Post of the Day: 5.10.2009

Again, in honor of the Star Trek movie releasing this past weekend, we have Star Trek references in World of Warcraft. Yes, there are a lot of them.

Review: Star Trek (yes, the movie)

I'm not going to do a major in-depth review or anything, but these are my thoughts on the new Star Trek movie. But first, some background - I've been a Trekker all my life, starting back in the days when I was younger and they used to run marathons of the original Star Trek on New Year's Eve. My dad would let us stay up late that one night while we were in elementary school, and we'd watch the original Trek for hours on end. Once The Next Generation hit, I was a full blown fan of the entire franchise, and that only continued into Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It only started waning when Enterprise came around, and the disappointment that came with that series. So yeah, I'm pretty knowledgeable about the whole franchise and a lore junkie.

By "lore junkie", I mean that I respect the lore, but don't mind minor lore disruptions for the sake of making good television or movies. I'm not unreasonable. Keep that in mind when you read my cons below.

WARNING: THERE ARE MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS BELOW - IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, DON'T READ ON UNTIL YOU HAVE!!!




We'll start with the good things:

• It was incredibly entertaining.
• The visual effects were outstanding.
• The general plot was intriguing.
• The acting was awesome, as were the actors/actresses involved.
• I like J.J. Abrams.
• I loved all the in-jokes: Star Trek homages and in-jokes form the cast and crew's past projects abound.
• The Romulans look awesome - in fact, they should have looked more sinister, like in this movie, all along. Who says the Klingons alone can have that honor?
• Leonard Nimoy. 'Nuff said.
  

Now, onto the bad (brace yourselves):

• Who the hell puts product placement in a Star Trek movie? Nokia and Budweiser - seriously?
• Yes, we know Spock was half human and that he has wrestled with those emotions in various episodes and movies throughout the last 40 years - but this thing with Uhura that he has going on in this movie is, from my viewpoint, an unacceptable, out of character use of those stray emotions form his human side.
• They blew up Vulcan - one of the most well known, iconic, beloved planets in the Star Trek universe. What. The. Hell.
• The time travel gimmick has been used to a nauseating amount in the last 40 years of Star Trek, not to mention the rest of sci-fi. This isn't a problem, if its done well. But, you don't use it to change the last 40 years of Star Trek. What was Paramount thinking by allowing that to happen?

I'm quite aware this is supposed to be a "reboot" of the franchise, and I will even agree that it was needed, but there are some lines you just do not cross. Changing small bits of lore here and there is fine, if the end result is a better movie. Changing huge chunks of the lore just for a "reboot" screams to me that the writers, producers and whoever at Paramount was involved in this just don't care about or respect the last 40 years of Star Trek. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't move Starfleet HQ to New York City and power the Enterprise's warp engine with butter instead of dilithium crystals.

In fact, I think what they did to Star Trek lore would be what The Lord of the Rings would be if someone did a movie and changed it so that Frodo died half way to Mount Doom, the ring was secured by Sauron and the entirety of Middle Earth was turned into a Mordor-like furnace.

Now that I got all of that out of my system, if you take the movie on its own merits and, god forbid, completely wipe everything you know about Star Trek out of your mind and pretend like you're starting fresh, this is a great, entertaining, funny, action-packed movie that I think you should go see just once, especially if you're not a Star Trek fan. If you are...I'm sorry.

Post of the Day: 5.7.2009

Seeing as this weekend is bit for Star Trek fans, here's a list of the best and worst Star Trek games ever.

Cloverfield

My brother and I went to see Cloverfield this evening. I hadn't really heard much about it other than it was supposed to be an American Godzilla...and there was going to be a teaser for the new Star Trek movie on the front of it. There was indeed a teaser, but not much of one.

Cloverfield was a great movie, I thought. I really enjoyed the way it was filmed - using a hand-held camera. I also really liked the fact that us - the audience - didn't know any more about what was going on than the main characters. There was one part of the movie I was a bit disappointed with, but in the interest of keeping spoilers to a minimum, I'm not going to talk about which scene it is.

Definitely go see it, its worth it!

StarTrek.Com Situation

Yesterday I pointed out that CBS Interactive had "shut down" startrek.com and "eliminated" (their words, not mine) the staff working on the site. Today there's no mention of the article I quoted yesterday. Instead, I found this:

"CBS Interactive, which oversees StarTrek.com, is reorganizing the way it does business to align the division's workforce with its new vision that focuses on building communities online.

CBS Interactive remains absolutely committed to StarTrek.com and to growing the site along with its users by directly tapping into and utilizing the passionate fan base that has supported the site.

It has been your support and contributions to the lore of Star Trek that are what make StarTrek.com a vibrant place to be. To that end, we encourage you to keep the conversation alive and flowing using our message boards."

If they feel that way, then why did the do what they did over the weekend? Obviously the team hasn't done a bad job or anything, given that the site is updated with fresh info every day and sees thousands of visitors on a daily basis. This boggles me...

CBS Shuts Down StarTrek.Com

As if Mondays weren't bad enough, today my wife e-mails this link to me at work about CBS Interactive disassembling the startrek.com team, effectively shutting the web site down. Just in case it gets taken down, here is what was posted on the site.

"Sadly, we must report that CBS Interactive organization is being restructured, and the production team that brings you the STARTREK.COM site has been eliminated. Effective immediately.

We don't know the ultimate fate of this site, which has served millions of Star Trek fans for the last thirteen years.

If you have comments, please send them to editor@startrek.com - we hope someone at CBS will read them.

Thank you for your loyal fandom over the years. It has been a pleasure to serve you."

So, I sent a nastygram to CBS Interactive via their feedback form (scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Feedback"). Here's what I wrote:

"As a long-time Star Trek fan and reader of startrek.com, I'm very disappointed that you have eliminated the startrek.com team, effectively closing down that site that thousands of people visit every day for information on their favorite television franchise.

Its very disheartening to know that you no longer care about the fans of the Star Trek franchise - some who have been around for 40 years."

I kept it very short and to the point and tried my best not to be extraordinarily evil.