See, if they're pandering to the wrong crowd, that makes the movie a bad Star Trek film. I think it would have been great if it was generic sci-fi shoot-em-up. The fact that they felt the need to shred the old setting to pieces to make this is the problem. You just don't do that kind of thing to an established franchise. There's no reason for it. And you can make Star Trek cool and trendy and action-packed without changing the canon. There was no reason to use Kirk and Spock as characters when they could have just placed themselves after what had taken place (there was, after all, a big war last time we actually saw an update there, which was 10 years ago due to them making 'Enterprise' instead of another continuation).
Seriously, nobody cares about this 'returning to the roots' stuff. I never sit in my house, reading comic books, thinking "Jesus, I just can't follow along with Batman because I wasn't around in the 40s or 80s when his origin story and origin story remix came out. This fucking sucks" (Star Trek isn't an origin story remix, by the way, because they destroyed an important alien race. Just for kicks. There was literally no reason for them to do so). Instead, the work actually benefits from 80 years of creativity.
JJ Abrams is the kind of guy who would tear down the Mona Lisa and burn it because it was too old school. Then he would replace it with a picture behind a curtain, and promise that it's gonna be real awesome, like the end of Lost or the monster in Cloverfield. Then he's going to lift the curtain, and it's going to be two stick figures having sex.
Funny story, though. Explosm predicted that the Cloverfield monster would be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and I liked this idea. So much so that when the dust cloud blew through the city, I exclaimed "IT'S MARSHMALLOW DUST, IT'S MARSHMALLOW DUST" in the middle of the theatre.
Of course, we all know that what we got was a giant frog thing. It was made different from Godzilla by being based on a frog and not a lizard. Durrrrrrrr. You don't even get a particularly good view of it for any length of time, either. Major disappoint.
Abrams is a masterful cinematographer, though. If he would just hand over the writing to somebody else, he could be making the best films in the movie theatre.
Also, First Contact is the best Star Trek movie. Hands down. Shooting the Borg to death with a Tommy Gun was cool.
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Topic: LOST is over (Read 4393 times)