Sick of Movie Popcorn

 

Yes, I admit it: I am very suspicious of the new Star Trek movie. 

I can't quite put my finger on why, other than to say that there have been so many well-envisioned but badly-executed rehashing of old comic book/sci-fi icons these days that, with each one that flashes past, I become more and more jaded (Iron Man being the notable exception).

I won't even name some of truly crappy ones. They're justifiably forgettable. But it's the ones for which we all have high expectations and are generally sub-par that really sting. For example, X-Men 3 was more disappointing and frustrating than overcooked filet. There were moments in that film that should have shattered the world of the comic-book reading teenager inside me, but that only resulted in vague confusion. And while Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull did exactly what it set out to do—take Indy to the next possible level of his adventures through myth and legend—George Lucas's hard-on for special effects took Indiana Jones from the realm of solid adventure movies, that were even themselves nostalgic homages to the Captain Blood era of film making, into the world of meretricious computer-generated slapstick. 

Watchmen was hugely anticipated and hugely pretentious. Spiderman 3 was a sopping mess of absurd dramatic dialogue and too many super-villains. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was fan-fucking-tastic until the story fizzled and Gavin Hood tried to patch it up with bad special effects and what I affectionately call the Character Stuff (as in Spiderman 3). 

So, as a girl who watched The Next Generation and Voyager religiously with her mother, and scoured the cable channels for reruns of the original, I have to admit that I wish "they" (being directors, producers, investors, etc.) would keep their grubby fingers off my Star Trek!

I mean, something great can come of it. It could be brilliant and exciting and delightful. It could introduce a whole new generation of viewers to Gene Roddenberry's forward-thinking and open-minded philosophies. 

Or it could just be another flash in today's very large pan, where story and character and visual delights mean nothing amid the cacophony of texting, YouTube, and Facebook. 

Movies were once meant to dazzle. But these days, it hardly matters what we see. We start forget the second we leave the theatre. Intellectually, I know that Watchmen, Spiderman 3, and X-Men 3 were visually sensational, and that Star Trek will be the same. Moreover, at least according to the NYTimes review, the story's not half-bad.

The question is—do I really care anymore?