Re: So has anybody seen the new Trek

On May 9, 9:06�am, Kurt Busiek <k...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2009-05-09 04:17:48 -0700, 23vl <2389...@xxxxxxxxx> said:

What do you think?

I liked it. �It was a lot of fun.

kdb

I saw it last night. On the level of pure spectacle, it was quite
well done -- I'd put it a couple of notches below the spectacle of the
Star Wars II and III episodes.

On the level of story, well, it had some entertaining elements but it
wasn't very well constructed, and they showed only a sketchy famiarity
with the existing mythos -- which they got away with by claiming this
to take place in an alternate timeline. They turned Kirk into a
transcendent superhuman comic-book character with very limited human
motivations, which was disappointing. Some of the story elements were
just dropped without explanation -- the slug used on Pike, for
instance. And they introduced huge new problems into the Star Trek
universe -- The destruction of . . . a certain planet . . . and
the . . . person . . . seeking a new colony . . . and the diplomatic
and political problems that would have been caused by the assault on
the Klingons at a time before the Klingons were integrated into the
Federation was simply dropped.

The impression I had while all this was going on was that it was
somehow *thin* like coffee with skim milk rather than half-and-half
(if that's your kind of thing), Star Trek light. Since Star Trek
wasn't all that substantial to start with, the dumbing down of the
content was really noticeable. And at the end they have Kirk, still
in his third year at Star Fleet Academy -- well, it simply wan't
credible in any sense. Sacrificing credibilty for a *feel*good*ending
kind of shows the lack of ability and lack of respect of the
filmmakers.

I guess you could also say it shows why there is considered to be a
big divide in Hollywood between television writers and production
personnel and film people. This Star Trek was a really good
television production that almost but not quite transcended the
conventions. By way of contrast, Babylon 5 started out with a feature
film, and the TV show gave us a filmmaker doing good work in
television, about the way (though not on the same level as) the first
couple seasons of David Lynch's Twin Peaks did. There are other
examples.
.

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