Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Star Trek Fever







Star Trek is getting rave reviews from everywhere from The NY Daily News, to Variety and the Hollywood Reporter becoming the best reviewed Star Trek film ever.

The best Star Trek site, Trek Movie, is keeping tabs on everything. They recently reported on several Trek tie-ins on Fringe. (Just as Abrams' other series, Lost, had a preview last week.)

Trek Movie also has a handy media page with all the recently released Star Trek clips.

So, visit Trek Movie for all the latest Trek news, along with their new interviews with the Star Trek cast.

Also check out their review of season one of The Original Series on Blu-ray.

Matt and Nat from the BSG Cast video podcast, have a preview of Trek as well.

Even Mojo admits to catching Star Trek fever:

It was only a few short weeks ago that I firmly stood my ground that this new movie was going to suck. The pretty-boy cast, the Apple store bridge and JJ Abrams bragging about the “powerhouse writing team of MI:3 and Transformers” were just a few of the reasons I felt we were in for little more than two hours of action movie cliches and mindless visual effects.

But then there was the surprise “Wrath of Khan” showing in Texas; that surprised me big time. Studios simply do not have public screenings a month in advance unless they are sure they have a winner. And to an audience of die-hard Trek fans? That takes a serious pair of transparent aluminum balls.

Now the mainstream press reviews are trickling in and they have been overwhelmingly positive. Have Paramount pulled a fast one on us? Did they manage to very carefully plant the seeds of lowered expectations, only now to watch us gasp in awe as a towering tree of almighty Star Trek springs from the ground?

Whatever the outcome, for the first time I’m letting myself get excited. Maybe I’ll regret it but, for now, it’s fun to be an optomistic Star Trek fan again!


Live long and prosper, everybody.

12 comments:

Elrond Lawrence said...

Thanks for giving "Star Trek" some love! I'm a 30-year fan and have followed this film for 2 years thanks to TrekMovie. It's so great to have 'Trek' be cool again. We're seeing it tonite at 7 ... can't wait!!

Anonymous said...

The Great Ebert wasn't too impressed. :-(

Hieu Le Bui said...

Anyone seeing this movie should bring their sun glasses because every single frame will have at least lens flare on screen at all time. Protect your eyes people.

radii said...

A terrific space-adventure film but not entirely Star Trek to a purist like me. I always consider time-travel a crutch for the writers and although they tried to emulate the Khan revenge arc with this story it didn't carry the gravitas of the original due to the lack of Nero's backstory and he is a diminished villain relative to Khan. They could have done something interesting with time-travel, i.e., the more you change time the more it attempts to restore itself but they punted on that. Toss our new time-line characters into an action blender and watch them end up in the right chairs ... hmmm

After you've seen the film, if interested, my review on imdb can be linked through Galactica Variants

Anonymous said...

good popcorn movie, but far too nemesis 2 for my tastes.

glad to see the trek franchise is alive again, but next time I'd prefer more than a collection of one liners and special effects.

Logan Gawain said...

Quite surprising to myself, I find that I agree with both @Radii, and especially @bombsonengland. It's good movie. Not great. It's summer popcorn, nothing more, nothing less.

While the characters are all spot on, and the actors in those iconic roles are quite exceptional, the plot is mostly gibberish, non-sensical science with plot holes you can drive Optimus Prime through, the whole alternate reality game is kind of annoying.

I guess they weren't brave enough to do a full reboot, the way RDM approached BSG. So, we get the same basic characters, who now have their lives all mixed up because of the alteration to the timeline. It's quite dodgy. But, the movie is basically a pilot ep, and on that level it works, because I'd like to see more adventures from this team and cast. It should just be more believable next time.

But, if you watch it for the characters, it's a great fun film. All of them do great work in such mythic roles. Pine embodies Kirk. Quinto gets Spock. Saldana expands on Uhura. Cho and Yelchin are fine in Sulu and Chekov (though a real Russian accent might have been a better choice, his take on Koenig wans't as annoying as I thought it would be.)

Pegg's Scotty works very well, playing up the humor that James Doohan often brought to the role.

Along with Pine and Quinto, Urban is channeling DeForest Kelley, in a respectful way. He's amazing as Bones, who has always been my favorite Trek character.

Nimoy was awesome. So great to see Spock on screen again. Hope he does another one.

Hopefully in the next one they can slow down the action beats just enough to allow some time for the characters to live and breathe.

And don't bring back Tyler Perry.

But yeah, it's a good popcorn movie for the mass audience. It really wouldn't have worked as well as Christmas release. This is truly a summer movie.

radii said...

@Logan

agreed ... no more Tyler Perry, ever ... if she wants to do Star Trek again do it in his/her own movies Medea Goes Galactic On Yo Ass or some such

Please Robot Chicken guys do a spoof of the JJ Abrams version - complete with lens flare reference

Logan Gawain said...

@Radii,

What I am particularly enjoying is that the defenders of JJ's crap movie tell us, "Well you need to read the comic book to really understand the plot..."

Ah, so were back to "if you only listen to the podcast, then you'll get it." Or, "If you see this deleted scene, then it makes sense." "If you just watch the movie while being suspended from your ankles hanging upside down, then you'll get it."

As Harlan Ellison once said about Star Trek fandom: "Suckers being mulcted by venal Paramount..."

And on it goes. Between this and the anger generated about BSGs ending, maybe the SF genre is slowly but surly dying, or at the very least having all intelligence deleted from it.

But, at least RDM said from the start there would be no time travel idiocy on BSG. Gotta give him credit for avoiding that trope.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the worst Star Trek film ever. Just awful in every way. No heart. Writers who cheat. Spock doesn't sound like Spock. Kirk is an alpha male dick. A Star Trek story that encourages unbridled aggression and vengeance, rather than any deliberation or restraint. A piece of garbage for which I shall never forgive Paramount or Abrams and his crappy Transformers writers.

No ambition, just greed.

I am so saddened by this desecration.

Logan Gawain said...

@muldfeld

Well said. Well said. I really can't add to what you said, so I'll just echo it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Gawain!

I saw this coming over a year ago because all of J.J.'s stuff is the same, but this was even worse than I thought it would be. The sad thing is that my parents loved it. My father falls asleep watching BSG, but this hit every cheesy bone in his body.

Now, whenever I say I love Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, people are gonna think that Abrams Star Trek is all the franchise is capable of and assume I'm a moron.

It's so sad that all these critics seem to want Star Trek to fit in a neat little nostalgia package and haven't had the decency to check out DS9 Seasons 3 through 7, which would mostly blow their minds away; I've told Ebert just how special it is, but I don't think he's listened to this or my advice about BSG. :(

crone51 said...
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