muddled thoughts on the Star Trek movie
Okay, be honest: after my multiple demonstrations of crabbiness re: remakes, adaptations, Hollywood, and general messing with my stuff, how many of you thought I'd hate it?
I didn't! At all! This is not a review, obviously! This is me not wanting to write a review yet, because even though I didn't think it was a great film, I sure as hell enjoyed it.
So, my history with Trek is thus: I grew up watching TNG, and loved it. Then DS9 started, and it didn't have any of "my people" on it, and I was bored. (I later fell in love with Alexander Siddig of course, so maybe I should have stuck around.) Tried a few eps of Voyager. Didn't stick. So basically, I thought I was a lapsed TNG fan.
Until I finally watched TOS a few years ago. What blew me away probably wasn't just the show itself, but that I liked it so much. I'd always assumed I wouldn't--that the philosophy of TNG and specifically Picard's leadership style would win out for me. I'd heard Kirk was basically a womanizing jerk who captain-chopped his way out of every problem, and believed it. I WAS SO WRONG. Also, he's just not my type AT ALL, though Spock is. And that leads to the other weird thing--having always assumed I was a "Spock girl," because I am also a Holmes girl, liked Data, etc, I couldn't believe how much I loved Kirk. Which sort of made me love him more.
This is rapidly getting off topic, but the thing about Kirk--Shatner!Kirk, because regardless of how well Pine did I think I owe my love to what Shatner brought to him--is that yes, he's absurdly full of himself, he's kind of a douche, but he's also legitimately awesome. He's not nearly as "bad tropes of masculinity" as I was led to believe, either, and for whatever reason the chemistry, both with Shatner-as-Kirk and Kirk-with-Spock-and-Bones won me over entirely. You've probably heard me say this before, but I will defend to my dying day Shatner's acting in the early years. Kirk's a larger than life character. It's like asking Orson Welles to relax. By season 3 I see the stuff that gets parodied, but I really think he's great early on. And in The Intruder. He's also the only person I've ever seen speak Esperanto with any conviction.
So, yeah. I like Kirk. And because I thought that my love of Kirk was tied to Shatner's charm, along with a lot of stuff I'd heard Abrams say about the new film, I thought I'd hate it. I was okay with Quinto as Spock, because I thought he was a good enough actor to carry it off and because the character is cool enough to not require sheer charisma. But I assumed Pine had been chosen for his generic good looks, and not that quality of making someone I assume is a dick into someone less dickly. The moment that I was convinced, however, was when Kirk in the bar admits he didn't only have sex with farm animals. That was it. I was done.
Here's the thing: for me, this film was like fanfiction. It wasn't the original, it's not going to replace it, and maybe the characters aren't exactly the ones I'm familiar with. But it's okay. It got me there. There was enough there that I could layer over my considerable regard for them and find new things to be delighted by. Perhaps because the original was so silly anyway, none of it harmed my prior devotion. And I've never liked Scotty--so it was nice to finally do so now. Going into it cold may not have worked very well, because I think I was responding to my emotional baggage, and the legacy of it all, and the film did a good job of letting me do that.
What was great about the film was that no one did an impersonation of the other actors--though I detected some as Kirk came back on the bridge after being officially made captain of the Enterprise, at the end, and sat all primly in the chair. One disappointment was Nimoy, who... didn't really seem to be playing Spock at all, which was sad.
It's funny, because it could so easily have gone another way. I don't typically like J.J. Abrams. I dislike most big Hollywood blockbuster films, for reasons which I consider legitimate though I do not in any way think that makes people who like them--who are, after all, the majority--tasteless or stupid. I just happen to like different things. And I'm kind of astonished I liked this so much. I don't know if I should see it again, because then I'd have to start poking holes in it, and I'd be bored by all the action stuff which, honestly, did anyone think was the point? I'd still rather see it than The Motion Picture again. But anyway, it pushed all my buttons, and I'm happy and surprised I enjoyed it like I did, and it's made me very distracted this morning as I try to calculate whether I should buy TOS on blu-ray (I don't have it at all, so it's not a needless replacement).
I may even start reading fic.
I didn't! At all! This is not a review, obviously! This is me not wanting to write a review yet, because even though I didn't think it was a great film, I sure as hell enjoyed it.
So, my history with Trek is thus: I grew up watching TNG, and loved it. Then DS9 started, and it didn't have any of "my people" on it, and I was bored. (I later fell in love with Alexander Siddig of course, so maybe I should have stuck around.) Tried a few eps of Voyager. Didn't stick. So basically, I thought I was a lapsed TNG fan.
Until I finally watched TOS a few years ago. What blew me away probably wasn't just the show itself, but that I liked it so much. I'd always assumed I wouldn't--that the philosophy of TNG and specifically Picard's leadership style would win out for me. I'd heard Kirk was basically a womanizing jerk who captain-chopped his way out of every problem, and believed it. I WAS SO WRONG. Also, he's just not my type AT ALL, though Spock is. And that leads to the other weird thing--having always assumed I was a "Spock girl," because I am also a Holmes girl, liked Data, etc, I couldn't believe how much I loved Kirk. Which sort of made me love him more.
This is rapidly getting off topic, but the thing about Kirk--Shatner!Kirk, because regardless of how well Pine did I think I owe my love to what Shatner brought to him--is that yes, he's absurdly full of himself, he's kind of a douche, but he's also legitimately awesome. He's not nearly as "bad tropes of masculinity" as I was led to believe, either, and for whatever reason the chemistry, both with Shatner-as-Kirk and Kirk-with-Spock-and-Bones won me over entirely. You've probably heard me say this before, but I will defend to my dying day Shatner's acting in the early years. Kirk's a larger than life character. It's like asking Orson Welles to relax. By season 3 I see the stuff that gets parodied, but I really think he's great early on. And in The Intruder. He's also the only person I've ever seen speak Esperanto with any conviction.
So, yeah. I like Kirk. And because I thought that my love of Kirk was tied to Shatner's charm, along with a lot of stuff I'd heard Abrams say about the new film, I thought I'd hate it. I was okay with Quinto as Spock, because I thought he was a good enough actor to carry it off and because the character is cool enough to not require sheer charisma. But I assumed Pine had been chosen for his generic good looks, and not that quality of making someone I assume is a dick into someone less dickly. The moment that I was convinced, however, was when Kirk in the bar admits he didn't only have sex with farm animals. That was it. I was done.
Here's the thing: for me, this film was like fanfiction. It wasn't the original, it's not going to replace it, and maybe the characters aren't exactly the ones I'm familiar with. But it's okay. It got me there. There was enough there that I could layer over my considerable regard for them and find new things to be delighted by. Perhaps because the original was so silly anyway, none of it harmed my prior devotion. And I've never liked Scotty--so it was nice to finally do so now. Going into it cold may not have worked very well, because I think I was responding to my emotional baggage, and the legacy of it all, and the film did a good job of letting me do that.
What was great about the film was that no one did an impersonation of the other actors--though I detected some as Kirk came back on the bridge after being officially made captain of the Enterprise, at the end, and sat all primly in the chair. One disappointment was Nimoy, who... didn't really seem to be playing Spock at all, which was sad.
It's funny, because it could so easily have gone another way. I don't typically like J.J. Abrams. I dislike most big Hollywood blockbuster films, for reasons which I consider legitimate though I do not in any way think that makes people who like them--who are, after all, the majority--tasteless or stupid. I just happen to like different things. And I'm kind of astonished I liked this so much. I don't know if I should see it again, because then I'd have to start poking holes in it, and I'd be bored by all the action stuff which, honestly, did anyone think was the point? I'd still rather see it than The Motion Picture again. But anyway, it pushed all my buttons, and I'm happy and surprised I enjoyed it like I did, and it's made me very distracted this morning as I try to calculate whether I should buy TOS on blu-ray (I don't have it at all, so it's not a needless replacement).
I may even start reading fic.