First-pass thoughts on the new Star Trek movie (2,500 words)

[bironic]

Saw Star Trek: All the Characters Cry Into Darkness last night with a group of local fangirls plus a bonus group ditto who'd picked the same showing. That was a nice follow-up experience to the 2009 Reboot, which I first saw in Boston with my grad school class + significant others + our program administrator. In an attempt to buoy my low

Comments

[lettered]

YOU HAVEN'T EARNED IT, ABRAMS.

I feel like he never earns anything. Everything I've ever watched by him just feels like a bunch of really quite interesting stuff someone put in a blender.

Those reviews are great; thank you for linking them.

[bironic]

Sure! I spent part of the morning skimming Google and clicking on splatty reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. I just read and really enjoyed your post as well, and am about to follow the link over to liviapenn's.

[lettered]

I spent part of the morning skimming Google and clicking on splatty reviews at Rotten Tomatoes

What a good idea. I've just been moping about it for days, and partly I just feel bad that I feel this way. It's nice to hear other people say the same things, but I also don't want to harsh anyone's squee.

[bironic]

Yeah, it's tough, and people's reactions have been clustered at the... poles... of the opinion magnet... uh. They are divided, anyway, and since I fell somewhat in the middle, though closer to the *facepalm* end, reading well-thought-out reviews helped confirm some of my reactions and articulate why do I feel this way.

/probably incoherent comment - bedtime

[lettered]

Yeah, I totally understand people liking this film! I mean, the whitewashing element is never going to be okay, and there are all these moral and ethical issues with it, but if you're willing to allow it to build on your ST feelings, instead of expecting the movie to earn it all over again, then I totally see enjoying this film. But I'm not willing to do that when they've stated diegetically that this is a different universe, and made it quite explicit that it's not your mama's Kirk.

[bironic]

Like they want to eat their Kirk and have him too.

[lettered]

Exactly! This Kirk is cannibalized.

[bironic]

*high-fives you*

[bironic]

if you're willing to allow it to build on your ST feelings, instead of expecting the movie to earn it all over again

You helped me articulate something: It's perfectly fine for STID (or Reboot) to be enhanced by my rest-of-Trek feelings; but it is lazy filmmaking to solely rely on them.

[lettered]

Well, honestly, I don't think the original films are all that great either. TOS is awesome, but the films kinda disappoint me. I don't think TWOK is phenomenal filmmaking either, and it does rely on emotions from TOS and TMP. But I'm kinda alright with that, because they're the same characters. But reboot has made it explicit both diegetically and through characterizations that they're not the same characters, which I'm totally okay with, but it does mean you have to earn my feelings again. I'm not going to care about two random people just because you called them Kirk and Spock.

[lettered]

ALSO YOUR ICON. hahahaha omg I love him so.