STAR TREK: AXANAR - PRELUDE TO AXANAR
Written by
Alec Peters
Christian Gossett
Directed by
Christian Gossett
Starring
Richard Hatch as Commander Kharn
Tony Todd as Admiral Ramirez
Kate Vernon as Captain Alexander
J.G. Hertzler as Admiral Travis
Gary Graham as Ambassador Soval
Alec Peters as Captain Garth
Narrated by
Orion Acaba
On its own, this is nothing more than an extended trailer, therefore I can't (and won't) attempt to critique this as if it were its own film but instead do so for what it is.
Those of us paying attention have known for some time that Star Trek: Axanar was going to be Alec Peters' vanity project and he is to be commended for not trying to put himself front and center here. The production team and writers wisely chose to recognize the top brass talent they had access to (Todd, Hatch, Vernon, Hertzler, Graham) and let the spotlight be shared by them instead of focusing entirely on Peters as Garth of Izar.
Unfortunately, the down side is of course that by getting professional actors to contribute and perform in the piece, and by placing a single acting novice alongside them, it only further highlights Peters' relative inexperience and clumsiness as an actor. Certainly, he's not terrible, but the parts of his performance where the cracks are showing are all the more evident because of how much those he's playing against actually shine with what they have to work with.
I find myself mostly agreeing with the assessments of Maurice and Harvey but I also think it fair and proper to point out that this episode, while visually quite polished and pretty to look at, and while it works brilliantly as a tease for the film itself (however good or bad it turns out to be), on its own, this "prelude" is nothing more than fancy window dressing.
Writing and story-wise, we hear a lot about how great Garth is from all of the characters interviewed. We hear about how Ramirez gives this incredibly powerful speech that inspires hope. We hear a lot about how great Kharn is from a lot of the characters interviewed. We hear a lot about how horrible the Klingon advance was. We hear about how badass the Ares is supposed to be. We hear about how daring and brilliant Garth is.
But we don't see any of it.
Well, we get part of Ramirez' speech but is it any different from any other speech we've seen before? Not really.
All the loudmouthing about greatness and brilliant military strategy ... and none of it shines through here. It's all just talk. Are these things we'll see in the final film? I hope so. But here, just referring to these events and elements of the story ring hollow.
Indeed, when Alexander and Travis recount Garth's signature battle maneuver, all we get is a simple (if pretty) cut to more visual effects work by the extraordinarily talented Tobias Richter of one ship moving out of the way and the Ares just cruising by and attacking.
Are we to believe from this then that Garth is considered a brilliant military commander simply because he knows how to point his guns in the right direction and pull a trigger? That he's so cunning because he knows enough not to shoot while his friendly ally ship is in the line of sight?
Again, it's hard to criticize without seeing the full film and I certainly am open to recanting this point after I do see the whole film in context, but here, out of context, it's awfully difficult to accept that this is part of the great mythos surrounding the brilliant military commander James Kirk studies during his academy days.
I'm not a fan of modern vernacular "Queen Bitch-Whore of the Federation" or the exceedingly stupid "pinkskin" reference, which I freely admit, I've never liked. Each feels out of place in this particular era of Star Trek, and while I fully offer that this is my own opinion on the matter, I just didn't care for how either were presented.
More important however is this project's narrative flip-flopping of its mission statement. The contradictory intent -- Garth's line that "Starfleet isn't about that [battle]." only to see him turn that right around, drooling over the Ares as the newest, best battleship makes me question what kind of cohesivity (if any) we'll get with the full film, as though the producers want to stop just long enough to acknowledge that Star Trek is more than just being about pew pew pew spaceship battles...before giving us a 20 minute short film/extended trailer of mostly, exactly that -- gorgeous starship fly-bys, to be sure, but nonetheless mostly fly-bys and pew pew pew spaceship battles.
Sound design, lighting, color correction, and editing are all fine. The super-widescreen presentation was nice too. But I don't see the 'bottom" of the story here and am at a loss as to who I should be caring about, story-wise, as it's clear from this piece that every single character portrayed obviously survives the Battle of Axanar. (Sorry, Michael Hogan!)
Regardless of these quibbles, I remain hopeful that the finished film will deliver what it and its producers have been promising, if only for the untold number of contributors on Kickstarter's sake. I laughed when I heard the narrator's voice because it sounded an awful lot like Richard Hatch, and I, like others, appreciated the nod to John Gill.
In conclusion: I appreciate the approach to this piece with the gimmick of mimicking The History Channel-style retrospective, and in many ways the production gets a lot of important things right and wrong. It's obviously too soon to praise or condemn the actual film itself and certainly not based on this piece alone, but I look forward to what Alec and his team are going to present when they're finally ready to release the full film.
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