Oh my God!!!
[No Spoilers In This Post—everything here pertains to what I saw in the trailer that everyone can see right now]
I can’t even describe how psyched I am to see this movie. This trailer must be the best trailer I’ve ever seen in my entire movie-going life. Now granted you can’t base a movie on how good the trailer looks, but this third trailer for J.J. Abram’s Star Trek is phenomenal! And it is not the trailer itself that blows my mind but what I see in it: redemption for Star Trek.
I’m probably going to open up a can of worms over that but I don’t care. Star Trek has been bastardized over the years by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga who took over the kingdom after Gene Roddenberry died during the Star Trek: The Next Generation days. These guys have cheapened Star Trek down to the lowest common denominator and took away its soul. Here are some examples of what I mean:
- Transporter gets the crew out of a jam
- Reset button gets pressed at the end of an episode and everything is as it was—no harm, no foul
- The big themes get lost to the petty issues of the characters—ironically enough the best thing about the season 3 of the tv show Enterprise was the season-long Xindi story arc ala Battlestar Galactica/Babylon 5 like. And it was the season of the show the so-called true fans despised. But that’s good story telling!
- Starfleet officers are way too “high and mighty” for their own good—no one gets down and dirty and compromises to get the job done as they do in Galactica
- Ships seems to not take a beating too well—as in the warp drive goes offline everytime there’s a bump in the road
- Bad guys are not “bad-asses,” as in they are just misunderstood
- Instead of a cast of thousands, you get a cast of tens—sure you can throw budget constraints at me, but with the new technologies you can circumvent that issue. There are supposed to be an unbelievable amount of people in the Federation and you only see a few, that also goes for the ships as well—one Borg ship to attack Earth? Come on.
- Weak characters with no angst to them. I’m referring to the later iterations of Trek, the Classic Series had lots of angst, but could have used more.
- Time travel stories get over done
- The Trek canon is too messed up and should be abandoned and rebooted as is what J.J. Abrams is doing
These are just some points, I know there are way more. But regardless, what J.J. Abrams is doing is what Harve Bennett (producer on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier) suggested over twenty years ago. Start over, go to Starfleet Academy, and move on! Back then that would have been sacrilegious, but Berman and Braga screwed Trek up so much that this was the only way to save this incredible story.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen the trailer yet go here to the Apple.com website (I’m a life-long Apple/Mac fan as well) to get the HD version—it is so worth the downloading wait.
If you want to watch it right now go ahead (see below):
Here’s what I see in this movie that will make it great:
- A real backstory for Kirk. Spock’s is well-known and that is certainly covered in this movie. I love the “Rebel Without A Cause” version of Kirk as it adds real dimension to his character.
- A real badass Romulan, Nero, played by a real badass actor, Eric Bana. That last wuss, Shinzon of Remus (part of the Romulan Empire) in Star Trek Nemesis, was so bad that I really wanted to shoot myself in the head after listening to his whining for two hours. Nero is going to rock, plain and simple. He’ll probably even outdo Khan!
- The scale of this movie looks as big as it should! Kudos to the special effects people behind all of this.
- The new Enterprise is what the old Enterprise (sitting in the gift shop of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum) should have been but money was a factor then. That has been fixed now.
- All the cool 1960′s era style for the costumes and sets have been preserved to a certain extent and updated to our modern-day standards. It is as if Roddenberry was given $3 trillion dollars to produce Star Trek back in 1966!
- All the technology looks truly functional including a real space elevator!
- I love it when Captain Christopher Pike tries to recruit Kirk to join Starfleet in this trailer by telling him about his father’s heroism.
- I love it when Kirk takes command of the Enterprise in this trailer at a desperate moment (probably after Pike and the first officer gets killed somehow), as well he should.
- I love how the Enterprise seems to take a real beating in this trailer like the Galactica and still keeps on fighting!
- I love the Batman Begins like music for this trailer that gives me freakin’ goose bumps!
I love this trailer!!!
I’m gonna love this movie!!!