Over-share Sci-fi Geekery (just thought I should warn you)
Okay, so I have a confession that I never thought I'd make: I have a deep, abiding (and possibly unholy) love for the new Star Trek movie. I'm about a generation too young to have watched TOS when it was new, and it seems like whenever I see reruns of it, there's about a 50% chance of Tribbles, but I've never really gotten into the first Trek that much. I just couldn't get Kirk; he irritated the crap out of me. I liked Spock (who doesn't like Spock? No, don't answer that, I'd like to keep my faith in humanity) and Scotty, but on the whole, the series didn't really resonate with me and I couldn't watch much of it before I had to change the channel.
This is not to say I don't like Star Trek; I grew up on Next Gen, liked Voyager and loved Enterprise (mostly). DS9 wasn't really my thing, but that's a different discussion.
I went to see Star Trek with pretty low expectations; I didn't expect to hate it but I didn't really think I'd like it, either. Really I just thought it'd be okay and at worst it was two hours of my life worshiping fruitlessly at the altar of Roddenberry. But it was awesome.
I figured out in later years why I didn't really (and still don't much) care for TOS: mostly it's Kirk. TOS is Kirk's show and Kirk bugs the hell out of me: shoot this, flirt with that--I just don't like it. But this Kirk has a past, has smarts, has other reasons for being than chasing skirts and blowing shit up (also, he... doesn't talk... like this). Which is not to say there's nothing getting blown up in the new movie. Blowing shit up is a very big thing. It's also a very bad thing, which TOS (in my memory) seemed to gloss over.
But it's not just Kirk that's different: Spock shows real emotion. Granted, older!Spock tries to hide it (though the bridge choking shows he's not as successful as he'd like.) We get to see not just the human side of Spock, but the struggle between his humanity and his Vulcan-ness (there must be a better word for that). Being half human certainly doesn't help with the deep, seething mass of emotions Vulcan keep so fiercely in check and here we get to see him fight with that. This is a Spock who doesn't quite have it down and looses his shit more than once on-screen. Much as I liked Spock before, that was mainly for his sly digs and subtle humor. Here, he's also approachable and that makes a big difference (not that he's approachable for the characters, necessarily, but I as an audience member felt I had more in common with this Spock than TOS Spock.)
Scotty I"m not sure I can even say much about him but this: he was hilarious and I liked him a lot. But I liked him anyway and for pretty much the same reasons. So let's move on.
Uhura. I never liked her much on the show. She just... wasn't interesting to me. Looking at Star Trek as an historical document (which, wow I guess it is, if we're going with history of science fiction shows) it's great that they had not only a woman but a black woman as one of the major bridge crew, but as an older person I started to really dislike a lot of the things about the females of the first Trek. What's with the uniforms? And the soft focus lens on every close-up is irritating to the point of teeth-grinding for me. Also, who has the time to put their hair up like that every day? But movie-Uhura is different, too. She's smart, she's feisty, she knows what she wants and goes for it (and heaven help you if you're in her way) and she's allowed to show emotion without being defined as nothing but that. Okay, so she still had the damn mini-dress (though thankfully not as short), but I'll look past that for the practical ponytail she keeps her hair in. This is a hairstyle that someone can actually get some work done in.
Finally, Sulu's CuisineArt sword fighting. It was awesome and I loved how the "combat training" that we were supposed to laugh at was actually useful. I loved the fact he had a sword on him and as soon as he said what his training was in, I knew we were supposed to think he'd bomb, because what kind of idiot brings fencing skills to fisticuffs. So I was less than surprised but no less cheered when he busted out the sword. What kind of person brings a sword onto a spaceship? I'm not really sure, but I think it's cool.
Certainly, this reboot causes some problems. They pretty much wiped the entire slate clean and started fresh, because while the basic information about the original characters is the same, so much is different that there's no real way to mesh this with the previous Kirk-and-the-gang Trek and that probably pisses some people off. But I'd be really interested to see what they do with this, if they make another movie or a new-old series out of it. And if they don't, there's still this one and for all it's flaws (plot holes you could pilot the Enterprise through, questions that don't get answered, things that get tidied up too easily, etc.) I really liked it.
This is not to say I don't like Star Trek; I grew up on Next Gen, liked Voyager and loved Enterprise (mostly). DS9 wasn't really my thing, but that's a different discussion.
I went to see Star Trek with pretty low expectations; I didn't expect to hate it but I didn't really think I'd like it, either. Really I just thought it'd be okay and at worst it was two hours of my life worshiping fruitlessly at the altar of Roddenberry. But it was awesome.
I figured out in later years why I didn't really (and still don't much) care for TOS: mostly it's Kirk. TOS is Kirk's show and Kirk bugs the hell out of me: shoot this, flirt with that--I just don't like it. But this Kirk has a past, has smarts, has other reasons for being than chasing skirts and blowing shit up (also, he... doesn't talk... like this). Which is not to say there's nothing getting blown up in the new movie. Blowing shit up is a very big thing. It's also a very bad thing, which TOS (in my memory) seemed to gloss over.
But it's not just Kirk that's different: Spock shows real emotion. Granted, older!Spock tries to hide it (though the bridge choking shows he's not as successful as he'd like.) We get to see not just the human side of Spock, but the struggle between his humanity and his Vulcan-ness (there must be a better word for that). Being half human certainly doesn't help with the deep, seething mass of emotions Vulcan keep so fiercely in check and here we get to see him fight with that. This is a Spock who doesn't quite have it down and looses his shit more than once on-screen. Much as I liked Spock before, that was mainly for his sly digs and subtle humor. Here, he's also approachable and that makes a big difference (not that he's approachable for the characters, necessarily, but I as an audience member felt I had more in common with this Spock than TOS Spock.)
Scotty I"m not sure I can even say much about him but this: he was hilarious and I liked him a lot. But I liked him anyway and for pretty much the same reasons. So let's move on.
Uhura. I never liked her much on the show. She just... wasn't interesting to me. Looking at Star Trek as an historical document (which, wow I guess it is, if we're going with history of science fiction shows) it's great that they had not only a woman but a black woman as one of the major bridge crew, but as an older person I started to really dislike a lot of the things about the females of the first Trek. What's with the uniforms? And the soft focus lens on every close-up is irritating to the point of teeth-grinding for me. Also, who has the time to put their hair up like that every day? But movie-Uhura is different, too. She's smart, she's feisty, she knows what she wants and goes for it (and heaven help you if you're in her way) and she's allowed to show emotion without being defined as nothing but that. Okay, so she still had the damn mini-dress (though thankfully not as short), but I'll look past that for the practical ponytail she keeps her hair in. This is a hairstyle that someone can actually get some work done in.
Finally, Sulu's CuisineArt sword fighting. It was awesome and I loved how the "combat training" that we were supposed to laugh at was actually useful. I loved the fact he had a sword on him and as soon as he said what his training was in, I knew we were supposed to think he'd bomb, because what kind of idiot brings fencing skills to fisticuffs. So I was less than surprised but no less cheered when he busted out the sword. What kind of person brings a sword onto a spaceship? I'm not really sure, but I think it's cool.
Certainly, this reboot causes some problems. They pretty much wiped the entire slate clean and started fresh, because while the basic information about the original characters is the same, so much is different that there's no real way to mesh this with the previous Kirk-and-the-gang Trek and that probably pisses some people off. But I'd be really interested to see what they do with this, if they make another movie or a new-old series out of it. And if they don't, there's still this one and for all it's flaws (plot holes you could pilot the Enterprise through, questions that don't get answered, things that get tidied up too easily, etc.) I really liked it.