Star Trek
Spoilers ahead, off the starboard bow.
So I went to see the new Trek movie today. I had plenty of reservations but was still kind of excited. Overall, I don't think I liked it much, though there were a number of parts I thought were done quite well. It certainly looks very pretty, but that's never really been enough to take me in (I'm looking at you, The Matrix). The basic premise is that the main villain gets accidentally sent back in time shortly after his planet is destroyed by a supernova (and they grossly overestimate the destructive power of a supernova by saying it threatened to destroy the galaxy). His presence causes an alternate reality to form, and he decides to take revenge on the Federation, who he blames for failing to halt the supernova until after it blows up his planet. That's all well and good, and I can understand why they took that approach, since trying to adhere to 40-odd years of canonical Trek lore would be about impossible and would not help them reach a wider audience. That being said, I don't think there was much in the movie to really enchant new audiences, and I, as an avowed fan of the series, was not happy with their decision to blow up Vulcan, rather arbitrarily it seemed to me. They said some 6 billion people died, but it kind of gets mentioned in passing and then on to what really matters, saving Earth. I found that rather appalling.
Also, while Star Trek, especially the original series, was frequently on shaky ground scientifically, they did try to improve as time went by and discoveries were made. Many Trek fans are perhaps more scientifically literate than the population at large, and while they (we?) can appreciate the speculative nature of much of the science in this fiction, some of the pseudoscience they try to pass off in this movie is bad, even by the standards of the 1960s. I won't bother picking those nits unless someone wants me to, but there are some rather bone-headed ones.
I think the highest points have to be for the actors, especially Karl Urban (who plays Bones). None of the major players do a bad job, though I would rather they let Anton Yelchin just do a regular Russian accent, as long as they are rewriting history and all.
I'm not sure how likely I would be to see another movie in this rebooted series. The charms of traditional Star Trek don't really show up much in this movie, but to be fair, that takes time and they might be able to recapture that essential "Trekness" that is only occasionally displayed in this outing.
So I went to see the new Trek movie today. I had plenty of reservations but was still kind of excited. Overall, I don't think I liked it much, though there were a number of parts I thought were done quite well. It certainly looks very pretty, but that's never really been enough to take me in (I'm looking at you, The Matrix). The basic premise is that the main villain gets accidentally sent back in time shortly after his planet is destroyed by a supernova (and they grossly overestimate the destructive power of a supernova by saying it threatened to destroy the galaxy). His presence causes an alternate reality to form, and he decides to take revenge on the Federation, who he blames for failing to halt the supernova until after it blows up his planet. That's all well and good, and I can understand why they took that approach, since trying to adhere to 40-odd years of canonical Trek lore would be about impossible and would not help them reach a wider audience. That being said, I don't think there was much in the movie to really enchant new audiences, and I, as an avowed fan of the series, was not happy with their decision to blow up Vulcan, rather arbitrarily it seemed to me. They said some 6 billion people died, but it kind of gets mentioned in passing and then on to what really matters, saving Earth. I found that rather appalling.
Also, while Star Trek, especially the original series, was frequently on shaky ground scientifically, they did try to improve as time went by and discoveries were made. Many Trek fans are perhaps more scientifically literate than the population at large, and while they (we?) can appreciate the speculative nature of much of the science in this fiction, some of the pseudoscience they try to pass off in this movie is bad, even by the standards of the 1960s. I won't bother picking those nits unless someone wants me to, but there are some rather bone-headed ones.
I think the highest points have to be for the actors, especially Karl Urban (who plays Bones). None of the major players do a bad job, though I would rather they let Anton Yelchin just do a regular Russian accent, as long as they are rewriting history and all.
I'm not sure how likely I would be to see another movie in this rebooted series. The charms of traditional Star Trek don't really show up much in this movie, but to be fair, that takes time and they might be able to recapture that essential "Trekness" that is only occasionally displayed in this outing.