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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

I Hate You, J. J. Abrahms

My Dear Reader,

I'm crushed.

As a hard core Star Trek fan, I was really worried about the latest movie, but I tried to get past my reservations and started looking forward to it. Ever since the last Star Trek series was prematurely cancelled and the movie before that didn't do so well, a lot of people were saying that the franchise, which had been going on for the past 40 years, was dying. This new movie was supposed to bring it back to life. It was supposed to modernize it and let it reach out to people who hadn't seen Star Trek before, two things I very much approved of. But it turned out that instead of revitalizing the franchise, the new movie has put a stake in the heart of 40 years of stories with Kirk, Picard, and the rest. Because if this movie, Star Trek is not only dead--it never existed. It's just so dissapointing, because instead of getting people interested with the series again, perhaps motivating people to watch the old shows, this movie makes every ounce of Star Trek before it moot. I'm sure it's great for the writers, because they now get to play in the universe and do pretty much anything they want. It just sucks big time for anyone who cared about the franchise before May 7th, 2009

I'm not just crushed; I'm livid.

Without telling you the details of the plot, I'll say that certain characters go back in time and change history in a way that means that the mythology created in over 700 episodes and 10 movies that made up Star Trek could never happen. If you're not a hard core fan, you may not realize how big of a deal that is. Let me put it to you this way: what if J. K. Rowling decided to revise her novels, making Harry Potter die in the first five pages so that Neville Longbottom became the main protagonist? I mean a complete and total revision, where the previous version was taken off the shelves and only the new draft was considered the "real story." Yeah, not sure how I'd feel about that, either.

The most frustrating thing was that I thouroughly enjoyed the majority of the movie. It was updated, and they had recast some characters, but it had the Star Trek feel. It was funny and gave us an insight into favorite characters that we hadn't seen. It could have fit in perfectly with the rest of the franchise if they had just tried to fix the large changes in history that were made. It looked like they were going to do it, too, and when it got to the final credits and no one did any temporal correcting, my blood started boiling. Why didn't they go back and fix it? If you woke up one day and you found out that someone had gone back in time to make Nazi Germany win World War II, would you just roll over and go back to sleep? That's kind of what the characters in the new movie did. It's infuriating.

All they had to do to was add a few lines of dialogue at the very end, perhaps in a scene after the credits, that suggests that they are going to try to go back and stop the time-traveling stuff before it starts. I mean, a hint would be enough to satisfy me. It's so easy to do that I can even write the dialogue myself. There are so many ways to do it, but I've come up with three:

Version 1

Scotty: [running up to Ambassador Spock] Ambassador?
Ambassador Spock: [turns to face Scotty] Yes?
Scotty: I know this might sound a wee bit crazy, but I think I found a way to stop that Nero from ever coming here in the first place.
Ambassador Spock: [raises an eyebrow] Fascinating.

Version 2
Ambassador Spock: Excuse me, Montgomery Scott?
Scotty: [turns] Aye, sir.
Ambassador Spock: I find myself in need of your assistance.
Scotty: [smiles] For the man who got me out of that ____-hole of a station? Anything.
Ambassador: Excellent. Mr. Scott, in the future you will create an ingenious formula that enables a specific mode of transport. I would like you to help me recreate it.
Scotty: Sure, what kind of transport?
Ambassador Spock: Time travel.
Scotty: Fascinating.
Version 3
[Title Card reads "129 years later . . ."]
(Scene: In the capital city of the planet Romulus)
Ambassador Spock: Praetor, I know it may seem . . . illogical to you, but I insist that it be done.
Romulan Praetor: And you cannot explain yourself, Ambassador?
Ambassador Spock: I would appreciate it as a personal favor.
Romulan Praetor: [nods] As you wish. I will make sure this citizen--Nero, you call him? I'll make sure that he is reassigned from his post on the mining vessel to a place where he will be unable to cause any trouble. Remus, perhaps.
Ambassador Spock: [bows head] I am most grateful.
See? It's not that hard. They could have easily tacked on a thirty-second scene at the end. I mean, they spend the whole fourth movie in 1986 because Scotty figured out out how using the Sun's gravitational field as slingshot could let the Enterprise take them there. It was the third time they'd done it. I mean, come on!
Oh, right. Those episodes no longer matter.
If you're not a big fan, you probably still don't get why I'm so upset about it. In fact, you'll probably really enjoy the movie. So go ahead, enjoy it. Don't mind me; I'm just living in a world where the Gestapo runs the postal service.
Regards, best wishes, and a sequel that clears all of this up to my satisfaction,
-Cecily Jane
P.S. In case you didn't click on that link above, here it is again. It's a post that I wrote two years ago about why something like this shouldn't happen. I wish I had been wrong.

1 comment:

Susan said...

You know, I don't see it that way in the slightest, and I don't think it was meant as an erasure of all other Star Trek either. You see Star Trek never has used the single time-line theory of time, but the infinite number of alternate reality theory of time. So when you "change time", you simply create an alternate reality, or mirror universe. It's not so much that all the other Star Trek has been erased, as this movie takes place in an alternate universe. Ambassador Spock and Nero simply created another alternate universe by their actions. They do briefly mention this in the movie. So the universe that we know and love is still there, simply short one Ambassador Spock, no doubt presumed dead in the explosion along with the rest of Romulus. Now we are following an alternate universe, as if we had switched our point of view to follow the universe in which they never were able to save Picard from the Borg, or the universe in which Kirk is a barbarian who's enemies "disappear". I also think it was a good move, because now they can start a new series if they wish, staring Kirk, and not have to do a huge mountain of research every time they make a new episode to try and please fans such as yourself who know when they screw up. Anyway, I prefer this view to the view that the universe we have gotten to know so well is erased. I hope it makes a difference.