In waiting for the new Star Trek movie to hit the big screen, I remembered the great expectations my husband and I felt as we went to see it in 2009. I remember the trepidation I felt as I wondered if it’ll bring Star Trek back to life. To our huge relief, it did. We were ecstatic! Star Trek was back baby, and it was back with a vengeance!
Long has our society believed that Star Trek was just for geeks, nerds and the socially inept individuals who live in their parents’ basements. All of a sudden, Star Trek and geekery became cool! Nerds were coming out of their base…… pardon me, closets left and right proclaiming their nerdiness! Being nerd was becoming a cool thing, something you could be proud of! It was an incredible feeling. The movie brought the Star Trek back from the shadows into the 21st century and made it appealing to younger generations who may not have even heard of Star Trek. My only beef with the 2009 movie was that Scotty, played by Simon Pegg, didn’t get a bigger part in it.
My hopes were high for the second movie in the Star Trek franchise. After seeing it however, I couldn’t help but wonder about Star Trek as it was before and as it is now. We got absolutely bombarded by various clips from this new movie prior to its release and interestingly enough, everything was about one thing – action. And there’s plenty of it in the movie! Uhmmmm…. Where‘s the rest of it? The creativity, the huge scope of great new ideas, societies and technology that creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry envisaged? In my opinion, there was none of it. Just a re-hash of ideas already put forth by the Star Trek creator decades ago. Is that why they went with an alternate timeline? They couldn’t be creative enough to continue where Star Trek left off, so they concocted the same thing with minor differences, called it alternate reality, slapped a few CGI effects on it and hoped to make tons of money? The same thoughts occurred to me after seeing the 2009 movie, but I thought there was a bigger master plan at work here. You know, first get people back into Star Trek and then boldly continue on nurturing its true spirit. Yeah, from what I’ve seen, I was wrong. Hollywood is still so obviously Hollywood.
To boldly go where no man has gone before
Who says that Star Trek today has to be about the same races, the same societies, the same enemies we’re already familiar with? Slightly altering them or putting them in an alternate reality doesn’t make them new. It makes them a bad idea. Why not go that extra mile and create a new enemy, a new race, a new part of space that we have not explored before? I mean come on! Universe itself is your limit here! There’s a huge number of extremely talented and creative people out there that I’m sure would jump at the chance to create something new in Star Trek, something we haven’t seen so far. Dare to be different, dare to go further, dare to do better.
Has Star Trek lost its ability to pull together creative minds and create something new and exciting without rehashing what we have already seen? I sincerely hope not, but I was reluctantly forced to admit to myself that Star Trek is no longer pushing the envelope in the creativity department. At least nowhere as close as it did before. Just for the record, CGI effects don’t count. Star Trek used to ignite the imagination and creativity of hundreds of thousands of people, young and old alike, inspiring whole generations to create new products based on Star Trek ones for decades after it stopped airing (Apple eat your heart out!). It dared to be different in a society full of flaws and dared to question the inequalities among us.
Now, I feel Star Trek has been reduced to a mere action flick. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with an action flick, I’ve come to expect far, far more of Star Trek than just awesome fight scenes and flashy CG effects. This is something J.J. Abrams is more than capable of delivering, but there’s a lot missing in it for me.
Star Trek is for anyone who wants to believe in a better and brighter future for the humanity. It’s for everyone who dares to hope that humanity will indeed get past its many struggles today and learn how to live together in a respectful and peaceful manner.
I’m still holding on to hope that this revitalized edition of Star Trek will prove to be much more than just an action movie of the season. I’m holding out hope that Star Trek will once again become the leader in introducing new technological ideas and look to the future, igniting young minds today to look upon our sky and fire their imagination to not only create TV shows with what they think the outer space is like, but to actually create the technology that will allow us to explore it for ourselves – first hand.
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No thoughts about the post
Katzushima
I think there’s LESS of Roddenberry’s vision in the Abrams-Trek, but I also agree with Wil Wheaton in that its still there. The use of Khan was what the anime scene calls “fan service,” something thrown in to keep the fanbase happy. Plus Khan as envisioned by both creative teams reinforces the whole point of the movie, that of being vigilant against making the militaristic option the first option, especially in light of an attack against your home. Also, how far do we go in the name of defending what we treasure before we become the very thing we abhor? Its the decision that weighs on Kirk throughout the entire film, and its one of the central topics of almost every conflict in the film: Spock/Uhura, Dr. and Admiral Markus, Markus and Kirk, Kirk and Scotty, etc.
June 20, 2013 at 11:58 am
Xander
I do agree that there is less True Star Trek in this JJverse, but this movie in my mine totally fixed the 2009 one.
June 22, 2013 at 2:52 pm