Good morning fair fellows. I would like to make my apologies for not updating sooner, but while I had every eager intention of reviewing a few movies and posting some comic related updates, real life had other ideas for me. But as they say, better late than never, and at least the pages are still on time!
Finally, my update for the Star Trek movie.
** SPOILERS AHEAD **
Overall, I loved the movie. Talk about character acting - the cast did an excellent job of studying the original actors and really pushing the envelopes of their team roles. I was quite impressed, especially by New Spock. (On a tangential note, people keep telling me they think New Spock is hot, and I can’t reconcile this in my mind. It’s Spock.)
The cinematography was great, it looked sleek and modern while at the same time maintaining that old air of 60’s sci-fi with all kinds of lights and dials that do nothing in specific. As Scott Kurtz delicately put it, it looks as though Apple Computers threw up all over the bridge of the new Enterprise, in the best possible way. And, they kept the original door opening noise. Can’t go wrong with that.
There were some well written and perfect homages to the old show, as well: Kirk makes it with a hot green chick, they detonate the charges to get out of a dire situation, the red shirt dies - and fantastically so. Immolation from a thurster is a good way to go, if you have to. They did everything short of reverse polarity of the neutron flow. It was glorious.
Now, on the side of criticisms, there were a few plotholes that you could drive a Mack truck through, most of them having to do with incredibly bad science. We all know that sci-fi isn’t supposed to have good science, but some of this was downright non-sensical and not just a suspension of disbelief. Concepts such as “going through a black hole” putting you fifty years back in time: look, black holes aren’t Stargates, but alright, we can deal with this. In theory there is a wormhole concept that might explain how this could happen, even though in the most likely reality, you cannot go through a blackhole, as there is nothing to go through, and all of your particles will become disassembled and crushed. However, this is a staple of sci-fi, it’s legitimate to use the stretch.
However, there are much less reasonable plot devices such as the main point of the entire movie: if the Romulan homeworld was going to be destroyed, because of a supernova, why did anyone think it was a good idea to replace it with a black hole? First of all, the problem here is that the sun is exploding. Good luck getting near it. Second of all, a black hole and explosion do not cancel each other out. If you do somehow manage to create a singularity, you might contain the explosion but there still won’t be a sun and now there will be a black hole.
There are other indiscrepencies (such as how did Kirk exactly think that his beaming technology was going to work while Nemo’s ship was halfway through that black hole? “Hey guys, need help over there in your black hole? We can do that!” No you can’t. Or the fact that Nemo had 25 years to tool around in the past before Spock followed him through the time singularity and instead of, oh, I dont know, saving his planet or at least evacuating his people, he decided to WAIT for Spock for 25 years instead. Or the fact that there were no railings whatsoever on the bridge of his mining ship. I suppose he thought they weren’t the aesthetic he wanted.) But they are silly and laughable, and do not spoil the movie. They just make you pause and scratch your head. But then, it’s still not as bad as The Core.
Nothing is as bad as The Core.
- Jen
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