Start Wreck: The Linkage (No spoilers outside the cuts)

[prog]

I saw Star Trek and enjoyed it very much. If you like cool shit, you'll probably like this movie. Lilek's thoughts on it jibe with mine, more or less.

I had cortezopossum's summary of "they managed to screw up everything, and yet it worked" in mind as I watched, but I don't think any apologies for canon-drift are really necessary. The producers made room for it in-story by not only explicitly putting the movie in an alternate timeline from the old canon, but an alternate-to-an-alternate. (Pretty sure that Romulus wasn't destroyed in the TNG timeline, right?)

I was delighted to see that Old Spock was both a fairly active character, and was also allowed to live past the ending. Knowing nothing of the plot going in, I was expecting his role to be Mr. Basil Framingstory ("Ah yes, our very first mission, why it seems like only yesterday...") so this was a nice surprise.

Three scenes of Kirk clinging to a lip of a bottomless pit by his fingers was one too many. Two (little-boy Kirk being a jackass, and first-away-team Kirk putting past jackassery to better use) would have been perfect.


I also went in with surrealestate's perception that the movie was cringingly sexist. There is sexism-by-omission, but I want to beg off that charge by the fact that, short of BSG-style gender-flips, the producers didn't have much to work with given the source material. (Now, as dougo sez, they totally could have made at least one of the crew a lady, and made it work. Aw, I am now envisioning a girlie-girl Chekov. So cute. Oh well.) I can grok the negative reading of Uhura, but it's not the one that seemed natural to me as I watched the film. So, the movie didn't really trip my personal feminist barf-o-meter, for whatever that's worth... though I wouldn't have objected to more effort.

(I preëmptively dismiss the claim that any adaptation of Trek has to be sexist in order to stay true to its roots. As commenters to Ms. Estate's post note, the 1960s TV series did a lot to test social boundaries of the day, even though much of it seems pretty backwards to us now.)

BONUS REVIEW! Terminator: Salvation trailer: Boy, when the androids come for real, robophobic shit like this is gonna be unbearably igry. Just saying.

Comments

the best feminist barf-o-meter

[cthulhia]

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-mo-movie-measure/

which actually is misnamed.

original strip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zizyphus/34585797/sizes/l/

Re: the best feminist barf-o-meter

[cnoocy]

Actually, the movie passes this, but just in a single scene. Which, as others have said, is pretty good for a TOS movie.

Re: the best feminist barf-o-meter

[prog.livejournal.com]

Racking my brain trying to remember when this was. I'm perversely hoping that it was the moments when Uhura first walked into her dorm room and chatted with her roommate, before the subject changed to the naked man under the bed.

Re: the best feminist barf-o-meter

[cnoocy]

Ding! (It does put an odd spin on "passing" the test if both participants in the conversation are in their underwear.)

Re: the best feminist barf-o-meter

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

And, IIRC, the two women involved are both in their underwear.