Well, I finally got off my broke ass and scooted over to the nearest IMAX theatre to catch the much-anticipated Star Trek reboot, and boy has my tolerance for film that doesn’t even try worn thin. I’m not going to snow anyone; I’m a Trekkie. Been since I was a kid. I was raised on the franchise by my nerd father, and properly instructed in the grand and secretive ways of Star Trek Nerd-dom. I’ve seen all the movies in the theatre save for the first ‘Motion Picture’ — I think; I was 4 at the time, maybe I just don’t remember — watched all the spin-off series and their accompanying films. Never attended any conventions, and I don’t currently own or collect any Trek paraphenalia, so maybe I’m a half-assed Trekkie but I keep up on the history and the mythology — unlike the new Star Trek film, which like every other TV-franchise-to-film reboot to come out in recent years seems to begin with the idea that, Hey, it sucked the first time around, we can do it better now. No, no you can’t. Turning something into an action-soaked milquetoast blockbuster with $50M worth of special effects and CGI and $20M worth of headline talent does not make it better. George Lucas proved this when his most hardcore fans put a fatwa out on him for turning an adult space opera into a Disney-esque fantasy romp.
The Onion indirectly did the Trek franchise justice with this mock entertainment review of the new film:
So, if you haven’t heard already or don’t care, in which case you’re a complete mongloid because everyone and their mother (who’s a whore) have been reporting or blogging about it, American comedian/writer Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, is leading the voter write-in nominations of possible names for the new ISS module, tentatively referred to as “Node 3″. NASA started the contest one month ago, opening with their own selection of possible names for the module for which users could vote, as well as offering the possibility for voters to suggest their own ideal name. In answer to this challenge, Stephen Colbert, who had already jumped on the space bandwagon late last year by having his DNA digitized and sent into space to be stored on the ISS as part of game developer Richard Garriot’s ridiculous media-whoring stunt, Operation Immortality, encouraged his numerous viewers to nominate his own name as an option, the votes for which then proceeded to skyrocket, demolishing all competition. Watch the drama unfold for yourself: