Thoughts on Star Trek

I finally got the chance to see Star Trek. Once on Saturday in 35mm and then again on Monday in IMAX.

Let me start this off by saying how much I have loved Star Trek growing up. As I said in my previous post, I grew up on The Next Generation. I watched it every week and I’ll still watch it if its on. I own every special edition of every Star Trek movie. I have been to two Star Trek conventions here in Nashville where I got to meet James Doohan and George Takei. I think I know my Star Trek history. When I visited Las Vegas back in 2002, I and two buddies made it a priority to go to the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.(very cool,btw) So, yes I would consider myself to be a trekkie/trekker to some degree.

When I heard about J.J. Abrams directing a new Star Trek movie centered around the TOS(the original series) cast, I was very very nervous. I remember having conversations with others that also loved Star Trek, about how scary of an idea this was. To most of us, this idea was either succeed or fail. There was no real in between. Either it works or it becomes a bigger joke than the humpback whales. I wanted to have faith in J.J. based on how much I loved LOST, Alias, Cloverfield, and even Mission Impossible III, but I also remembered reading about his draft of Superman he had written a few years back. To make a long story short, he had written a first draft of a potential script for a new Superman movie that was crazy. He had supposedly written a draft with all sorts of wild over the top action and story lines that were never part of the Superman mythos. For example, in his draft Krypton never exploded and Lex Luthor was eventually revealed to be a second son of Krypton aka. an alien. It was all of course a first draft and sure enough it leaked out on the interwebs. Abrams has since come out and said that because it was a first draft, he wanted to make it so over the top just to see how far they could take it. After this, you can see why someone might have some fears about him “rebooting” a franchise.

I tried to keep a positive attitude about it. When I heard that they delayed the film for around 6 months due to the writers strike, I started to have more hope. Apparently they didn’t want to rush any of it because of the strike, which I agree with. As pictures and trailers were released over the last couple of months my fears receded even more. I actually tried hard not to read any spoilers about it. I wanted to go into the film knowing only what I had really learned from the trailers and maybe a few interviews I had seen on tv or online. In today’s online world, thats almost an impossible task. Well, all the waiting paid off and the worrying turned out to be for nothing other than just not wanting to see something I loved go down the toilet.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is wonderful. It’s magnificent. It’s joy. It’s everything I wanted it to be and more. I am just so thrilled to know that Paramount didn’t just throw it out there to any ole director to try make a few more bucks off of a franchise that had somewhat of a life threatening wound. No, they handed it over to a group of guys that wanted to make something special and boy did they succeed.

The movie is so beautiful to look at. Every scene whether it be on a ship or an a planet is beautiful to look at. The colors used in the movie are so vibrant. It doesn’t have the dark colors that TNG and the other shows used. The ship is so nice to look at. They gave it an updated yet still classic look. I loved seeing engineering look like engineering. It was just a bunch of touch screen pads. The bridge had a classic and simple yet updated look. I do agree with those that have said the bridge kind of looks like Apple designed it. Just about everything in the film you see in the movie is nice to look at and gives you a good feeling. It gives you this overall feeling of hope that I think Gene Roddenberry was going for when he created the series back in the 60′s.

The actors are great. Who ever was in charge of casting did an amazing job. Most of the cast were able to take traits from the original characters that everyone knows and loves and then make them their own. Everyone does a great job of getting you to love their character again. When I heard Karl Urban was playing Dr. McCoy, I thought “WHAT?”. I didn’t think he couldn’t do it, but I just couldn’t imagine him doing it. After seeing the movie, I am just blown away at how well he did it. It wasn’t just him though. Zachary Quinto as Spock, Chris Pine as Kirk, Simon Pegg as Scotty,etc…they all just nailed the parts. Granted, they’re not doing impressions of the original actors but they nailed the characters and aspects of the characters that we all grew to love. Chris Pine is in no way William Shatner but he has that swagger and confidence that Kirk has. Zachary Quinto does a great job as Spock. He really brings new elements to the character that is different than the way we’ve seen Leonard Nimoy portray Spock. Considering he had to be in the same movie as Nimoy, he did a great job overall portraying the character that has become as much of an icon as Kirk. Eric Bana as the villain Nero is good. Nero isn’t your typical Star Trek movie villain. He’s not the smartest or the most over the top, but he is sincere in what he wants. He doesn’t kill everyone in sight unless they’re in the way of his overall objective. I won’t go into main details about the plot mainly because I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone.

The story overall worked well. One of the biggest questions on every fans mind going into this has been, “How will this work in the continuity of the Star Trek universe?” Well, thanks to a very clever time travel storyline, they managed to go back and basically start from scratch. The beginning of the movie basically tells the audience that the timeline they know has changed. We still have the same characters but now everyone’s destinys have changed. Overall, the story works. Abrams and his crew of writers have managed to give themselves a clean slate in the Star Trek universe in which to work. In this timeline, Kirk has yet to go up against Khan. They haven’t made their peace treaties with the Klingons. Now, they might not have to go back in time to bring back humpback whales. You get my drift.

I am kind of torn about this. I would love to see what kind of movie these guys can make with a new Khan storyline(btw,the writers have been quoted as not ruling Khan out for the sequel). At the same time, this movie was so good that I don’t want them to make a great movie that might tarnish the image of the original Khan movie. Its kind of like Batman in a way. Until last year, Jack Nicholson was THE Joker to many people. Then Heath Ledger came along and threw that character on its head and he is now THE Joker to many people. As of now, Ricardo Montalban is Khan. To a lot of Star Trek fans, The Wrath of Khan is their favorite Star Trek movie. I guess I’m just a sucker for originals. I honestly feel that these new Batman movies are making people forget about how classic the ’89 Batman movie truly was. I just don’t want to possibly tarnish the image of an already classic movie like Khan. Then again…most fans didn’t think that replacing Shatner and Nimoy would work out well and well, we were wrong.

Overall, Abrams’ Star Trek is a breath of fresh air to sci-fi films. I think I enjoyed more in these screenings than I did in any of the Star Wars prequels and I would consider myself to be a big Star Wars fan too. I honestly think I enjoyed this movie more than any movie in the past year since The Dark Knight came out. It all JUST.WORKS. I’m really excited to see where they take this franchise now and I do have faith overall that whatever direction they go in, it will work.

By the way, if you get a chance to see it in IMAX, then do yourself a favor and see it. Seeing the ships and space battles on that big of a screen and hearing the sound in a large theatre is so very cool. Definitely the way to go!

p.s. I’m already jonesing for the blu-ray version of this movie. It’s going to look beautiful!

Rumblings of the Day 4/30/09

-I guess its safe to finally say that I saw Wolverine. Initial thoughts? The trailer plays games with you when you watch it. You see all these cool action scenes and completely forget that the X-Men movies are not like “Iron Man” or “The Dark Knight”. I didn’t think Wolverine was bad. I thought the first X-Men was good, X2 was great, and X3 was like that family member you don’t want to acknowledge but you know they’re still around. Wolverine fits in between the first and second movies for me. Hugh Jackman is great as he usually is, but the other characters/actors, I really didn’t deep down give a crap about. Sorry. My gut tells me that Hugh Jackman/Wolverine is probably the only character people care about. I’ve heard talk about a Magneto movie or another “X-Men Origins” character movie. I honestly don’t think people will respond to them unless Hugh Jackman is involved. Thats just my opinion and I hope I’m wrong.

-Hopefully, I’ll be seeing Star Trek within the next 48 hours. Either in IMAX or good ole 35mm. Honestly, I don’t care how I see it. I just know I WANT TO SEE IT. I’m so happy to be excited about a Star Trek movie again. I grew up watching TNG. I knew who the original cast members and characters were based on the movies, but it was TNG that got me hooked. I think I was around 6-7 when it first airing on TV. It is probably the first tv show I ever watched on a regular basis. Every Saturday afternoon/evening, I was in front of that TV watching TNG on ch.17 or ch.30 here in Nashville. When the show ended, I remember hearing about the first TNG movie and I was SO excited to see it. I’ve loved every minute of Star Trek anything I’ve seen especially TNG, and while yes I’m sad that the time of TNG and Rick Berman is about 99.9% over, I’m super stoked to see what direction J.J. Abrams takes Gene Roddenberry’s idea in. I have yet to read a bad early review about the new film which gives me some relief but at the same time, I need to try and not get my expectations to high.

- Some posts back, I wondered about my neighbors upstairs. They were always there. They were always outside smoking and they unintentionally talked loud with southern accents. Really nice people, but confusing people overall. Anyways, they moved out yesterday. It will be a quiet for a little while thank goodness. Hopefully, the new people will be nice whenever they move in.

- My dad is trying to move back home from North Carolina. He’s been a chef my entire life and he’s had some really great jobs with some GREAT perks(Cabo!), but over the last few years he’s worked his butt off to finally get a college degree and also a masters degree. Well, as of last month, he finished. Now, he’s taking a huge leap and changing careers. I’m so proud of him. He’s an inspiration to anyone that if you want to do something you can do it. I know its a big risk changing careers like that and I just hope he knows that we’ll always be here no matter whatever.

- For the past two weeks, The Office has been really great! Not that the rest of the season hasn’t been great, but it’s had some down moments. These past two episodes though have been just stellar in my opinion. They’ve felt like older episodes that made the show what it was.

- The jury is still out for me on Parks and Recreations. I like Amy Poehler but I can’t decide if I like the show. It’s trying to be like The Office but in a different way and I can’t tell if that’s hurting it or helping it. I’ve watched all four episodes and I still cannot get a definitive feeling about it.

- I’m really hoping NBC doesn’t cancel Chuck. Its such a great show. I know it has its problems but overall I like it. I’m actually preferring it over Heroes. With Jay Leno doing his thing next year, I know NBC is going to have to cancel some stuff. I know it hurts to say it, but I would kind of prefer that Heroes be cancelled before Chuck. I know it’s not going to happen because NBC already announced it was coming back, but I think Heroes has used up all their chances trying to make it a hit show. They will be going into their fourth season next year and I still don’t think they know what they’re doing. Whereas LOST has a definitive story to tell, Heroes seems like they literally make up stuff each week before it airs kind of like South Park.

- Enough about TV and movies. I’m really excited about some of the draft choices the Titans made this past weekend. I think the Titans have worried for so many years about their defense and they’ve cared enough about the offense. For years, during a lot of games they’ve scored just enough to win. And for Titans fans, its aggravating. Getting down to that stadium in downtown Nashville is not an easy task on gameday and to get down there and watch them play just enough to get by, stinks. I’ve prayed that they would finally start getting some wide receivers that would make other teams worry and yet we’ve never had it. Every time the Titans have tried to get a big name receiver, that player gets hurt or just doesn’t live up to expectations. I’m hoping that this will be the year that we continue to see signs that Titans are working their way towards that explosive offense that a lot of Titans fans haven been dying to see.

- There are a ton of good big name shows coming to Nashville over the next few months and I can’t seem to afford any of them. They’re all so expensive. Even Metallica with their advertised economically affordable tickets are still a minimum $50 before ticketmaster starts adding all of their stupid fees. Its aggravating. I don’t know how people are buying multiple tickets to the big name shows coming to town.

Thats enough for tonight. I have to get up early tomorrow morning. Goodnight.

p.s. Here is your obligatory mention of “Swine Flu”.