Star Trek 2009 is when you mix Spielberg with Michael Bay

  Blender Dumbass
August 13, 2025

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#startrek #jjabrams #film #review #movies #cinemastodon

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I have a soft spot for J. J. Abrams. His masterpiece Super 8 inspired me greatly to develop film-projects when I was a teenager. But his 2009 other masterpiece Star Trek ( together with 2009'th other Sci-Fi masterpiece Avatar by James Cameron ) is what pretty much started my obsession with space movies.

Before I watched the 2009 Star Trek I though Star Wars were lame and uninteresting. But after experiencing the shier coolness of a space opera directed by one of the more caffeinated directors out there, I started respecting these films for their craft. Avatar obviously helped with it. Cameron released a very detailed documentary about how this kind of thing is done. And so knowing the amount of work that goes into each shot like this, and being somewhat already into Blender myself by that point. I had immense respect for Star Trek 2009.

Re-Experiencing it now, as a director who worked over 10 years making films ( with various success ) and who now can nerd about each and every shot, this movie just came to me in a new light. J. J. Abrams is an amazing director.

Take the true Spielberg, not the brand people think about, not the melodramatic tear squeezer Spielberg, but the technical master of flow and movement Spielberg. The Spielberg that can make some truly awesome shots. The Spielberg that understands edit to such a degree that he creates flow-perfection ( which I talked about in my review of Ready Player One ). And then mix it thoroughly with Michael Bay. With insane camera angles, with lens flares, with directing toward achieving as much anxiety in the audience as possible, so they could feel what the characters are feeling. And what do you get? You get J. J. Abrams.

The opening sequence of the movie, as a ship is about to crash into an alien attacker ship. And as a newly set captain Kirk ( Chris Hemsworth ) is about to sacrifice himself to save the crew, his wife and the newly born son ( the main character of the movie ) James Kirk ( which will be played by Chris Pine later ). This sequence has all of what you need to see to understand how I came up with my Spielberg / Bay analysis of Abrams style.

You have operatic, high energy camera moves. Complex Spielbergian shots with the energy of Michael Bay. You have lens flares and other stuff making the frame always dirty to some extent. A technique that Bay likes to use. You have melodrama. But you also have an enormous amount of explosive tension during the melodrama. You have insane understanding of editing and flow. Yet you have a sensibility of a kid playing with firecrackers.

And then we cut to something that Spielberg is sort of famous for, we get an anti ageism moment of a kid ( Jimmy Bennett ) driving a very fast car. Something that seems to have inspired me specifically a lot ( watch Moria's Race ). Spielberg was doing that kind of thing more in the 80s. Like when the kids stole the government van in E.T.. But if we remove the kids driving cars part, and just focus on anti-ageism, Spielberg continues to do that sort of thing through-out his career in a lot of movies. And frankly Abrams also does it at-least once more in Super 8.

All this bad-shit-crazy stuff and energy, made the movie work. This explains why the movie is so highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes. This explains why people outside of the US suddenly started caring about Star Trek. And this explains why sequels were made. Gonna talk about those later, I suppose.

Happy Hacking!!!

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  Troler c:0


I have seen "Star Trek: Original Series", I must say this movie appears to be way more action packed than the original material. It was also a TV sci-fi drama, the budget was not that exorbitant.

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