Remember my accurate predictions about Watchmen, right before I saw it? Star Trek gets the same treatment after the fold...
If you're interested in a no spoilers (so long as you've seen the trailers) story about the people who made Star Trek- which opens on May 8th- go read this NY Times.com article. (thanks Tom)
If not, I'm going to quote from it anyway, to illustrate my thoughts that the Star Trek movie isn't going to be nearly as good as so many people are saying/wanting/needing it is/to be.
First, it's J J Abrams, director of Mission Impossible: III (I will give him it was better than John Wu's; but that's like being less retarded than the most retarded retard) along with other shitty shit shitshit.
There's a LOT of qualifying in the article. They are desperately trying to ensure fans that their beloved show/series/movies/franchise isn't being ass-raped by drunken clowns:
For the “Trek” faithful there are plenty of nods to past television episodes and movies, familiar catchphrases and Kirk’s notorious solution to a supposedly unwinnable mission simulation. But there is also a conscious effort to inscribe this “Trek” in the storytelling traditions popularized by Joseph Campbell, in which heroes must suffer loss and abandonment before they rise to the occasion.
[...]
Though their revisions may be contentious, the filmmakers said they were necessary; the “Star Trek” empire entrusted to them has been in dire straits.
The one that swayed me the most was:
Mr. Abrams said that throughout the production process Mr. Orci and Mr. Lindelof, both acolytes of “Trek” history, were there to keep an eye on him. The filmmakers also received the blessing of Leonard Nimoy, who created the role of Spock and agreed to reprise the character in the film as a wizened old man.
“Any fan who would think that it’s not ‘Trek’ has to say that to Leonard Nimoy’s face,” Mr. Orci said. “Don’t talk to me, talk to Spock.”
But then I remembered Nimoy really hated being identified as Spock for years. Sure, he's accpeted it all now; but my impression of Nimoy is that he's a pompous jackass. Really, only Gene Roddenberry's opinion would sway me. Not his wife's, and certainly not Rick Berman's opinion. But Mr Roddenberry is dead, so: Fuck You, Abrams, no swaying for you!
That's not all, but it is a large portion, of the qualifying. However, that's as much as I care to share. (Read more qualification at the link already provided.) In general, that level of "But it won't suck because..." in an article sets off my Suck-o-Meter alarms, big time! If it didn't suck, would you really need to tell me it didn't suck that much? "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" {Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2; I looked it up to make sure I wrote it correctly.}
Now, here's why I think the movie is going to blow:
Mr. Abrams and his partners are guys with mainstream pop-culture aspirations; their forte is taking on genres with finite but dedicated fan bases — science fiction, fantasy and horror — and making them accessible to wider audiences. And what they had in mind for their “Star Trek” movie is a film that is consistent with 43 years of series history but not beholden to it.
Re-parse that into non-marketing-ese:
Mr. Abrams and his partners are people who want to make lots of money and have lots of people like them; thy are exceptional at taking sub-culture and bleaching it, dumbing it down, and scrubbing away it's filthy underground musk until it's stupid enough for any idiot to get moist over all the pretty people and colors/explosions. And what they had in mind for their "Star Trek" movie is a film that is not beholden to 43 years of series history, the intentions of Gene Rodenberry, or anything that won't increase their profits- principles, for instance.
A couple self-explanatory bits:
This:
there is also a conscious effort to inscribe this “Trek” in the storytelling traditions popularized by Joseph Campbell, in which heroes must suffer loss and abandonment before they rise to the occasion.
This:
Perhaps more audaciously, this “Star Trek” also has a time-travel story line that essentially gives those on its creative team license to amend internal “Trek” history as they need to, and they aren’t timid about exercising it. (For example the villains of the movie are Romulans, even though the Enterprise’s first encounter with this alien race occurs in a well-known original “Trek” episode.)
Though their revisions may be contentious, the filmmakers said they were necessary
And:
Despite their collective reverence for “Star Trek” — and “Star Wars,” and Indiana Jones, and X-Men, and other cultural artifacts of their awkward adolescence — none of them are total “Trek” completists (not even Mr. Orci, who once owned a telephone shaped like the Enterprise). They say that makes them the ideal candidates to upgrade Gene Roddenberry’s creation for 21st-century audiences.
Before having been associated with a movie he hopes will attract all the fans, plus the not-fans:
ENGAGE J. J. Abrams in conversation for even a few minutes and he will gladly confess the role that “Star Trek” played in his cultural coming of age. “I was not a fan,” he said recently.
And After:
“I now consider myself a Trekkie,” he declared, “which I literally could not have ever imagined saying to anyone.”
“which I literally could not have ever imagined saying to anyone."
Mr. Abrams said his responsibility was not to the “Trek” loyalists, but “to create a movie that would be for moviegoers who love an adventure, and movies that are funny and scary and exciting — not ‘Star Trek’ fans, necessarily, but not to exclude them either.”
I'm fucking glad we're not gonna get excluded! Especially since we're the after thought, and not the focus! Yay!
What remains to be seen is whether the patient, thoughtful and deeply philosophical tradition of “Star Trek” is compatible with a “Star Trek” movie that is variously flashy, frenetic, dirty, slapsticky and sufficiently steeped in popular culture to accommodate both the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage” and a cameo by Tyler Perry.
Look, there's an ass ton more of this crap over there, go read it. But I want to end with one more:
“We’ve become so familiar with the idea of space travel because of so many movies and TV shows that it’s lost its adventure and its possibility, its sense of wonder,” Mr. Abrams said. “Forty-three years ago it was not a boring idea.”
Let's take this out of marketing-ese again:
"The whole concept of Star Trek was how cool Space Travel was. It's not anymore, so we're gonna dump what I see as the main concept. Ha ha, fanboys, fuck me? FUCK YOU!"
Okay, so that last bit may not have actually been in there; but my translator assures me she doesn't want to be beaten with the rubber hose, and her work tends to be pretty damn accurate.
He doesn't get what Star Trek was about. It wasn't about Joseph Cambell and SPACE TRAVEL!; those were tricks to discuss things. That's when Star Trek is at it's best, when it's speculative fiction- when it's using these future star ships, technologies, and aliens to explore contemporary things (like race) in a way that people won't just close down and vigorously ignore. Putting it in the future with aliens makes it easier for people to think about. Instead of shutting down, they think; and Star Trek blossoms.
And we know Abrams is going to throw in some pandering god references. But look back at Star Trek: it was the most relevant and exciting in TOS (the Original Series) when Roddenberry made it rational and secular. It was worst in DS9 (Deep Space 9) and Voyager, where they were constantly dealing with god and their personal spiritualities. Except they weren't issues, except as things characters refused to give up.
So, no philosophy, no social commentary, no strict science-based rationality (even from Spock); but up the pretty visuals. Down on space travel, up on time travel; down on Trek canon, up on new, easy to grasp Campbell-ian backgrounds/plots.
It's going to be pretty and very very stupid- like Jenny McCarthy, but pretty.
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