Aw geez, not this @#$@ again

[lazypadawan]

With New!Trek upon us, the ugliest rivalry since the Yankees and the Red Sox could flare up again. First to light a fire and throw in some kerosene is our old buddy Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty in the flick. Pegg is famously a PT basher but now he thinks SW has no integrity!! From an interview with New York Timeout's website:

Star Trek, in the end, seems to have won the war, because it maintained its integrity, and now the effects are catching up as well. So you sort of get your Star Trek cake and eat it, too. I'm sure Star Wars fans around the world will want to kill me for saying that, and see me as a traitor, because I've always been a very outspoken fan of Star Wars, but I've never been publicly keen on the new ones.

It makes you want to look up at the ceiling and yell, "KHAAAAAAN!!!" Integrity? WTF is he talking about? Lucas made the movies he wanted to make, not kowtowing to fanboy nation or movie critics or internet dweebs. That's integrity.

Please tell me again why do people at Lucasfilm suck up to this guy?

Comments

[ladyaeryn.livejournal.com]

The skies should have been orange, but thats a nit-pick.

Yes, that's what I was referring to - while a seemingly minor thing, yes, what was the point of such a change? How hard would it be in this day and age to make an orange/red sky?

I can't really comment on the rest, as I still haven't seen the movie yet.

After suffering through Voyager and Enterprise (apologies to any who like those shows) it would have been nice to find Trek that I could get excited about again.

I liked the first few seasons of Voyager okay enough - it had a good premise, truly "where no man has gone before" - but grew annoyed with their falling back on the Borg so much, and I never got into Enterprise. (Seeing one of the actors viciously bash AOTC at a con didn't encourage me to, either.) I know what you mean, though - I think the last time I was really "excited" for new Trek was First Contact. Which was... 13 years ago? Part of why I really, really want to like this movie.

[(Anonymous)]

*So the film is indeed a reboot then, right? It exists in a different reality/universe/continuity from Shatner and Nimoy's Kirk and Spock? (Critics and journalists seem to be confused over whether the film is a prequel or a reboot. I've even come across an item in which a journalist describes the film as both a prequel AND a reboot. Well, it can be either a prequel or reboot. It can't be both.)*

It is, in my opinion, definitely a reboot. There are enough differences between this version and the original that it can only be read that way for me. I think the intention of the filmmakers was to re-write Trek history, mapping this new version onto the old, thus supplanting it. In that they have, mercifully, failed. You can set your old Trek DVD’s on the shelf, that universe is done, this is another place.

It is also however, a prequel. Because it is set in these characters early years, showing how they progress ( with baffling speed) from cadets to officers and star ship crew, it can be read as a sort of Star Trek begins as well.



*What was the point of such a change? How hard would it be in this day and age to make an orange/red sky?*

I don't think it was a conscious change. To be fair, I don’t think anyone stood up and said; “I don’t like this orange sky hooey. I want it blue. BLUE! Damn it to hell…” I think they just got it wrong.

*... I really, really want to like this movie.*

I hope that you do. Genuinely!

I do intend seeing it again. I want to try and find a way to get past some of the things that really do bother me, get over myself, and try and develop an appreciation for whats been done here. Because it is a good movie. The cast are uniformly good, to great. The script is, honestly, a little ropey in places, and wouldn’t really hold up to stress testing, but Abrams direction smooths over most of it and keeps the whole thing screaming along with lots of pace and energy. If I wasn’t such a fan of Star Trek, and so trenchent in what I think it is, and how it should be assembled, I would probably have loved it. As it is it waddles and quacks, but for me it just doesn’t have the duck’s soul.