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I saw Star Trek this weekend. I think I've mentioned in various places, but I'll say it again here: The Onion was right. Fun, watchable. Not really a great movie for Trek fans, but probably a great movie for lighter Trek fans.
Every time something new in Star Trek comes along, it has to change how the show is designed. The movies differed rather radically from the show and Next Gen differed rather radically from the movies. There are lots of reasons for why this would be, but all of them had some pretty good reasons and excuses. Well, except for Klingon foreheads. Though eventually they even came up with a (hilarious) excuse for that in Enterprise.
One thing I've noticed about series in general. When someone new takes over a series, be it producer, writer or directer, and that someone is a Big Name or wants to be a Big Name, there is this burning need for that writer/producer/director to do something to own the material. You'll often hear interviews with that personality talking about how they respect the original material, but...which goes off down a rather egotistical path of how they can do it different/better/faster/cooler/neater. Usually it's a freakin' disaster, because what just happened is that you ended up taking the names and sometimes characters, changing everything around and turning into a pile of sucktastic.
This has been particularly true with remakes of some of the shows and movies of our childhood. Mission: Impossible. Great summer action movie, I suppose, but it would've been better if it hadn't been Mission: Impossible, frankly. First Knight might not have dismally failed if they had named the main character something besides Arthur. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Interesting production, but uh? Planet of the Apes. Sabrina. Dukes of Hazzard. Lost in Space. Starsky and Hutch. And sequels? Tim Burton had Batman and gave it to someone else in the 3rd installment who decided Tim Burton was an ass. I remember hearing Alien 3 producers talking about how they wanted to 'get back to what was good about Alien', sort of implying that Aliens was just a dumb action movie while Alien was this fantastic work of art. Sadly what they did was get back to sucking, rather than getting back to what was good about Alien.
Star Trek was another of these movies. Quite awhile ago I remember reading about Abrams wanting to go "in a different direction" and that's pretty much code for "I will pee on the material." You know, like a cat or a dog does, letting everyone else know that this is THEIR thing, or place. And oh he did. Sure, he peed on it in a fun way, but there it is, covered with the smell of J.J. Abram's pee. Yes sir, you own this movie. This simply ain't Star Trek.
The original Trek was a campy, wagon-train-to-the-stars vehicle for Roddenberry to talk about the cultural issues the networks would let him talk about. It was about how human emotions were a good thing and technology was great but it wasn't everything. Later on it morphed into kind of a liberal utopia where the benevolent Federation took care of everyone and all the enemies were external and internally things were mostly hunky dory. Except of course you had to put some cracks in that for plot here and there. It was fun and it made us dream about a future that could be a better place and made a lot of the problems faced in its time smaller.
The Next Generation came along and we got a New, More Politically Correct Trek. By now the utopia was in full force, and it was no longer chic to have the two-fisted captain so we gave that role to the XO (pardon me, first officer) and our token alien, the warrior Klingon. Oh and we made peace with our worst enemy ever. Yes, the future looked bright. TOS was full of rampant sexism, and sexism was now a topic you could talk about on TV, so out with "no man has gone before" and in with "no one has gone before." We tried strong female characters, sadly Denise Crosby's acting failed her character and we were left with the doctor and counselor, so that part of the contemporary societal problems didn't do as well. Like its predecessor it was campy, but modern techniques allowed it a much cleaner look and snazzier special effects, so while sometimes the f/x were pretty laughable, lots of things were great. The storylines were still pretty cheesy, the writing just as variable, but the show had a lot longer longevity and it did manage to find itself a niche.
Then Rick Berman took over the franchise, and he, well. Peed on things. DS9 wasn't entirely his, I don't think, but Voyager was. Strong female captain, that's great, but Star Trek: Lost in Space didn't appeal, and we had to bring the sexism back so we got Seven of DDs. And Enterprise? The special f/x improved but we had to make a supermodel into a Vulcan so we could put the logical, emotionless (ice queen) character into emotionally compromising positions as absolutely much as possible. Thanks, Rick. You totally missed what Roddenberry was doing, you shmuck.
One thing *all* of them had in common: Star Trek was about discovery. It was about the sheer excitement of the unknown, the knowledge that there's a lot of stuff out there, good and bad, and desperately wanting to know what it all is.
And now J.J. Abrams has spun the wheel. 40 years of Star Trek universe history. Hi I'm going to crumple it up and throw it away. It's gone. Writers love to have a shared world to write in, and they hate to be tied down by everything you know about that shared world. It's this horrible duplicitous thing where the shared world brings in the audience, but hamstrings the writers. So if you can chuck the history from the get-go, well, now you've got an open book! You can do your winks, nudges and homages, and believe me, there were plenty of awesome homages, but when you want to pee on something, well, there's a nice clean wall for you to mark. Nobody will be able to avoid seeing your pee stain. Good job, J.J., this is YOURS.
I didn't hate the movie, by any means, despite having to suspend my disbelief with a noose in order to accept that this giantShadow vessel Romulan mining vessel was able to easily capture one of the Federation's best ships, no matter how small. It had guns, that should pretty much cause it to outmatch a mining vessel. Let's also add that this Romulan miner was somehow able to calculate exactly where and when Spock was going to show up. I guess he had a really, really sharp grasp of temporal mechanics in order to, uh, more efficiently mine. Or something.
Somehow the Romulans got bald. I surmise that they all shaved their heads when the Remans did their think in Star Trek X, which doesn't really explain any of the Romulans in TNG, of course. Oh and tattooed, though maybe that's something that miners do because it gets them better ore. Or chicks. Chicks dig tattoos, especially lusty pointy eared Romulan chicks. Chekov's 17 year old exuberance almost physically injured me, it was so palpable. Scotty managed to get the role of Plucky Comic Relief, right up to the point where he beamed Admiral Archer's beagle somewhere "where no dog has gone before" (Or returned). Bonus points for catching that Admiral Archer is Scott Bakula. I missed that reference until it was pointed out to me.
Ok, I give them mad props for doing cool stuff with Christopher Pike, and Karl Urban is freakishly like DeForest Kelley. And Pine did a fantastic job of being Shatner without Shatting on it. There was a moment when he was sitting in The Chair where he was hunched over and talking out the side of his mouth that was so Shatner I wanted to cry. He even got to kiss the green chick, though please let's remember that the green chicks were "slave" girls that used their sexuality and powerful pheremones to rule their "masters". I bet that was fucking hawt at the Academy. As you can see, the rampant sexism was back. Hi, I'm Fucking Hot Uhura and I'm So Hot I'm going to make it a game for you to get my first name. Oh and I'm going to give smooches to Spock. Oh and I'm hot. Also I'm really a talented...linguist. Sadly for all my talent, once I've used my talents to give you the big piece of information you need, I'm now a useless decoration because this is a TWO FISTED ACTION MOVIE and once the tits are out I'm not useful anymore. Please stand in line for your smooch.
BTW, did it ever occur to anyone, at any time, that shooting the fucking drill with a photon torpedo might actually be more effective than 'sneaking' onto it and disabling it? Oh wait, it occurred to Kirk...but not until AFTER he only had a rifle. Seriously, I like photon torpedos for this trick myself. It's much more likely to actually vaporize the target than a phaser rifle.
Also who turned phasers into pulse guns? I don't know why but that one really bugged me. Looks like a phaser. Sounds like a pulse gun. Shoots like one too.
Also, while Quinto did a great job as Spock, I am sure I was not the only one expecting him to EAT KIRK'S BRAIN when he was busy strangling him.
One last gripe? Why the fuck isn't Spock, who knows a little somethin-somethin about time travel, having done it more times than he can remember, working on going back a little more in time to fix things? I mean, yes, there's the whole leaving the fabric of the universe alone and stuff, BUT HIS ENTIRE RACE HAS JUST BEEN GENOCIDED TO DEATH. Except for ten thousand, plus one who's a little out of his own time.
Clay suggested that he was going to show up in the next movie as the villain. Evil Spock Prime. Hopefully he'll grow a goatee' for the role.
Quite a few people have said that it was way better than Star Wars Episode I. I agree. J.J., can you take over that franchise instead? I think it's a little bit more up your alley. Also, Lucas already fucked it up, so it needs rescuing.
I predict the new monologue in the inevitable sequel will go: "Space. The Final Frontier. Again. These are the voyages of the Starship: Enterprise. It's continuing mission: To explore strange new world. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly pee where EVERY FUCKING DIRECTOR HAS PEED BEFORE." And it'll probably make a shit ton of money.
Every time something new in Star Trek comes along, it has to change how the show is designed. The movies differed rather radically from the show and Next Gen differed rather radically from the movies. There are lots of reasons for why this would be, but all of them had some pretty good reasons and excuses. Well, except for Klingon foreheads. Though eventually they even came up with a (hilarious) excuse for that in Enterprise.
One thing I've noticed about series in general. When someone new takes over a series, be it producer, writer or directer, and that someone is a Big Name or wants to be a Big Name, there is this burning need for that writer/producer/director to do something to own the material. You'll often hear interviews with that personality talking about how they respect the original material, but...which goes off down a rather egotistical path of how they can do it different/better/faster/cooler/neater. Usually it's a freakin' disaster, because what just happened is that you ended up taking the names and sometimes characters, changing everything around and turning into a pile of sucktastic.
This has been particularly true with remakes of some of the shows and movies of our childhood. Mission: Impossible. Great summer action movie, I suppose, but it would've been better if it hadn't been Mission: Impossible, frankly. First Knight might not have dismally failed if they had named the main character something besides Arthur. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Interesting production, but uh? Planet of the Apes. Sabrina. Dukes of Hazzard. Lost in Space. Starsky and Hutch. And sequels? Tim Burton had Batman and gave it to someone else in the 3rd installment who decided Tim Burton was an ass. I remember hearing Alien 3 producers talking about how they wanted to 'get back to what was good about Alien', sort of implying that Aliens was just a dumb action movie while Alien was this fantastic work of art. Sadly what they did was get back to sucking, rather than getting back to what was good about Alien.
Star Trek was another of these movies. Quite awhile ago I remember reading about Abrams wanting to go "in a different direction" and that's pretty much code for "I will pee on the material." You know, like a cat or a dog does, letting everyone else know that this is THEIR thing, or place. And oh he did. Sure, he peed on it in a fun way, but there it is, covered with the smell of J.J. Abram's pee. Yes sir, you own this movie. This simply ain't Star Trek.
The original Trek was a campy, wagon-train-to-the-stars vehicle for Roddenberry to talk about the cultural issues the networks would let him talk about. It was about how human emotions were a good thing and technology was great but it wasn't everything. Later on it morphed into kind of a liberal utopia where the benevolent Federation took care of everyone and all the enemies were external and internally things were mostly hunky dory. Except of course you had to put some cracks in that for plot here and there. It was fun and it made us dream about a future that could be a better place and made a lot of the problems faced in its time smaller.
The Next Generation came along and we got a New, More Politically Correct Trek. By now the utopia was in full force, and it was no longer chic to have the two-fisted captain so we gave that role to the XO (pardon me, first officer) and our token alien, the warrior Klingon. Oh and we made peace with our worst enemy ever. Yes, the future looked bright. TOS was full of rampant sexism, and sexism was now a topic you could talk about on TV, so out with "no man has gone before" and in with "no one has gone before." We tried strong female characters, sadly Denise Crosby's acting failed her character and we were left with the doctor and counselor, so that part of the contemporary societal problems didn't do as well. Like its predecessor it was campy, but modern techniques allowed it a much cleaner look and snazzier special effects, so while sometimes the f/x were pretty laughable, lots of things were great. The storylines were still pretty cheesy, the writing just as variable, but the show had a lot longer longevity and it did manage to find itself a niche.
Then Rick Berman took over the franchise, and he, well. Peed on things. DS9 wasn't entirely his, I don't think, but Voyager was. Strong female captain, that's great, but Star Trek: Lost in Space didn't appeal, and we had to bring the sexism back so we got Seven of DDs. And Enterprise? The special f/x improved but we had to make a supermodel into a Vulcan so we could put the logical, emotionless (ice queen) character into emotionally compromising positions as absolutely much as possible. Thanks, Rick. You totally missed what Roddenberry was doing, you shmuck.
One thing *all* of them had in common: Star Trek was about discovery. It was about the sheer excitement of the unknown, the knowledge that there's a lot of stuff out there, good and bad, and desperately wanting to know what it all is.
And now J.J. Abrams has spun the wheel. 40 years of Star Trek universe history. Hi I'm going to crumple it up and throw it away. It's gone. Writers love to have a shared world to write in, and they hate to be tied down by everything you know about that shared world. It's this horrible duplicitous thing where the shared world brings in the audience, but hamstrings the writers. So if you can chuck the history from the get-go, well, now you've got an open book! You can do your winks, nudges and homages, and believe me, there were plenty of awesome homages, but when you want to pee on something, well, there's a nice clean wall for you to mark. Nobody will be able to avoid seeing your pee stain. Good job, J.J., this is YOURS.
I didn't hate the movie, by any means, despite having to suspend my disbelief with a noose in order to accept that this giant
Somehow the Romulans got bald. I surmise that they all shaved their heads when the Remans did their think in Star Trek X, which doesn't really explain any of the Romulans in TNG, of course. Oh and tattooed, though maybe that's something that miners do because it gets them better ore. Or chicks. Chicks dig tattoos, especially lusty pointy eared Romulan chicks. Chekov's 17 year old exuberance almost physically injured me, it was so palpable. Scotty managed to get the role of Plucky Comic Relief, right up to the point where he beamed Admiral Archer's beagle somewhere "where no dog has gone before" (Or returned). Bonus points for catching that Admiral Archer is Scott Bakula. I missed that reference until it was pointed out to me.
Ok, I give them mad props for doing cool stuff with Christopher Pike, and Karl Urban is freakishly like DeForest Kelley. And Pine did a fantastic job of being Shatner without Shatting on it. There was a moment when he was sitting in The Chair where he was hunched over and talking out the side of his mouth that was so Shatner I wanted to cry. He even got to kiss the green chick, though please let's remember that the green chicks were "slave" girls that used their sexuality and powerful pheremones to rule their "masters". I bet that was fucking hawt at the Academy. As you can see, the rampant sexism was back. Hi, I'm Fucking Hot Uhura and I'm So Hot I'm going to make it a game for you to get my first name. Oh and I'm going to give smooches to Spock. Oh and I'm hot. Also I'm really a talented...linguist. Sadly for all my talent, once I've used my talents to give you the big piece of information you need, I'm now a useless decoration because this is a TWO FISTED ACTION MOVIE and once the tits are out I'm not useful anymore. Please stand in line for your smooch.
BTW, did it ever occur to anyone, at any time, that shooting the fucking drill with a photon torpedo might actually be more effective than 'sneaking' onto it and disabling it? Oh wait, it occurred to Kirk...but not until AFTER he only had a rifle. Seriously, I like photon torpedos for this trick myself. It's much more likely to actually vaporize the target than a phaser rifle.
Also who turned phasers into pulse guns? I don't know why but that one really bugged me. Looks like a phaser. Sounds like a pulse gun. Shoots like one too.
Also, while Quinto did a great job as Spock, I am sure I was not the only one expecting him to EAT KIRK'S BRAIN when he was busy strangling him.
One last gripe? Why the fuck isn't Spock, who knows a little somethin-somethin about time travel, having done it more times than he can remember, working on going back a little more in time to fix things? I mean, yes, there's the whole leaving the fabric of the universe alone and stuff, BUT HIS ENTIRE RACE HAS JUST BEEN GENOCIDED TO DEATH. Except for ten thousand, plus one who's a little out of his own time.
Clay suggested that he was going to show up in the next movie as the villain. Evil Spock Prime. Hopefully he'll grow a goatee' for the role.
Quite a few people have said that it was way better than Star Wars Episode I. I agree. J.J., can you take over that franchise instead? I think it's a little bit more up your alley. Also, Lucas already fucked it up, so it needs rescuing.
I predict the new monologue in the inevitable sequel will go: "Space. The Final Frontier. Again. These are the voyages of the Starship: Enterprise. It's continuing mission: To explore strange new world. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly pee where EVERY FUCKING DIRECTOR HAS PEED BEFORE." And it'll probably make a shit ton of money.
