“Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight-hundred lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better.”
-Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), Star Trek (2009)
It dawns on me that on my criteria for my personal Top Ten Movies, I left out nostalgia as a factor. Perhaps that was because I subconsciously considered it under “Influential”—which this movie is—or because I figured that whoever has known me long enough to be reading my movie opinions would consider it a given. Nostalgia is probably the overriding factor 2009’s Star Trek, written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and directed by J. J. Abrams, has in its place on this list.
It is 2009—and I am taking my middle school girlfriend to a movie (oh yeah, I was cool). Science fiction movies lay in the wake of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, something which my father—a fan of Star Trek’s original series and who remembers the heyday of Star Wars—at once adores and opines. High school looms before us as its own great unknown. College is a far-off notion. I have not met three of the four people I now consider my best friends. I have only just begun to register that my place as an adopted child who doesn’t look quite like everybody else in our private New England Christian High School means something more to me than I think. We are dimly aware of the scope of the world, the depths of humanity’s kindness and cruelty, and of just how young we were.
But summer also lay before us, and there were few better ways to kick things off than a movie based on those hokey, fun, kind of weird episodes my dad loved sharing with me and of which my girlfriend was completely ignorant.
Then, Vulcan explodes. Spock, portrayed by Zachary Quinto, reflects upon this development in an almost dispassionate voiceover. Almost, because one feels the weight of restrained emotion as he declares:
“I am now a member of an endangered species.”
And I am crying?
It’s no secret that the appeal of fantasy and science fiction is their ability to relate complicated and different situations in appealing and appetizing ways. The space (ha) in both genres for people of various identities to tell their stories, to explore their pasts and imagine their futures, to find connection and sympathy, and to hide safely in worlds of endless imagination is an invaluable asset. This has, of course, been at the center of Star Trek—a series which long has sought diversity, understanding, and experimentation back to when its original 1960’s cast featured Japanese, Russian, and Black crew members and main characters. It was a core the 2009 film did not forget, though it had the honor of introducing a new generation to that core.
Now, being honest, this movie is not a masterpiece. But, said with even more honesty, it doesn’t have to be. Relating back to my tenet of absurdism as a qualifying factor for my favorite movies, I would be remiss if I said the appeal of anything set in the Star Trek universe does not rely to some degree on a sincere, unabashed cheesiness backed with a core of almost saccharine sincerity. 2009’s movie has both in spades, from callbacks to the original series around every corner, hand-waved time travel, gratuitous line delivery, and convoluted means of escaping a black hole ripped right from Voltaire’s lyrics proclaiming the USS Enterprise the USS Make Shit Up. (I am listening to this song as I write this blog post).
The cast is immediately rewarding and the acting, while not subtle, is enjoyable. There’s a quippy quality to Zachary Quinto’s Spock that is a source of endlessly quotable one-liners and which plays well against Chris Pine’s portrayal of the forever shoot-from-the-hip James T. Kirk. (“I'm coming with you.” “I would cite regulation, but I know you will simply ignore it.” “See? We are getting to know each other.”) The script as a whole is entertaining, and that is its greatest compliment, and familiar enough in its beats and its callbacks to previous Star Trek media to feel rewarding for those familiar and paying attention. Upon rewatch, the special effects have held up remarkably well, and the movie remains enjoyable simply to view. Part of the appeal of science fiction is its vision of the future, and there is certainly vision here.
While the reception of J. J. Abrams’ science fiction projects has recently been… mixed… in 2009, his vision was the perfect mix of heartfelt nerdiness and sleek late 2000’s imagination. Lens flare aplenty, shining white hallways, and reimagined bleeps and blorps (I really do love the sound of this movie) from the Federation contrast against flickering, steam-drenched, trench-coat sporting Romulan (my main cosplay race) war criminals. What’s more, he did what too many adaptations and reboots seem afraid to do (with good reason—fanbases are vicious). He proclaimed: “To hell with the original timeline!” So, we watch Vulcan get sucked into a black hole, kill Captain Kirk’s father (an almost easter-eggy pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth), openly pair Spock and Uhura (Zoe Saldana), and assemble the crew of the Enterprise not from the ranks of the Federation’s finest but from a hodgepodge of leftovers, drop-outs, and forgotten heroes.
But then, Star Trek reminds us of the vastness of space and all its possibilities. The movie effectively shows us the conflict of a child of two worlds watching one destroyed and the weight of a man living in the shadow of his father given the chance to salvage his own life. 2009’s movie is a lesson in grief and potential, of the future and its relationship to the past, and of personal drive and the ability to decide one’s own life even in the void of space. That kind of inspiration is what draws me back to the movie, what makes me want to rewatch it again, and again.
That, and the lessons internalized by a 2009-era Justin who saw himself, before he had words for what he felt, reflected in the inner conflict of a dry, wry, half-Vulcan, half-Human unsure of his place in the universe—a person comforted by his mother merely by remembering that he is her son and pushed by his father to remember that, “What is necessary is never unwise.”