But I did, in the first five minutes. And if you have anything resembling a beating heart in your chest, so will you. But don’t worry, there’s some fast top-down-on-the-convertible driving with blasting Beastie Boys angry music shortly to follow. And laughs! This movie is funny! And awesome! And you should go see it; don’t even stop to get your Klingon costume out of storage! Just go!
I don’t want to spoil anything, but I have some thoughts.
1. Where were the women, Gene? Where?
2. The romance? It is sweet. I don’t even care that it’s not “authentic.”
3. I wish we could get these guys to go back and re-do all the old Star Treks. The old ones were good, they were competent for the most part, and often interesting, sometimes moving. I’m not the biggest fan around, but I know enough to say that the whale one (Star Trek IV?) is my favorite, with Insurrection a close second. The TV shows? Enh. Nice as far as TV shows go. In a way it’s kind of a blessing to not be so invested in the mythology of Star Trek, because I’m not upset by any of the “re-writing of history” as my movie row-mate complained, half-heartedly, because even he really liked it. (And, no, that wasn’t Dick citing Star Trek lore; it was Joseph Scott of Automattic. I took the geek opportunity to let him know what’s wrong with the latest version of WordPress. Love you, WordPress! And good luck to Joseph’s lovely wife Sarah, who’s going to pop with their third baby in a couple months!)
4. So why say the old ones could be even better with this team re-imagining them? Remember Amadeus? And the part where Salieri is playing his piece, and it’s okay, it’s fine, it’s not bad. It’s gonna keep him his job as the Emporer’s composer-stooge-boy for another few years. Then Mozart sits down and tweaks it just that little bit and it is suddenly magic? That’s what this Star Trek is like. Virtuoso. (And the soundtrack is fine, too!)
5. The triumph of emotion over reason. Or the body over the mind. I don’t think it’s giving anything away if I tell you that Kirk ends up as captain of the Enterprise, and Spock as his first officer, and not the other way around. What exactly, besides hot blue eyes, makes Kirk the superior in terms of command? Spock’s strength is conventionally assumed to be his rationality, his imperviousness to messy emotion. Kirk and Spock are seen as being perfect complements to each other because one embodies logic and the other feeling. But really, Spock has these seething emotions, he’s just better at controlling them. Until he isn’t, and then, since he’s not used to experiencing them in a normal manner, he goes Minnesota-Nordic berserker and ruins everything for himself. Kirk, on the other hand, takes insane risks and is cocky, blah blah blah, but actually, he is the wiser man because he is a blend of both reason and emotion. I’m not even sure he really needs Spock for his cool head, but I’m glad he thinks he does.
6. And the women? Gene, the women! This movie is almost biblical, or okay, definitely mythological in that two of the three main women characters (if “main women characters” is not a total oxymoron) are mothers. And as mothers, they rock! So while I’d like to see some kick-Romulan-hiney females, I can appreciate the fine mother characters.
(How do you say “Happy Mother’s Day” in Klingon?)
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I haven’t seen it yet although my mother went last night in her Star Trek Uniform. I refused to go with her. I went to see the last one with her and she kept yelling “make it so!”.
[...] « Star Trek’s not supposed to make you cry [...]
That just tickles me! Though that particular phrase wasn’t used in this movie, because I believe it was Captain Picard who said that, and he’s obviously not in this one.
We were lucky enough to get to see it in IMAX yesterday…loved it!! Yep, I teared up a little at the beginning
I thought all the actors did an awesome job capturing the mannerisms, expressions, etc. of the original actors and I loved the story of them coming together as a team. Here’s a kick in the behind to the crying baby “mom”!