Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning review
Star Trek gets the parody treatment in a production that was created under extraordinary circumstances…
Star Wreck started as a project in film-making and has, quite quickly, turned into a bit of an Internet phenomenon. It’s quite obviously a parody of Star Trek, but it borrows tricks from all of the major sci-fi television classics. Let’s start from the beginning…
The movie was released a while ago now, and has had several updates as time has gone by. Its latest Imperial Edition has been released on DVD with better special effects and a pretty decent surround mix.
The disc starts up and goes straight into the film and from the beginning you know this is a parody. The filming is low-budget but clear and the sound mix is good. The first shock though, is that this is in Finnish, with English subtitles. Once you are over the shock, and get into the film itself, it is remarkable how easy you find it to watch.
We start with three crew, stranded in time, on 21st century Earth. One is a Klingon lookalike , the other is a Data lookalike and the third is our anti-hero, Pirk. No need to guess that he is a parody of a certain James T. Kirk. However, instead of fitting in with the past, Pirk decides to use his knowledge of the future and become Emperor. The plot then moves on to him taking over the Earth, creating a Star Fleet of sorts and jumping through a “maggot hole” to an alternative universe. What do they discover in this alternate universe? A Babylon 5 parody.
The plot just gets sillier and sillier from then onwards, but it is still immense fun and I was amazed by the quality of the space effects.
Then we move on to the second disc, which – feature by feature – takes you through the making of this movie. It’s at this point onwards that you start to become amazed by what the creators have achieved with this movie by using home computers, a blue screen in a bedroom / lounge and a bit of ingenuity and persuasion. I sat there laughing as the director woke up an hour after everyone had already arrived at the exterior filming location.
When watching this movie you have to remember three things: firstly, it is a fan movie made by young filmmakers who have spent hours of their spare time putting this together. Secondly, it was created on a low budget with bedroom-based computers that kept breaking down every couple of days. Thirdly, it’s meant to be a parody, so expect it to make fun of the movies and television shows that it has taken for inspiration.
Altogether, this movie is fun, light entertainment that will amaze you even more when you see just how it was made. If a bunch of university students can do this on a limited budget over several years, just imagine what they could have done with a million pounds or more? It’s a triumph of ingenuity, dogged determination and imagination.
Movie:
Go to http://www.starwreck.com to see more.
Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning is out now.
Written by