{"id":982,"date":"2009-05-13T11:15:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/05\/13\/j-j-abrams-awesome-trek-fanfic\/"},"modified":"2009-05-13T11:15:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T18:15:00","slug":"j-j-abrams-awesome-trek-fanfic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2009\/05\/13\/j-j-abrams-awesome-trek-fanfic\/","title":{"rendered":"J.J. Abrams&#8217; Awesome Trek Fanfic!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s my one-line review of the new <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Star Trek<\/span> movie.<\/p>\n<p>D and I saw it yesterday, and we both enjoyed it, but I have to be honest here:  regardless of its provenance, the story still felt more like fan fiction than actual <a href=\"http:\/\/memory-alpha.org\/en\/wiki\/Canon\">canon<\/a>&#8212;<span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span>&#8211;<span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">flavored<\/span>, if you will; much better than <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Enterprise<\/span>, but still not the real thing.<\/p>\n<p>Before I dive in, a couple of non-spoilery remarks:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As the end titles started rolling, I thought:  &#8220;John Cho gets top billing?  Represent, brother!&#8221;  Then I realized the principal cast were listed in alphabetical order (Ben Cross being the second name was a big hint).  Oh well.  At least Cho&#8217;s starring in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1268799\/\">another Harold &amp; Kumar flick<\/a> next year.<\/li>\n<li>The score started out perfectly, with a lone French horn, but the overall tone of the theme music was a bit too martial for me.  Which leads nicely into my next point&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One of my earliest memories is of standing up in my crib and watching television.  The three shows I remember most clearly are <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Space: 1999<\/span>, <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Star Trek<\/span>, and <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Bewitched<\/span>.  (I can just imagine some of you nodding and muttering, &#8220;That explains a lot.&#8221;)  For me, the thing that always distinguished <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Star Trek<\/span> from other shows was its stated mission:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To explore strange new worlds;<br \/>To seek out new life and new civilizations;<br \/>To boldly go where no one has gone before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At its core, <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span> was all about <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">exploration and discovery.<\/span>  The best stories they ever told, IMHO, involved the crew learning something new, either about the universe or about themselves (ideally both), figuring out how something worked, and&#8211;if it was broken&#8211;<span style=\"font-style:italic;\">fixing<\/span> it.  It often also pitted personal principles against rules and regulations (<span style=\"font-style:italic;\">e.g.<\/span>, Kirk vs. Prime Directive), and above all, it emphasized that <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">science works<\/span>.  It wasn&#8217;t always the right answer, and sometimes it was even the cause of the problem, but there was no question that science and research were the key to a greater understanding of our universe and ourselves.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);\">*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The new movie gets the characters right, even while tweaking them a little.  I agree with screenwriter John Rogers that &#8220;[a]lmost every choice was the best possible choice&#8221; in that regard.  You should go read his excellent analysis of <a href=\"http:\/\/kfmonkey.blogspot.com\/2009\/05\/star-trek-and-breaking-rules-spoilers.html\">&#8220;how what will be the most successful movie of the summer kicks conventional screenwriting &#8216;rules&#8217; in the junk.&#8221;<\/a>  You could also read film critic Anthony Lane&#8217;s thoughtful review of the new <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/arts\/critics\/cinema\/2009\/05\/18\/090518crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=all\">&#8220;recklessly rolling plot&#8230; [which] powers along, unheeding of its own absurdity, with drive and confidence,&#8221;<\/a> even if he is a bit of a downer.<\/p>\n<p>I have issues with the new <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span>&#8216;s wacky pseudo-science (yes, even wackier than the usual technobabble), multiple <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">deus ex machina<\/span>s and MacGuffins, and nonsensical villain motivation (hello, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Evil_Overlord_List\">Evil Overlord<\/a>); but, as D said, whenever the story stopped making sense, the filmmakers just threw in a big action scene to distract us.  That&#8217;s one advantage movies have over books, at least in the hand-waving department.  They can always flash something shiny&#8211;or naked, or explodey&#8211;to distract you from a weak story.  It&#8217;s a problem when spectacle overwhelms storytelling (insert Michael Bay joke here), but Abrams understands and respects that balance.<\/p>\n<p>As a longtime fan, I&#8217;m still ambivalent about the massive continuity changes wrought by this reboot.  The alternate reality angle, even more than the Spock\/Uhura &#8216;shipping, makes this seem like fanfic; and though I understand why Abrams and company chose to destroy <strike>Israel<\/strike> Vulcan and kill Amanda, it feels to me like The Powers That Be just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snout.org\/hotsheet_classic\/20020406.shtml\">gave up<\/a> on trying to deal with that culture.  I&#8217;m glad they recognized that Spock is an integral part of <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span>&#8211;you could argue that this is really <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">his<\/span> movie, not Kirk&#8217;s&#8211;but I think his story was already interesting enough, and obliterating his homeworld just seems mean-spirited.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/star_trek_11\/\">At this point<\/a>, a sequel seems inevitable, and maybe the Vulcan diaspora is part of the plan for rewriting the <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span> universe:  to shift the fundamental balance of power in the galaxy away from Vulcan, which was previously depicted as a highly advanced civilization and one of the governing races in the Federation, and toward Earth.  I noticed that while several alien Starfleet officers got screen time in the new movie, very few of them actually had speaking lines:  Kirk&#8217;s obligatory green-skinned honey was little more than a prop, and Scotty&#8217;s little <strike>Ewok<\/strike> friend doesn&#8217;t actually <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">do<\/span> anything useful.  Um, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snout.org\/hotsheet\/Ark\/00000286.shtml\">xenophobic<\/a> much?  Let&#8217;s <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">not<\/span> do that, guys.<\/p>\n<p>To end on an &#8220;up&#8221; note:  I did enjoy all the little in-jokes and callbacks to previous <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span> incarnations, especially the sound effects and the return of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.schlock.net\/movie47s.html\">47s<\/a>.  It&#8217;s a sign that the writers were paying attention to at least some of the details, and it gives me hope that this new <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Trek<\/span> will respect the history of the franchise while putting an interesting and different spin on it.<\/p>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">ADDENDUM:<\/span>  My Facebook friends inform me that Abrams previously and independently did the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.schlock.net\/the47s.html\">47<\/a> thing in <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Alias<\/span>.  Guess Paramount picked the right man for this job, then.)<\/p>\n<p>~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s my one-line review of the new Star Trek movie. D and I saw it yesterday, and we both enjoyed it, but I have to be honest here: regardless of its provenance, the story still felt more like fan fiction&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[13,32,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-sci-tech","category-writing"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}