Start Wreck: The Linkage (No spoilers outside the cuts)

[prog]

I saw Star Trek and enjoyed it very much. If you like cool shit, you'll probably like this movie. Lilek's thoughts on it jibe with mine, more or less.

I had cortezopossum's summary of " they managed to screw up everything, and yet it worked" in mind as I watched, but I don't think any apologies for canon-drift are really necessary. The producers made room for

Comments

[radiotelescope]

I had a great time watching the Star Trek movie and would totally go see it again this weekend. With people.

I went in without reading commentary and (like prog above) did not think anything of the miniskirts. Then I came home and read commentary and agreed with the people who said, like jadelennox above, that they could perfectly well have skipped the miniskirts and the movie would have been better for it. (For a start, it means they can't show any female Starfleet officer over the age of 30 or the rank of lieutenant, unless she's sitting behind a desk. This is a crazy strained situation to put your scriptwriters in. No, I never noticed this about TOS either.)

Anyway, aside from costuming, nothing about the movie made me cringe. Uhura was a major character (a larger part of the plot than Scotty or Sulu) and, to my eyes, the more active partner in her (nonspoil) romantic relationship. Her roommate was a minor character but not portrayed unhealthily. Kirk was a hound but the plot didn't admire him for it. (And the last Star Trek movie I went to featured Marina Syrtis saying "I think my boobs are firming up". So much better than that.)

I don't want to argue solely from low expectations, but given Abrams's choice of premise -- an ensemble movie with the TOS core crew as written, focussing on and thus reconsidering Kirk and Spock -- this was the result. Additional female roles would necessarily have been background scenery or one-line cameos at best. An improvement, but not something whose lack spoiled the movie for me.

It was fundamentally *dumb*, plotwise, but look, it's a movie. Watch TV series for plot, they've got time for it.

[prog]

The plot was hella dumb, but I would push back against anyone who would see that as a demerit against the whole picture. The movie is a big, dumb, lovable doggie. I wanted to hug it.

I have read complaints along the lines of "What, nobody on those planets containing entire spacefaring civilizations could do anything about this threat?!" But I was as blind to this as I was to the miniskirts, because the movie had its paws on my chest and was licking my face and I was laughing.

[radtea]

Apparently the plot is deeper than you think!