Star Trek Tease

Hell of a teaser.

I like it... but it didn't awe me quite the way I wanted it to.

Some backstory: I know a lot of people who give J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III shit for being "too television." Too many medium shots, not enough camera movement, a constrained sense of space. I felt it was plenty cinematic, and had they not known a TV vet was directing, I think a lot of these complaints would've evaporated. Yes, the scene where Tom Cruise slides down a diagonal roof was horribly shot and did, in fact, feel like an extra-crappy "Alias" stunt, but besides that, J.J. did pretty damn well, in my opinion.

This teaser, though, starts to wake those fears in my own heart. Aurally, this glimpse at the coming Christmas' tentpole is epic and huge; NASA controllers counting down, JFK proclaiming a nation's resolve to head into space, Leonard Nemoy giving his farewell-ish rendition of the classic "space, the final frontier" from The Wrath of Khan. The audio does a better job of creating the myth of Starfleet than the opening titles of "Enterprise,"which went for a similar effect. But visually... it feels pretty constrained. No sense of space, in any meaning of the word. The briefest hint of scale and legend in the final two shots, where the warp nacelles edge into view.

On the whole, it feels pretty TV.

I dig the style, the grit. The orange and blue color scheme, washed and blown out at times. The human hands and faces building an epic ship with an epic destiny. It's close, it's personal, it's filthy. A lot of these shots could have been filmed over at BIW. I like the design of the Enterprise herself, the moving turbines in the nacelles, perhaps to be covered by the familiar orange domes. It feels like a real machine, and a human one at that.

Yet the trailer itself never achieves grand or epic; it relies completely on reputation for that, using the cred of the name "Enterprise," the familiar "Dum da-dum, da-dum dum da-dum..." and Leonard Nemoy's voice to substitute for any real presence. That isn't a death blow for the movie; it doesn't mean I think or fear it'll end up a sucky retread of some of my favorite films. But it does leave me with an underwhelming trailer that I sure do like a lot, despite that fact that it doesn't inspire me for a second.

This teaser satisfies, when it should have excited. I had hoped for more... scope. Give me a wide angle or two, give the camera more than a straight vertical gib move up, dissolve into one more shot, with the camera place back a few orders of magnitude. Let us feel the Enterprise, not just see it.

Hopefully, when the next round of teasing hits, we'll see something more cinematic to get my blood flowing. I don't mean plot or story points, dialogue, explosions, or even any shots of the cast at all. I want scale, I want space, and I want scope.

Incidentally, the writers should be crucified for re-locating the construction of the Enterprise to the Earth's surface. Not because it breaks canon, but because it's stupid. Any ship design with distinct structures bearing heavy mass while being flimsily connected, at a size like that, wouldn't be able to survive liftoff through an atmosphere. Build pieces on-planet, and assemble them in space? Absolutely. But launch the thing from Canaveral, or some future equivalent (probably in San Francisco)? Under no circumstances whatsoever.

Oh well, we can't win 'em all. In the end, all that matters is the movie, so if J.J. focuses his efforts on that over the trailer, he gets my vote. For, uh, whatever it is he's running for.