18 November 2008

New Star Trek looks terrible - My eyes, my eyes!


Must you taint everything geeky out there?

I found a link to the new Star Trek trailer and followed through. The comments made me wonder just how jazzed up it was.

*Bling Bling*, typical non-stop glorified action, *bling bling*, usual annoying music that signifies something gargantuan being blasted into bits, *bling bling*, someone takes her top off *bling bling* ....

Needless to say I felt a need to throw up after watching that trailer.

I would not call myself a die-hard Star Trek fan. I'm more of a Asgard watcher meself.

But then what I saw of it, I liked. And appreciated.

This movie does not resemble anything that I have come to associate with Star Trek.

Don't get me wrong; the movie will probably be big and popular and jazzy.

It will break box office records.

Someone somewhere will give it an award.

But, on a personal level, I am not inspired to go watch that movie. It had more gratutitous action than social commentary; more perfect looking people than ordinary beings doing extraordinary feats ....

You can accuse me of writing stuff off before watching it - but then the trailer is supposed to grab my attention and reel me in, is it not? Why would I cough up extra cash to watch a flick in the cinema when it resembles all the dumbed down annoyances that is being belched out everyday anyway?

A lot of folks have been heralding in the new spate of sci-fi, previously geek movies / series. Some well meaning folk have even mentioned that it is okay to be a geek now - previously, in the 1980s, there were intelligent, tastefully done material that broke the mould and only a small segment of population stuck to them as die-hard fans. The rest watched Lawrenece of Arabia take off his pants ... or something to that effect. Now, the geek of the 80s say, what was on the fringes of society is becoming the hit for the masses.

That's not quite true, is it?

Star Wars was an uber cool trilogy. I mean 4, 5 and 6. What happened after that was fodder for the mindless. To this day I am trying to erase that image of Anakin and Amadela singing "the hills are alive with the sound of music". No wait, they didn't say that exactly. But they might as well have.

Indiana Jones, while dastardly mainstream and so politically incorrect your eyeballs would melt, was awesome as a smart, witty adventurer. Don't think I need to mention how that dream died.

How about I am Legend? Countless classic horror movie remakes? Pimp my ride mentality of the Batman movies?

I also heard that they are re-shooting a Stargate SG-1 two-parter, dolling it up for a movie.

All in all, what used to be intelligent geek phenomenon is not mellowed down to appeal to the lowest denominator in a population. It's a matter of, make sure as many people will watch it as possible.

Guess these golden oldies I mention used to be the new frontier for its generation. Maybe it is time to move on, leave cinema behind and find the new frontier.

*Checks for updates on The Guild and Galacticast*

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