To Comfortably Go Where We've Already Gone Before.

Just got back from seeing the new star Trek movie, and it was a pretty decent movie. But...it's not that great. The biggest problem I had with the movie was that it was called Star Trek. Somewhere in the middle of the movie it dawned on me that there was no reason for the movie I saw tonight to be tethered to some 50 year old science fiction franchise, when it would have served the movie better had it been called Sexy Teenagers in Space. The entire film I sat there and dissected and compared and contrasted this flick with the original series, and I never even gave it a shot as its own independent thing. Technically, it isn't its own independent thing and therefore the comparison must be made.

It reminded me of when I go see the super hero movies that and I sit there and think about how much better I like the source material than what I'm watching on the screen. Star Trek suffers from the same thing. It has awesome laser gun noises and the spaceships look wicked as hell, but no one that utters a line even matches up to their original counterpart. Sure the inflection might be there or even the occasional he sort of looks like Kirk there, but you never really see Kirk up there.

The whole idea of the movie is a little lazy in that it doesn't have to establish anything new. We already know these characters by heart, si there's no need to do anything but stay on the surface. One thing that struck me about the movie was how there weren't any great one liners you could walk away quoting. Then it dawned on me there were great one liners, it was just that I'd been hearing them all my life and they had become routine. I've already heard "Dammit Jim I'm a doctor not a clit masseuse" a thousand times. Gimme something new fellas. The archetypes work just fine, we'll trot them out in some shiny new shirts, but they'll say the same things and people will think they're seeing something they ain't never seen before. Therein lies another problem.

Star Trek is about boldly going where no one has ever gone before, except this time we've already been to Myrtle Beach. It doesn't mean Myrtle Beach isn't a bad place, it's great actually, but we've been going there for a few Summer's now. I hear Virginia is for lovers, lets see what the poon tang is like in that direction, it might be great.

The argument could be made that I knew wasn't going to get anything new out of something called Star Trek anyways, that if I want new I should go see something else. and you would be correct, but that outer space big budget sci-fi movie didn't get made, because they went for the sure thing and remade Star Trek instead of giving me Sexy Teens in Space.

There's a line in the movie about star Fleet needing guys like Jim Kirk that'll give it a boot up its ass and make it exciting and not so self assured and routine. Maybe this was a little aside about Hollywood. It needs something to come along and make something new for the kids today. It's great that I like Superman and Batman and my nephew does too, but it saddens me some to see that a lot of the same toys I played with are still popular today. I know there are some new and great things out there, but sometimes it gets hard to see them with the old ideas mugging for everyone's attention.

Questions that kept running through my mind is why not Star Trek? and when do you change things to the point where it's no longer Star Trek. If you're making a movie about the space navy that journey's around having adventures you might as well call it Star Trek, but if but if you start tweaking a few things maybe it's no longer Star Trek. To me Star Trek was much more cerebral than this movie. Star Trek is less laser guns and more philosophy. Less rocket engines and more dramatic intensity. This of course is partly due to the limitations of 1960s TV, but for better or for worse, that's what Star Trek is. Well, not this movie anyways, this movie is just Space Navy pretending to be Star Trek, but maybe in it's heart of hearts it wants to be Sexy Teens in Space. If you call the ship the enterprise, but you never really wrestle with any moral dilemma or philisophical question, is it still Star Trek?

I ate a lot of pop corn, I saw some some cool blinky lights, and I generally had a good time. There's certainly worse things I could have spent my money on, but in another time line my $8 went to Sexy Teens in space, and I had a blast.