A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

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 ( making Picard age backwards ), but ( also letting Richard Hatch reprise his role as 'Nomad' from the original series. )

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.

Looking through the official website for Super Smash Bros: Brawl, the Wii version of the wonderful game series featuring all of Nintendo's characters kicking the shit out of each other until everyone's bored. It's a good time, and I am sorely looking forward to its release. I should really just pre-order the sucker from Amazon now...

The website is high-profile video game launch marketing done right, by the way. Since the start of summer they've been adding a goodly amount of teaser material nigh every weekday, and the copy is written in an oddly charming voice of continual, stuttering amazement, allegedly from one of the game's implementors. All that's missing is an RSS feed.

They added an MMO-ey "pet class" with the "Pokémon Trainer" character, who attacks by throwing monsters atcha. This could be lots of fun. And my man Wario is there who attacks by fahtin so yeah. And there is a curry power-up.

But what does it say about me that I am sad that Samus Aran without her suit on is a generic-"hottie" skinny blonde? Who looks like she's like 19 years old? No, that is not a grizzled bounty hunter, I'm sorry. Please feel free to make her a lean, athletic woman, but I'd want to see more gamey than pneumatic. Linda Hamilton > Miss Teen Carolina. (Also, where the heck does she put her hair when her helmet's strapped on? And does she spend an hour brushing it back into shape in between bouts of mowing down space pirates? Furrfu.)

I like Zelda's character design much better, basically the same body type but somehow wearing it much better, and much less of an eye-rolling T&A showcase. See, you can have this morphology of female game character without making her into Lara Croft.