A Star Wars Fan Reviews Star Trek 09
A Star Wars Fan Reviews Star Trek 09
May 10I’m savagely unapologetic of my Star Wars fandom, and have been since a young age. A friend of mine has a four year old son who needs to know everything about Yoda, down to what kind of nuts and roots and berries he puts in his stewpot on Dagobah, and I self-identify with that kid pretty heavily.
I’ve never had the same passion about Star Trek. Yeah, I watched it. It was okay. I just never got passionate about it. Never understood the Big Deal. I liked space wizards with laser swords. I liked the bizarre, nonhuman-looking aliens that were just hanging around everywhere – not the staples of action set pieces or important characters, just guys hanging out. I liked the fast pace and the action and the melodrama much better than what I perceived to be the rather mundane proceedings aboard the Enterprise.
For me, Trek has always been the Elvis to Star Wars’s Beatles. Even before 1994, when Tarantino first introduced that forced dichotomy into my brain.
I loved the new Star Trek movie with complete abandon.
Friday morning, I was talking to Matt about the movie, and I realized something very important. Well, two very important things. First, all of the things I said I loved about Star Wars were on full display in this movie, and they did them all better than any of Lucas’s prequels did. Second, a lot of those things were already staples of the series – I just never noticed it because I was too busy being blase’ about the lack of midichlorians or whatever.
It’s easily the best summer tentpole film I’ve seen in about a year. In fact, the last time a movie made me go “I need to go see this again immediately,” it was probably the first Pirates of the Caribbean flick. It’s the best Star Trek movie I’ve ever watched, running neck and neck with Wrath of Khan – the only one of the movies that I’ve actively rewatched several times (as opposed to leaving it on because there’s nothing better on TV).
Just like J.J. Abrams, I went into this movie basically knowing only that Kirk and Spock are the overwhelming OTP among slashfic writers. I knew that people loved Kirk, but I never got it.  I think I get it now.
I couldn’t agree more.
Abrams basically took everything I love about STAR TREK, which is essentially the character interactions, and combined it with what first caught the attention of my five-year-old self when I saw STAR WARS–the action-packed spectacle of it all. It jettisoned all of the heavy-handed allegory and pontificating for some good old-fashioned fun. Remember “fun”?
TREK was always too “clean” for me. Everything worked too well. Nothing ever *really* malfunctioned and, if it did, Scotty (or Geordi or O’Brien or whoever) would rattle off some techno-babble and press a few buttons and everything would work again. STAR WARS felt lived-in, like FIREFLY (although, I will admit that both DS9 and ENTERPRISE sort of had that “lived-in” feel that other TREKs did not). And, sure, the new movie was slick and the ship was sleek and shiny…but, the characters still have to get their hands dirty.
Like I said back at the start of this comment: it’s the relationships that I always liked about TREK, especially TOS, where the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and Bones perfectly reflected the concept of id, ego, and super-ego.
Now, if only J.J. Abrams would do a “reboot” of Wolverine, X-Men Origins…
Am I interpreting your comment correctly, that JJ Abrams said that all he knew about STAR TREK before making the movie was from slash fiction? That may be the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. (But, for realz, Spock/McCoy is the way to go! Or, you know, Bashir/O’Brien. What?)
I have no proof one way or the other. But Abrams did say that he pitched a total reboot because the only point of reference he had to Trek was Kirk and Spock. I just extrapolated from there.
Abrams claimed to not be a TREK fan, which is why he made a movie that’s “for movie fans, not STAR TREK fans.” So, it is possible that his only previous exposure was through fan-fic.
Bashir/Garak > Bashir/O’Brien. Just sayin’.
Picard and Dathon at El’Adra.
anyone who liked this movie you have to go see it in IMAX! I saw it last night at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ and it was awesome ! i def recommend seeing the IMAX version, esp there because they have the biggest one in the nation. Even if you saw it go see it again in IMAX.
at the risk of seeming a cad, ninaf smells a bit…viral.
But virally promoting one IMAX theater in Jersey by commenting on a month old post? It doesn’t seem very effective.