Star Trek

Last night I did something very unusual--I went to see a movie in the theater. Being basically cheap and anti-social, I long ago decided that it wasn't worth the effort seeing something in the theaters versus waiting for it to come out on DVD. Why sit in an uncomfortable seat, forced to either miss part of the movie or threaten exploding bladder induced uraemia (which killed Cassanova, you know, because he was too polite to ask to be excused from a dinner party--or so I vaguely recall) in a theater full of strangers when I could just buy the DVD (and probably pay the same as I did for the ticket) and watch it from the comfort of my own recliner? And, now that I have an HD TV, there's even less point to seeing it in the theater. No, I don't have surround sound, but surround sound usually just sounds like LOUD to me in the theater anyway (christ that sounds old-man-y. You damn surround sounds! Get off my lawn!).

Anyway, I'm generally against seeing movies in the theater. The last movie I saw in the theater was "30 Days of Night," which I saw with my friend Brian in the early afternoon of the day before he got married (and I only went because he wanted to, I wouldn't have seen it at all, much less in the theater). Before that, I saw "300," and before that, "X-Men 3." And those are the last three movies I've seen in the theater. So, yeah, three movies in the last three years.

But I went to see Star Trek last night, and I'm awfully glad I did. It was actually a phone call that I received from my friend Aaron that encouraged me to go. Tuesday night, around 9:30, Aaron called. He claimed the movie, "Changed his life." Now, Aaron is a touch prone to exaggeration, which is part of his charm, but he was genuinely excited about the movie. And the critics tended to agree (it's at 96% with 235/246 reviews positive on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about as good as I can remember ANY movie, much less a sci-fi movie being), so I decided to see it.

Now, I should justify my credentials just a bit (or downplay them, perhaps). On a nerdiness scale of Charlton Heston to Bill Gates, I'm about a 6.5. I actually prefer science fiction and fantasy stories to most "normal" fiction, but it's primarily because I think those mediums do a better job of parlaying social commentary into a format that is accessible to its audience than any other genres can. When you can explain things away because they are "in the future" or "in a different world" you can instantly reset the moral codes and social stigmas and show the audience that things CAN be different without having to explain away how it all works into the "normal" way of things. Plus there are lasers (or magic, or super powers, or something like that), which are awesome and sometimes explody.

Now, this is a fiction-geek rating, mind you. I'm not what you'd call a techno-geek. I try to stay knowledgeable on technological trends, but I don't really participate in most of them. And 6.5 is probably about where I am right now, I've been far higher in the past, possibly as high as 8.0 or 8.5 (I read comics in high school and bought action figures in college and so forth). I have never been a Trekkie, as such. I watched the original series growing up because we didn't have cable and, frankly, it was the best thing on some times. And I've seen every episode of Next Gen, but most of those I watched in repeats years after they originally aired at a time when there wasn't much else interesting on TV to watch. I did watch all of Deep Space Nine from about the third season on as it aired, but that really only solidifies my non-Trekkiness because, for some reason I can't fathom, Deep Space Nine is like the red-headed step-child of the Trek series (probably because it was good and most Trekkies don't seem to have a problem latching on to substandard crap if it's heavily invested in the mythos--take Voyager, for instance, which I felt was a steaming pile of Gorn poop).

In other words, I LIKED Star Trek, but my world has never, in any way, revolved around it. I own only one Star Trek toy--a 12 inch Miles O'Brien, which I'm honestly considering opening up if I can find so I can work Colm Meaney into some of Gabe's storylines. And I collected just about every toy imaginable through early college. So, in that sense, I approached this movie as a general fan of science fiction, but not so much an invested fan of Star Trek itself.

And I thought the movie was fantastic (though, perhaps ironically, the hardcore Star Trek fans have a problem with it because it does a pretty good job of mucking up the original storyline in spots, and they have zero tolerance for that sort of thing). As a rule, I am loathe to give most movies a 5/5 rating because I almost always feel there is something MORE that could have been done to it, and that still holds true. I'm guessing there are some things that could have been done to make this movie better--but not much. So I'm going to give it a 4.8/5, which, actually, would put me exactly in line with the rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was an awesome movie, plain and simple. If you have ANY tolerance for science fiction, you'll probably like this movie. You don't have to like Star Trek, either, or know a damn thing about it to follow what's going on because they're basically starting from scratch (of course, you will miss some of the inside jokes, like the one guy who goes off on a mission with Kirk who's wearing a RED life support suit who, inevitably, ends up dead). Trust me, you'll like it. It might not "change your life," but it will certainly make two hours of your life slip by in a hurry.