Star Trek

I wasn't going to write about Star Trek, because everyone has already seen and commented on it, but then I felt guilty, that I was shirking my duty as one of the Internet's most preeminent nerds (just got with it), so here are my thoughts.

In short: I liked it. Finally, a Star Trek with some hot mancandy on display!

I mean, seriously, the women on Star Trek have always been hot, but the men? Eh, not so much. I mean, Riker? Harry Kim? Odo? Tom Paris? Yick. I mean, yeah, Picard and Sisko are hot if you like stentorian voices and bald heads, but they're not eyecandy. Meanwhile, Chris Pine? HAWT! Those blue eyes make you tingly. And he totally gets half-naked and shows off his basket! (What's really funny is that I swear they're a pair of 2(X)ist carbon fiber trunks. I see them in email ads I get. Just about the gayest underwear ever.) The new Chekhov? Twinkilicious! He can pilot my "wessal" anytime! The new Bones is Karl Urban: Caesar/Hermes from Xena! Zach Quinto's hot, and I've always thought John Cho was cute. The U.S.S. Kelvin was well named, too, because its crew got my temperature rising, George Kirk and Indian-Picard chief among them. (Kudos to the casting director, BTW, on Kirk pere; he really looked like someone who could be related to Chris Pine.) And Eric Bana always brings the beefcake. He looked surprisingly good bald and pointy-eared. Talk about your tribal tatoos, too! Probably had a barbed wire one around his bicep.

I've heard some complain that Engineering just looked like a factory (and that's probably where they shot). I wasn't bugged by that, because TOS Engineering was very industrial, too.

Tyler Perry as the head of Starfleet or the Academy or whatever? All I'll say is that apparently, in the future, we still wax our eyebrows.

Some say, "But it's not Star Trek! It doesn't have a message, it's just a big dumb action movie!" To which I say: first, the Trek movies aren't messagey like the shows are, anyway. Second, I do think there was a message (besides, "Kirk is awesome!"), about grief and how we deal with it, the contrast being Nero and Spock and Kirk.

If that age makeup is an accurate picture of how Winona Ryder is going to look in twenty years, girlfriend should call herself very, very lucky.

J.J. Abrams, as everyone else has noted, needs to step away from the lens flares and the "people on the edge of an abyss, hanging on by a finger."

I admired the use of incidental music, of all things. Not only was it pretty, but I think it was utilized with a touch of restraint and propriety that a lot of movies don't have. Sometimes it overpowers, instead of enhances, movies, but not this time.

Did anyone else keep having to remind themselves that Sarek wasn't being played by James Cromwell? Because that actor really, really looks like James Cromwell. They didn't alter the timeline so much that Zefram Cochrane suddenly got a bowl cut!

Favorite bit of fan-service: the mention of Admiral Archer's beagle. Seriously, Porthos was the best damn thing about Enterprise.

About the whole "alternate reality" thing? I'm totally cool with it. It's a well-established concept in the Trek universe that keeps the old stuff as it was but lets the new stuff go wherever it may. It really was the best solution.

Can't wait for the next one!