in which our hero goes on and on and on and doubts anyone will read the whole thing
I've come to a conclusion....
J. J. Abrahms is a fucking genius...
Bare with me now, I've not seen Cloverfield, Fringe or Alias, I thought Mission Impossible 3 was in no way supperior to the second which was in no way supperior to the first... I am, however, a Lost fan.. Yes, it has problems, but I still find it compelling..
I'm basing my statement, that Mssr. Abrahms is possessing of a beautiful mind, if you will, entirely on Star Trek.
It should come to noone's supprise that I am a big ol' nerd, and a part of that is a longstanding and abiding love of Star Trek.. I wasn' alive for the original series, and I caught onto Next Gen. near the end, my dad was a fan of both in their time, but I was 7 when Next Gen first aired, by the time I was 12-13, into the show's later years, I caught on.. Lucky for me this is about the same time of my first true Star Trek passion, Deep Space 9... I don't know why Deep Space Nine was the one that really piqued my interest and kicked off my intense Trek love, but it did, and as a result, throughout my teenage years, I watched every episode of DS9 and eventually Next Gen.. While I was in High School, my father eventually ammased a collection of every Trek movie on VHS, we watched them, many times (I proudly state that we watched Wrath of Khan when it was on cable the other day), we went to the theaters to see the films as they came out durring those years... When I was about 19-20 for christmas my mother, who is not a trekkie (and yes, I prefer the tradtional trekkie to the douchey trekker) gave my a Star Trek encyclopedia, all the notable people, places, things and episodes involved in all Trek up to that point. I was unable to watch Voyager or Enterprise when they first aired, as Youngstown has a shitty history with local UPN channels, and I spent alot of those years cableless, and I'll admit to what little Voyager I was able to see wasn't the best Trek ever, and I didn't seek it out much.. However, durring my twenties, with the advent of the DVR, one of the first uses we put the machine to was to seek out all Trek episodes, of every series, durring these past nine years, I've seen all Next Gen and DS9 again, as well as Voyager and Enterprise, every episode.. I've seen some of Orignal series, and as much as I love that cast, that crew from the movies, I find it difficult to watch those dated episodes...
I think I am a quindisential Second Gen Trek fan, my dad was their for the original, and I caught on when it was more sleek, more polished...
My nerd-ego sufficiantly puffed up, onto the subject at hand, this new thing coming out on the movie screens which may or may not be Star Trek.
I'm not sure about the movie, I don't know what to expect.. But I do think it was approached and handled extremely well by the people who made it.. They made a comic book movie.
Think about it, they've got an origin story about a group of heroes that are enough part of pop culture that everyone is sort of aware of them, but still have a fairly small core group of very devoted fans! It's exactly the same way Hollywood approaches a comic book movie, and say what you will about the quality of those films, you cannot deny that they are hits.. More then they are misses, these comic book films are raking in the money, hand over fist...
As a Star Trek fan, I watch the trailers for the film, and I look for the Star Trek, I look for the things that make me think this is a Star Trek movie, and I'll be honest, I don't see them.. I see X-Men meets Mission Impossible in space.. And that's why the movie's gonna be a success.. Not because it's Star Trek, the fact that it's a Star Trek movie is secondary to why this movie will be successful.. The movie will work because it's new, exactly like a comic book movie does, Spiderman attracted non-Spidey fans (myself included) not because it was Spiderman, but because it was something that people were vaugly familiar with, but bigger, and newer, and without needing 50 years of comic cannon knowledge to get behind.. This movie has that, you don't need to have ever seen an episode of the Orignal Series to get into this movie, and to understand it from the begining, all the trailers are making it appear bigger and better then you've ever seen Trek before, they've hit all the right marketing points to make this a success.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think the movie will be a hit, but will it be good, I don't know.. It'll be good enough to be a hit, but will it hold up to my scrutiny, the love of a Trek fan.. I wanna like it, I'm going in prepared to like it but will there be enough Star Trek? Enough connection to episodes and to movies to things that we as fans know and love to make it Star Trek? My guess is yes, that's the easy part.. All those things will be there, just like they are in X-Men.. And maybe, just maybe, they'll hit enough of those things to even make it feel like Star Trek, and trekkies know what I'm talking about.. Hell, fans should know what I'm talking about.. Medium, be it books, comics, shows, movies, they have a feel to them.. So you watch something like Harry Potter, and you want it to give you the same feeling the books did.. I'm most afraid this movie is going to lose that feeling.. That Star Trek feeling that almost made me tear up durring the orchestreal themes to DS9 and Voyager, that proud feeling that we as human beings can eventually move past our wars and poverty and cruelness and embrace technoledgy, use it to our advantage and seek exploration into the stars..
Yeah, I know, my uber-nerd is showing, but that's what Trek is about, my friends.
Seacrest OUT!