I'm already on the 11th "module" of pattern repeats (the pattern is in French - thank goodness for my high school French teacher and babelfish!). So far, it's looking good!
Don't scroll down if you haven't seen Wolverine or Star Trek and you don't want any spoilers for either movie. Because spoilers, they are abounding below... Wolverine is first, then Star Trek, so if you're clever with your mouse, you could read about one without reading about the other...
And for those of you who haven't seen Star Trek yet... I'm just gonna leave this here to tempt you a bit (and as awesome as the trailer is, it still doesn't quite capture just how amazing the movie itself is):
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Wolverine was awesome, despite what they did to Deadpool. Lots of people have objections about what was done to Deadpool's character, but I thought it worked for the purpose of the movie and the plot. Others might disagree. Overall: bone claws, backstory, general awesomeness, pimp cane wielding Gambit. I'm a happy girl. Also, I'm easy for Hugh Jackman. I even liked Kate & Leopold because of him and I greatly dislike Meg Ryan as a general rule.
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Saw Star Trek on Thursday at 7pm in an advanced screening. My first reaction was basically that it's THE MOST AWESOME RESET TO EVER BE MADE IN THE HISTORY OF EVER! BAR NONE! NO, I DON'T CARE!
Seriously, I couldn't get out of my seat even to stretch after the movie was over until the credits had completely finished and the houselights came up and even then I was on a cloud of happy for the next three days. That has never happened to me before, even with LOTR: ROTK, and I cried through the last 45 minutes of that movie the first time I saw it. So. This is saying something. I think I also hyper-ventilated due to awesomeness-overload a few times.
It was really great.
James T. Kirk is a badass. Who likes 20th century rock music, vintage cars, motorcycles and leather. I approve. Spock is pretty badass too. Together they are unstoppably badass. As it should be.
Sulu kicks ass and takes names. Really, really, loved his character in this.
McCoy... OMG, Karl Urban is an amazingly underrated actor. He became McCoy more than any other new actor became their character in this movie. He had down the way DeForest Kelly spoke as McCoy, his facial expressions, the way he walked... Everything! It was incredible. Also, he had some of the best lines. Really quite funny and I loved him.
Scotty and Chekov and Uhura are completely brilliant. Uhura could have been given more to do other than being a love interest for Spock, but there were a lot of other characters and she is, after all, a language specialist. She translates. So... yeah... she's important, but not exactly necessarily in the thick of things a lot of the time. Also... Spock is her former professor... making their relationship a little... questionable on the ethics scale, imho (and if I understood that situation right), because he's still has authority over her at Starfleet Academy. However, I can see why they did it given how much Uhura flirted with him in the early days of TOS.
Others have complained about a few things and I'll tell you why I think these complaints are nit-picky and dumb.
- #1. That the make-up they used for the Orion (the would be the green girl who was Uhura's roommate) Kirk was trying to bone looked fake and was jarring.
Dude, she's supposed to be that color green. That species looks like that. They have green skin, just that color with bright eyes and often times (any more) brightly painted lips so that there's somewhat of a - what I like to call - radioactive cats effect. It's not supposed to look like Rebecca Romijn did when she played Mystique in the X-Men movies, even though you might think that's a "cooler" effect. Just no. Orions always look pretty much just like they did in TOS. Always. It's the way it is. Accept it or GTFO. And if you still thought it looked like the most fake effect ever and you were startled by it so much you laughed and thought she looked ridiculous, I suspect you're not really a Star Trek fan to be perfect frank about it. - #2. Tyler Perry's cameo.
I didn't even notice it a little bit, and I've seen it twice now. The second time, I knew he was in there somewhere and still didn't notice. I think someone's been watching too much Madea. - #3. Kirk and Spock Prime were suspiciously marooned on the same planet.
Delta Vega is what it is. It's the planet that people get marooned on apparently (see TOS episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before"). Go with it. Also, one can easily see that Kirk and Spock would have been put on the same planet since there probably aren't that many M-class planets near Vulcan... Delta Vega being one of the planets in the Vulcan system. Also... It's the planet that Nero and his crew were mining when Romulus was destroyed. So, yeah, makes sense Spock would get dumped there by them.
My little issue with this: Why is Scottie necessarily on the same planet? That was a bit convenient. And I find it a wee-bit coincidental that Kirk and Spock were dumped off close enough together to actually find each other just by chance before making it to the base, but I guess since they were in proximity to a Starfleet station, they were both probably intentionally placed there so that, after trudging through the ice and snow for a while, they would eventually find shelter and not die of exposure. But really, I'm more than willing to let these points slide.
Also didn't have a problem with:
- Winona Ryder being Spock's mom
- Any of the casting
- The new look for the ship
- That Kirk became captain at 25. If you saved Earth from being imploded, I think Starfleet would give you your own ship too.
Things I did have a problem with:
- I have no logical explanation for why there would be water on the floor in some parts of Nero's ship. Were their bilge pumps not working or something (not that they'd have bilge pumps on a space ship as opposed to a regular floats-in-water ship)? I really want an explanation for why they wade through ankle-deep water in space...
- The Nokia thing being in the car, and the "Budweiser Classic" at the bar... Because Earth in Star Trek is supposed to be post-capitalism. I'm not sure they really have brand names in the Trek universe. I'm not sure what explanation there could be for it other than product placements are "the thing to do" in these kinds of movies these days, and personally, that just doesn't fly with me completely when we're talking about STAR TREK for the love of all that's holy in science fiction. I certainly have never seen them in any other Trek movies or shows. So that did give me pause once I thought about it. But, really, I'll let it slide...
Other than that, I think I loved every nanosecond of the movie and can't wait for it to come out on DVD, and can't wait even more for the sequel(s? - please, I pray).
4 comments:
Mom and I went to see it last night with some friends who are dedicated watchers of most things ST.
Loved. It. Karl Urban can totally occupy a spot on my coffee table any day. And that thing with the hypospray was just funny. There were several instances where something happened and I was the only one who was howling with laughter.
Two gripes: Unless Vulcan has a very thin atmosphere, why did the away team not burn up due to friction with said atmosphere at.. a certain point in the movie?
I'll save the other one in case someone else reads this who hasn't seen the movie. :P
Word: Batinot. Sounds French to me. Batinot: French for "batty"?
I think their space suits were supposedly just that awesome they can resist the heat of re-entry. *shrugs* Lord knows, stranger things have happened in Trek.
Karl Urban is a comedic genius. *draws hearts around him* I saw an interview yesterday about how he and Chris Pine were trying to one-up each other there. Chris Pine kept smashing either side of Karl's face with his huge rubber hands and Karl kept hitting him harder and harder with the hypospray and the end result was Chris Pine had some hypospray shaped bruises on his neck by the time they were done... in a funny way, he said. LOL!
Ask away, if you want to. I think anyone who gets so far as to read the comments on this post either must have seen the movie or really don't care about spoilers.
If we are to assume that this movie will be considered part of the Canon:
1. Did Sarek later remarry? His wife is very much in evidence in a number of episodes (either she's really, REALLY aged well since TNG is considerably later than TOS, or he did remarry).
2. Captain Pike's accident and confinement to his wheelchair/semi-vegetative state.
3. Yes. The obvious advertising bothered me, too. Picard mentions in First Contact that by the time Enterprise-E was built, there was no longer any need to view things in terms of monetary value, etc., etc. Basically, what you said: post-capitalist society.
4. What happened to the slug?! It went into Pike's mouth and was never seen or heard from again. ;)
I'm really, REALLY not a purist here since I'm guessing the events in the movie are sort of an alternate timeline since the Romulans figured out how to fiddle with things thanks to their clever theft of Spock-the-Elder's ship. That, and I know next to nothing about the ST universe (read "I'm not a total Trekkie! No, that's not denail." :P)
On the other hand, parts of this seem to be a heavily veiled social commentary. MAHVELOUS. I likes it muchly. The music totally threw me. I was convinced it was Danny Elfman, and when the credits indicated otherwise, I was surprised indeed. :P In a good way.
I know in a lot of places they're calling this movie a "prequel," but it isn't really. It's a reset, something I think media should be a lot more clear about when talking about the film.
This movie is an alternative universe almost entirely to what we've already seen in canon up to this point, starting with the day Kirk was born. In the original canon, Kirk's father never died while he was a child, let alone on the day of his birth. Nero's ship never came through a singularity. Spock not saving Romulus and getting pulled back in time through the singularity set off an entirely new chain of events. This will give JJ Abrams & Co practically total freedom to do whatever they want to in subsequent movies, and maybe even tv shows, if it gets to that point.
The only person to survive as they were from the original time-line was Spock, played by Nemoy... Or as they call him in the credits "Spock Prime."
LOL! Trek is always veiled social commentary... at least, it is when it's good. I'm fairly certain that was one of Roddenberry's original purposes in creating the original show.
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