This'll be a hell of a way to get back into blogging, after all this time, but there are moments when I simply must say something, and I'm pretty sure that's what blogging is for, so here we go.
We saw the new Star Trek movie tonight, after what felt like a very long wait. I'm not going to censor anything here, so look away, ye who want not to be spoiled.
Everything that has been said about it being a great movie is spot on. Fantastic casting, and even though I couldn't see that guy as anything other than Sylar, he still managed to deliver one or two lines that made me believe he was Spock, simply because his impression of Nemoy was perfect. The guy doing Bones was perfect, enjoyed him practically as much as I did the original character (which, I guess, doesn't say much because he was never my favorite character), and while we didn't get much Scotty, he was still delightful. A little too over the top comedy relief, but that wasn't a bad thing. Sulu and his portable, extendo-sword was great.
It was solidly written, aside from a couple random points, VERY well acted, and the casting was fantastic, like I said.
And I did not like it.
It was a GREAT movie. I will tell everyone to see it.
... But I did not like it.
I'm going to be in the minority here, and I know exactly why and I'm perfectly ok with that. Please suffer me my feelings on this matter, though. I can't say for sure, but I might be the only one in here that had as strong an attachment to the original series as I did. It was a very large part of my life right at the time when I was developing who I really was inside. I studied original Trek - I didn't just enjoy it, I STUDIED it. I checked out books from the library, I kept a journal on things I'd noticed about the writing, changes in costumes, character development. It wasn't that I just cared about it as a fun show, it was that I couldn't get enough of the cultural impact it had during the sixties and early seventies. I studied about the writers, about what they thought they were doing, and what they ended up actually doing to society... Hell, I even made little notes on my calendars that said silly things like "Kahn turns fifteen today." In my early teens, I had a long period of studying pop cultural phenomena of the sixties and seventies. I felt compelled to do so - it wasn't just interest, I literally needed to know. Trek was part of this, and was part of me. Before this, I had pretty much been weened on The Next Generation, and later I enjoyed very much fitting the time periods together, finding the holes, discovering homages, etc.
I don't expect anyone to care about all that, and that's not why I wrote it, but it's a piece of me that might explain my feelings about this film. The people who are upset because this film "violates cannon" are fools.
This movie didn't violate cannon.
It obliterated cannon.
And it pretty much steps up to the screen and says, "Hey, you know all that stuff you've loved for the last fifty years? We just made it all go poof."
I know that a lot of the movies were horrible. I know a few of the SERIES were horrible, for god's sake. I know there was a lot to hate about Trek. But to get rid of ALL of it...?
... all of it...
And, of course, I see that unless they wanted to keep making more bad movies trying to salvage what had become of the Trek universe, they HAD to do something like this. I realize that. But I guess I would have been happier if they'd just let it... stop. I would rather all of Star Trek die a peaceful, honored death than to have the entire history erased so it can start again.
And man... they erased the ENTIRE history. They didn't leave a single scrap left for anyone that cared. Kirk isn't even the same person because he doesn't grow up with a dad in this alternate reality. He CAN'T be the same person. Nothing can ever be the same.
As I was explaining to Brian in the car on the way home, it wouldn't have felt so bad if the worm hole had just taken them to an alternate DIMENSION. With that at least you have the feeling, even if it's very bleak, that what you know and love is still out there somewhere. No, the worm hole takes them to the past so that an entire alternate REALITY gets created. There's nothing left to cling to. It's bye bye to everything you knew.
My one flaw with the movie itself was how "old Spock" reacted to all of this. He was noticeably, and appropriately, upset about the destruction of Vulcan. Who wouldn't be. And to consider the entire history of Vulcan for the next hundred and thirty years will never happen... it's devastating. But he didn't seem at all to consider, react to, or even acknowledge the loss of HIS WHOLE LIFE'S MEMORIES. Imagine living as long as he did, and having basically your last hundred and thirty fucking years ERASED. Now you're too old to go back, and you just have to accept that everything that you knew, everything that shaped you, only happened in your own head, and no one will ever share that with you again. It's not the same as losing all your friends because of old age. It's losing all record and acknowledgement that your life, as you knew it, ever existed. I refuse to believe that he'd just be ok with this. I can't feature that he'd just shrug and sing que sera sera.
I feel hollow after watching this movie. Hollow because I know that; unless they want to pull that annoying thing they do in comic books, where one writer decides to blatantly ignore something else another writer has done, and you end up with a zillion different Batman story lines; the time line of Trek that I grew up with, that I studied, that I loved my whole life, will NEVER be touched upon again. Not in movies, not in television series, not in books... it's gone. They've erased it. And I feel like I've lost a friend. Not only a friend, but the entire existence of a friend.
I don't particularly feel like debating this post because I'm actually really sad right now, even though I feel foolish for this sadness, and I have a lingering knowledge that I just watched a really good movie. I know it was a good movie, and I know you are all right. But I feel miserable.
(Originally posted on May 12th, 2009)
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