I, also, disagreed with and disapproved of the decision to make Young Kirk a rebel. I always imagined Young Kirk as being ideal Officer material from the get go. Disiplined, motivated and naturally inspiring as a leader.

But the closer we got to the release of the film, the more I thought that I, as a writer, couldn’t have made something like that work. We need Kirk in this story to be Me Against The World and the journey of how he ends up in the Captian’s Chair.

I read a book about Delta Force and having met a couple of Special Forces dudes, they’re never what you expect. They’re usually small, unassuming, wirey guys with no swagger or bravado but also no humility. The book opens with one of the first recruits talking about how they found him and it’s all "I was doing something awesome and then this awesome dude came up to me and said ‘hey me and some awesome guys are going to do some awesome shit, you want to come along?’ And I said ‘Awesome.’"

There’s no journey there. These guys were hunting and living off nuts and bark in the woods of Louisiana at the age of 11 for fun. They were born awesome, and ok fine, but blech from a storytelling standpoint.

I think maybe the writers did a little too good a job here. Kirk goes from being a "Me Against The World" character to a natural leader right in front of us, but because he doesn’t compromise his hunger and eagerness to consume everything around him, we almost don’t notice it. He just transferrs his attitude to the people around him. He goes from internalizing his worldview to externalizing it.

When he’s in the Future Ship with Spock and gives Spock this great look and says "It’s going to work." There’s really not an ounce of doubt in him. He believes in Spock the same way he believes in himself and that’s his journey.

I could understand how Kirk Prime would live life without fear.  He was the product of a long line of Starfleet officers (at least, according to the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture).  Starfleet was made for him – a meritocritous organization that knows how to follow leaders and take orders, but challenge assumptions and restrain arrogance.  Kirk Prime was perfectly suited to be Fearless.

Kirk New, however, should have a different outlook.  His father died in a very scary event – a random throw of the dice put Nero & his ship in that place at that time to encounter the Kelvin.  Clearly he had a tough upbringing living in a home with a father-replacement who didn’t like him (witness his Ferris Bhueler moment with the ‘vette), and then something drives him to go to Starfleet bars and get the shit regularly kicked out of him (otherwise how would he know he was good in a fight?)

I think you can scare a kid into having real fears and Kirk New should know fear.  But something genetic makes Kirk New incapable of accepting the no-win scenario.  Logically you can get kicked in the nuts enough by life to develop a healthy appreciation for danger but it takes something deep down in the core to be so fucking optimistic and willing to forge on well past the point when others have abandoned hope to find victory in the fate of "certain defeat".

Spock New gets to be different from Spock Prime.  His mom died in front of him and his dad admits living his life baed on emotions, freeing Spock New to share the love a good woman.  Why not give Kirk New something changed too – a core of fear that he has to overcome, but he DOES overcome because, well, Kirk is AWESOME!

I always felt that McClain in the first Die Hard was a very well-rounded human character.  He certainly feels fear – fear for Holly, at minimum, but several times you can almost hear (and sometimes you hear outright) his inner war to keep doing amazingly hard things despite the risk.  What makes McClain in DH1 AWESOME is that he masters his fear and does what needs to be done anyway.  That’s the kind of Kirk I wish there had been room for in Star Trek.

[Compare and contrast this with the new Bond, who truly is fearless]

RyanD

Upon a second viewing, I’m more impressed with Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine.

Quinto is so perfect, I honestly think they could not have made this movie without him, as absurd as that sounds. I feel like they had to wait for a Zachary Quinto to show up.

And while Chris Pine is in no way doing a Shatner impression, he has that same hunger for the whole universe. Like he’s going to eat it, and with joy. He seems to *derive* Kirk’s swagger and humor, rather than channel it. But critically, unlike Shatner, Pine isn’t playing the Lead. He’s playing the anchor. He’s the steady rock that everything revolves around. Everyone else is defining themselves off him.

That’s probably wise. Many people have mistakenly perceived Trek, the Original Series, as being an ensemble pieces when in fact its the Kirk Show. But while you can do that with Shatner, I don’t think you can count on lightning striking twice and so this really IS an ensemble piece. And that requires the steady rock at the center, not the flamboyant, charismatic leading man.

Like John McClane, Kirk in this movie gets his ass kicked in every single sequence we see him in *and he wins all the way through*. 

One of the great hallmarks of good acting is when the audience knows what someone’s thinking, and when we see Kirk confronted by Spock in front of the Academy, not with the No Win Scenario (which is not what that scene’s about) but with Fear, we *see* that Kirk disagrees. He has *never* experienced fear. He never has, and he does not in this film. But he doesn’t say it and thank god. If he did, it would bring the whole thing down. It would mean handing us something we’re supposed to figure out.

Also, there’s a tribble in the movie.

There needed to be a moment of solemnity, a place where someone "adult" (Chris Pike, of course) could frame that pain, and forge it into something other than random acts of senseless future violence.  The lack of that scene I think fundamentally weakens the integrity of the whole story.  It made the characters less than really fully human.

On a second minor note along the same theme, Kirk’s defense at his Academic Board hearing was incredibly weak.  Worst case you could recycle the dialog from II.  Best case, you could allow that scene to reveal to the audience what Pike has seen in Kirk all along – the reason he makes him 1st officer in the middle of a horrific crisis.  The part of Kirk that is INCAPABLE of accepting the no-win scenario, which is the part of Kirk that makes him AWESOME.

On the other hand, I’m absolutely planning on seeing it again today, and I haven’t done a back-to-back theater experience since SW1, so that’s saying something extra special about this film.

RyanD

This movie has him actually doing more science stuff on the bridge (and spouting more scientific dialog on the bridge) than Spock does, which I thought was a nice touch.