream audience, because these geek things were actually hugely popular in "the day", and there was a good reason for it. It's not that hard to make a film that the fans will love and the mass audience will be entralled with, because they are, at the end of the day, looking for the same thing.

It's been so long since we've had a great sci-fi movie with a kick arse action rogue (since Serenity, in fact), that the audience have secretly been screaming for it. Oh yes, we want massive space battles; we want to hear a captain say "Abandon ship!" (although I actually wanted this to be preceded by "All hands!", but sadly it didn't happen), and yes we want a space captain to shoot first and ask questions later. And that's the most important thing about this movie.
The script for the film is entertaining, but nothing particularly mind blowing (although it's worth noting that one of the things that marks this as a very modern movie is the tongue-in-cheek feel to the film, but more on that later), the special effects are amazing, but in this day and age, if the special effects were crap it would be a very ordinary movie, and the direction is tense; the editing quick. But none of those things make this movie stand out. What makes this movie really entertaining, and really head and shoulders above a lot of other movies, is the astonishingly brilliant cast.
I don't know if these actors sat down and watched the original programme, or if they were fans of Star Trek, but these actors have truly recreated the characters without fault. Yes, Captain Kirk has lost his somewhat unique form of delivery, and the voices are all a little different, but these *are* the characters that were in the original series, without question.

The crew members are all there - John Cho as Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Chekov and Simon Pegg as Scotty are the three smaller parts of the seven, but they are all excellently realised, even though Chekov and Scotty are the comic relief. Sulu is the serious helmsman, Chekov can't pronounce his "v"'s, and Scotty has his scottish accent, but all three are on their first missions and all three are learning their trade, becoming the characters that we will see them become in later stories. From there we get Zoe Saldana as Uhuru, the rather beautiful comms officer who, rather controversially, is having a relationship with her lecturer...but that's not the reason for the controversy.

Rather nicely some other characters from the Star Trek franchise make appearances, giving us a reminder of the original continuity from which they come, and of particular note is Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike, captain of the Enterprise, and Ben Cross as Sarek, Spock's father, and the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. I thought that these touches more than anything showed that the production crew cared about the franchise they were now representing, and the fans who also care about the same thing.

But it is the three principals that are truly, truly outstanding. Karl Urban is Leonard "Bones" McCoy, and his portrayal, more than any other in the cast, is spookily like the original. Urban brings his character to life, effortlessly helping out his friend when he's needed and moodily sulking about the Enterprise's first officer when things don't go his way. Urban has caught on to the fact that McCoy is a Southern gentleman who is a moaner at heart, but always does the right thing.

Zachary Quinto plays Spock, and from the moment you see him arch an eyebrow, it is clear that this part is a labour of love from Quinto. He rather nicely shows a Vulcan at odds with his human heritage and his emotions (which is important for this film and the story behind it, though could be rather fey if it carried on), but attempting to balance it as best he can to please everyone except himself. What is also amazing is how much like a young Leonard Nimoy Quinto looks.

And then there is Chris Pine, the man who has the hardest job in the world - bringing to life the original rebel captain who has little respect for authority and a gung-ho attitude that has him fighting every step he takes. And he succeeds in a way that you wouldn't even believe. We see Kirk as a cocky young boy, who becomes an equally cocky twenty-something, and who is more than happy to cheat as long as it means he wins. As he says in the film "I don't believe in a no-win situation" and that is Kirk - arrogant, cocksure, and, rather annoyingly, right. What Pine does is channel William Shatner's complete arrogance in the role of Kirk, and bringing with it the same charisma that makes you refrain from wanting to punch him in the face. You can't help but cheer when Kirk solves the insoluble Kobayashi Maru situation at the academy even though he cheated in order to do it. But every so often we need to see a hero who will break the rules and be happy to blow his enemy away. Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote a script that faithfully recreated the original character, but it is Pine's outstanding performance which sells it.

Have I forgotten anyone? Oh yes...of course...When it was announced that Leonard Nimoy would be appearing in the movie, I did wonder if it wasn't just an excuse to shoehorn an original actor in, and did wonder why they didn't bother doing the same with Shatner. However, after watching the movie, it becomes pretty clear exactly why this couldn't be done. Because, if this is an alternate reality, Leonard Nimoy is definitely the original version - Spock Prime as the credits name him. And it brings a joy to the heart and a slight tear to the eye when Nimoy intones the "Space...the final frontier" before the closing credits.

I really have nothing more to say about this movie, because it really is all about the performances. Never mind Eric Bana, never mind Winona Ryder...the main cast is all you need. And by god do they sell it well.

As Scotty says "I like this ship! It's exciting!" It is indeed.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I really had to restrain the fan-geek in me for this movie, let me say from the outset. A movie like this has the potential to be so amazing, but at the same time can upset fan-geeks a lot, primarily because there is already an established movie continuity for the X-Men. What if they were to destroy that? Could I handle it?

As it turned out the fan-geek had absolutely nothing to worry about and while, as I expected, this didn't turn out to be the thought provoking X-Men movies of Bryan Singer, it was still an entertaining and action-packed film that doesn't have a dud moment.

Fox and Marvel must be thanking Tom Cruise every day for the fact that Mission: Impossible II ran over schedule and Dougray Scott was forced to pull out of the role of X-Men, handing over to song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman. Jackman, of course, turned out to be handsome, charming and able to bring Wolverine perfectly to life for three movies, so much so that by the third X-Men movie he was, undeniably, the star. If any X-Man was going to pull off a solo movie, it was going to be Wolverine, and thanks to Hugh Jackman's success and popularity, it became a no-brainer.

What was slightly more controversial, though, was recasting established characters such as Stryker and Sabretooth. However, given the context of the story, this is perhaps, not that surprising. Tyler Mane was brilliant as the tall, muscle bound heavy that Sabretooth was in the first X-Men movie, but I'm not sure he could have gotten through the acting and dialogue that Sabretooth has to carry in this film. Liev Schrieber was an odd choice for me when I first heard about it, but the trailers allowed me to warm up to him and on film, he's an absolutely terrifying beast, even more agile than in the first film.

Danny Huston as Stryker didn't really make me uspet, but at the same time I didn't also get terribly excited about it. He plays the part competently, giving some nice character moments to the part, but unfortunately he fails to make much of an impact.

In truth, most of the film fails to make much of an impact. While the story is servicable and gives a nice backstory to Wolverine, where he comes from and why he is like he is, it's not a particularly new story in any genre, and at times seems more of an excuse to introduce us to a much wider group of characters from the X-Franchise. Characters like The Blob, John Wraith, Deadpool, Agent Zero, The Bolt, Silver Fox, Gambit and Emma Frost all make an appearance while the intricacies of Stryker's plot doesn't entirely add up. We discover that he is rounding up all the mutants to create a supermutant that he can control to hunt down and kill mutants. Except that, if he can round up mutants, why not just kill them there and then? Indeed, at times it seems that Stryker's primary motivation is to create a mutant that can kill Wolverine and Sabretooth - except that if he hadn't tried to create the supermutant, he wouldn't need to kill Wolverine and Sabretooth. It's slightly circular.

What's funny is that, given the Marvel trend to tie their movies into a coherent universe, this one could actually have easily been tied into the Marvel universe, while at the same time giving a little more scope to Stryker's actions. If Nick Fury had had a cameo to check on Stryker's progress in recreating the super-soldier program, suddenly you would have a lot more depth to Stryker; something which would have been more effective than a quick cameo by a kid with two eye colours stuck in a freezer. This would also have been a nice touch for the fans, something which the movie never shies away from; dropping names such as the Hudsons and having a cameo appearance at the end of the film by a certain distinguished British actor.

However, to most people, and to me as well to a certain degree, this movie could have been awful but would still have been saved by watching Hugh Jackman recreate his Wolverine character. Although on a couple of occasions he drops his accent and goes Ocker for a bit, Jackman still manages to inject so much into Wolverine that he simply steals the show whenever he's on screen. Wolverine is much more of a hero in this movie than he was in previous ones, but it doesn't matter because that's what you expect from this movie, and from Jackman as well.

Wolverine is a far more entertaining movie than it's immediate predecessor, but one of my friends remarked that it was the kind of movie that was best seen at the cinema with a group of like-minded friends. I think he's pretty much on the money with that observation.

Heroes: Season Three

Twenty five episodes later, and Heroes has reached the end of its third season, to a fairly mixed reception and, undeniably, some rather disappointing ratings - an average drop of around three million viewers. Why is this? Well, it's a little hard to say, but certainly the programme this season suffered from two things - the fallout of the writer's strike that cut season two in half, and head writer Jeph Loeb. There were some great ideas this season, but the major problem with the programme was that it lacked focus, which is a great shame, all things told, because there is limitless potential with the format, the ideas and the, frankly quite brilliant cast.

Season Two was supposed to have continued by having a four episode volume called Villains, before going into the Fugitives volume that would have seen the heroes round up and locked away - though not because of Nathan, but rather because of the outbreak of the virus, which never actually happened due to the writer's strike. As a result Loeb decided to take the slightly unusual decision to still have the round up of heroes, but still at the end of the season, which meant that the opening needed to be expanded and this meant the inclusion of a new supervillian, Arthur Petrelli, backed up by Maury Parkman and some other nasty pieces of work. Brother vs brother would become son vs father, dramatic tension would unfold, the astonishing revelation that Sylar was a Petrelli would be revealed, and Peter would absorb Sylar's power and start down the dangerous path that his brother was already treading.

Except it didn't quite work out like that. Throughout the first volume, Jeph Loeb would come up with some great ideas, but then get sick of them and forget all about the fact they had happened. Yes, Peter appropriated Sylar's power, but an episode later and he had forgotten all about it. Sylar was revealed to be a Petrelli...and then it turned out that he wasn't and both Arthur and Angela Petrelli had been independently lying about exactly the same thing.

The big problem was that there was actually so much room for dramatic character development. How interesting would it have been to see Mohinder truly get darker and darker, becoming more and more desperate for power? To see Peter kill Sylar and effectively take his place? To see Angela truly run the company with Bennet as her right hand man. There was an enormous amount of paths that the series could have taken, but instead we got half way there, and then completely forgot about.

There were other problems, of course, including the fact that a number of the heroes were becoming more and more powerful to the point they were virtually unstoppable. As a consequence they had to have their powers very quickly removed, either by the much talked about antidote that Mohinder devised or they were just taken away by Arthur. Which leads me neatly to my next point, and that is the death of characters that were relatively entertainging. Micah and Monica were unceremoniously dumped, while Elle and Adam were killed off and Maya just stood around doing very little. As the cast expanded it became clear that the writers were having difficulty knowing what to do with them, and as a consequence they were just tossed aside.

And so with the ratings progressively deteriorating decisions were made and Loeb was given the chop (although curiously he was credited until the very end) and Tim Kring, apparently, returned to being the showrunner.
Finally the storyline of the heroes being rounded up came into play, but sadly they didn't end up being contained; rather they spent most of the time being on the run from the Hunters. Tracy Strauss, the new character portrayed by Ali Larter - a character with a very dark side, which was a nice move - was effectively sidelined (though she did very little for the opening part of the season). And then there was just a little too much character development, as most of the characters, when they weren't on the run, were moping about how they got into this position.

And then came Episode Twenty, and Bryan Fuller who had returned to be a consulting producer, delivered a script that was simply sublime. Tracy met with a devastating end (or did she?) while Micah returned showing initiative and power. For the next five episodes, the series delivered what it had done in Season One; action mixed with character moments that paid off and explained the motiviations of the characters, most notably Angela who had appeared to be virtually schizophrenic until we finally discovered why she did what she did.

I had been hoping for a huge showdown at the end of Volume Three, with the heroes uniting to battle Arthur Petrelli, but it turned out to be nothing but an anticlimax. Happily, though we didn't get the big fight against Sylar at the end of Volume Four, instead we got the heroes working together towards the eventual aim. The costs were high, as they had been in the finale of Season One, but the final actions of the characters have created some interesting pathways to explore next season.

Season Two had dared to be different to Season One, but Season Three seemed to be lost, struggling to recapture what was lost from the previous two season, whilst attempting to make its own identity. The theory didn't really work, and perhaps the writers would have been better starting afresh, without the leftover storylines of Season Two, and without attempting to be like the previous two seasons; rather just doing what it needed to do.

Season Four has been greenlit for the programme, as the show still is one of NBC's big winners despite the ratings fall, but hopefully the writers will learn from the mistakes of Season Three, utilise the characters better and finally slough off the stigma of the writer's strike. I don't think NBC will be forgiving if Season Four fails.