Star Trek Reboot

So by now everybody has seen the new Star Trek movie by J.J. Abrams. I blogged earlier about my giant skepticism. I saw it on opening Saturday at the Archlight in Sherman Oaks. I saw it again on the IMAX at the AMC16 in Woodland Hills. On Friday, I saw it a 3rd time with my brother Ben at the Pacific 21 in Winetka.

So what did I think about it? Well, I pretty well love it. You may have surmise that from the fact that I saw this movie 3 times in the theater. I staggered out of the Archlight in an overjoyed state of shock. I was amazed that J.J. brought it off. He did the impossible. Pretty astounding.

Lema {

I should note in passing that I recently discovered that J.J. Abrams is a Modo brother of mine. Brad Peebler of Luxology recently boasted on the Modo Modcast that J.J. Abrams is in the sales database. By all evidence, it appeared to be a personal purchase of Modo. strictly for his use.

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Some key points to consider about this movie:

1. For the first time in it's 42 year history, Trek is competitive with the other major science fiction movies in terms of visual effects. Trek has always had effects, yet Trek has never attempted to compete with Star Wars or Bladerunner or any other major work of Science Fiction/Fantasy. ILM boasted that they placed 60 minutes of visual effects shots in the final cut of Star Trek. Fully 1/2 of the movie consists of visual effects shots. They are dandy.
2. A lot of the visual effects shots are highly reminiscent of cover art found on the 10,000 Star Trek novels that have been published since pros and fans started cranking these books out. The shots especially resemble covers done during the 1970s. Somebody did a study of Star Trek fan-art before planning these shots. That is pretty damn good politics and wise artwork. Some of that stuff was amazing. They were pretty thrilling shots for my imagination when I was a kid. They are amazing now.
3. The new crew is good, but not entirely convincing. They got it done this time. However, they need to get better at it and more comfortable in their roles. I think they will be more confident after this glorious reception the critics and fans have given them. There are some problems here, but it is mostly good news.

There are some problems with the new Trek. As good and entertaining as this movie is it is not a perfect movie. The greatest single problem is a substantial loss of scientific realism, something that Trek eventually became famous for. Trek had its wild moments where some art-school screenwriter let a dastardly physical impossibility fly, or dropped piece of scientific nonsense in the middle of an important scene somewhere. However, especially in the latter times, Trek had a crew of Caltec, UCLA and MIT Chemists, Physicists, engineers and biologists consulting on the screenplays. These Ph.D. holding experts caught and eliminated the most ghastly errors art folks were inclined to make. They also beefed up the script in ways screenwriters could not have.

Spoiler Alert!

So what are these problems?

1. How did Scotty wind up in charge of the Engineering section? Star Fleet in the habit of promoting invading Star Fleet offers from Delta Vega to Chief of Engineering? Who died? Did they tell us who died? When did Kirk or Spock say 'You are in charge of engineering'. I don't recall this moment.
2. Delta Vega was not in the Vulcan star system. In the episode (#1) "Where No Man has Gone Before" we learn that Delta Vega is the most distant Federation outpost, near the galactic barrier at the "End of the Milky Way". Yet in this Trek Delta Vega must be a part of the Vulcan star system. Spock could not observe the destruction of Vulcan with his naked eye to the sky unless Delta Vega were a very close neighbor of Vulcan.
3. If Delta Vega were that close to Vulcan, don't you think Montgomery Scott would have noticed a small quantum singularity appearing in his solar system? Do you think he might have noted that a near by planet... a famous planet... an important Federation planet... had been destroyed? Do you think he would have been so oblivious to everything but foot when Kirk and Spock show up?
4. When the final plan to destroy Nero's ship is being hatched on the bridge of the Enterprise, a lot of dialog and logical steps are missing. The plan is not stated well at all. The scene is to brief and too fast. We needed a mission impossible style meeting to form up the game plan. We did not get it. The final attack feels half-assed, and seat-of-the-pants.
5. Spock Kamikaze's the Jellyfish into the Romulan mining ship. This dumps the full load of Red Matter on Nero's ship. Why should we believe that the ship would survive this for couple of minutes of dialog? Why does the Enterpise need to shoot at the Romulan ship? They would all be dead as fucking in hell in no time flat as a consequence of the crushing gravity all around them.
6. A Super Nova is too small to threaten an entire galaxy. According to Wikipedia.org, one Supernova occurs approximately ever 50 years in our Milky Way. We have not been destroyed in the past couple billion years, so these little bangs just don't do that much to disturb the 'hood. A Supernova destroys the local star system. If our sun were to go Supernova, God forbid, nothing in our system would survive. Everything out to the Kuiper Belt would be destroyed. A massive explosion would hurl all the active plasma off our sun's dead core at something pretty close to the speed of light. The Earth would be gone very quickly. Perhapse 10 or 15 minutes after the Nova began. 2 hours later, nothing would be left of our system. However, our closest neighbor Alpha Centauri would be largely unaffected by the event. Something like 4.37 years later, the Supernova would be visible from this vantage point. When a Super Nova strikes you don't have time to make plans, hash out agreements, launch a plan to thwart the Nova by dropping a quantum singularity in there. When a Super Nova strikes, any planet in its way is gone... very quickly. If Romulus is in the path of a Super Nova, Romulus is dead... very quickly
7. I question the whole scene where Kirk exposes the fact that Spock is "emotionally compromised". No military ship allows a mutinous officer to confront the Captain in that manner. This is very questionable. The crew doesn't usually allow the Captain to strangle a mutinous officer on the bridge. Order would have been restored.

So my best advice to J.J. is the following:

1. Make sure the new crew is working on their ensemble chemistry. The Classic Trek was all about the ensemble chemistry between the big 3 (particularly Kirk and Spock) and the supporting 4.
2. Get a crew of scientific consultants to work with you on the next script. I could have fixed all of those screenplay problems myself in a day or so of work. A great crew of consultants would have added some really special sauce to the movie.

Why is optimism considered a liberal thing?

Boy... I sure am reading some very strange things in regards to the new Star Trek movie.

A cursory survey of the articles shown on news.google.com indicate that every liberal is punching in an editorial on this movie.  They are saying some of the darnedest weird things.  If I understand them correctly, Obama is responsible for the best movie of the summer.  He seems to have created the optimism that forced Paramount to make this new Trek in precisely the way they made it.  This new Trek is the spirit of the Liberal Obama on film.  If you love the new Star Trek movie, you are a soul-brother of the Liberal Obama.

Wow...  He works fast, doesn't that Obama?  I think I smell a political cogitation.  What a co-inky-dinky?  Who woulda thunk they'd have done a strange thing like that?  This is very much like John Kerry putting on a Buckeye sweat shirt before appearing at Ohio State University and then a Wolverine cap in Ann Arbor the next day.

Let's face the facts folks.  The Democratic party is attempting make a long-term comeback. It was not long ago when the entire world considered the United States to be (by far) the most conservative advanced nation in the world.  Most of them still hold this impression of us today.  It was not long ago that  people were talking about the Democrats becoming a permanent minority party.  It was just a scant 9 months ago that Palin... er... McCain was 10 points ahead of Obama in the polls.  John only pulled ahead because he picked Sarah.  Otherwise his campaign was dead.

Larry King famously asked Bill Clinton the following question in October 2008: "We are in the midst of the biggest financial collapse since the great depression.  We have the biggest deficit we have had since World War II.  We have the biggest debt ever.  We have had 6 years of unpopular war.  Why is Obama barely ahead in the polls?  Why is this not a done deal?  Why is this election not completely over and done already?"  

Larry was reffing the very slim lead Obama held in the polls during the month of October.  You should have seen the look on Bills face.  Boy that was a combo of affects!  Terribly embarrassing question there!  Bill was humiliated over being forced to grapple this question.  

Bill spun a political yarn about how 45% of the people are die-hard Republicans and 45% of the people die-hard Democrats.  10% of the people are die-hard independents who just can't make up their minds.  They won't decide until 1 week before the election, if they follow their normal pattern.

With all due respect to the last Republican... er... Democrat to give us 3 straight balanced budgets in a row and 2 with a surplus (and I thank him profusely for this) I have to say that this theory is absolute and complete bullshit.  Bill was telling one his famous lies there.

Fact of the matter is about 30% of the population now describes itself as die-hard Democrat.  About 29% of the population describes itself as die-hard Republican.  That number has shrunk considerably in the past 2 years.  I am one of those who left the Republican house.  Don't you dare think that makes me a Democrat.  Fuck no!  

The conclusion is clear.  Something on the order 41% of the nation now calls itself independent or 3rd party.  They don't like the Republicans.  They don't like the Democrats.  Most of them are like me in dismissing ideological rhetoric from both parties and watching actual voting behavior.  If you do this, you will understand that Republicans vs. Democrats is anything but Liberal vs. Conservative.  It is more like Target vs. Walmart.  Similar vendors, similar products, similar prices.  They pretend a difference.  That fantasy is bullshit.  It is just the Blue team vs. the Red team.  It is like the Rams vs. 49ers: Two formerly great teams who both suck ass today.    It makes no sense to describe the Rams as the conservatives and the 49ers to be liberals.  That would be foolishness.  We simply have two teams competing in a Zero-Sum game.  That is all.

The behavior of the electorate in October was an indication that a large majority of the people do not trust the Democratic Party.  Although they probably didn't want to support the Republicans, the notion of supporting a Democrat was unpalatable at best.  The majority went ahead and did so anyhow.  Truth be told, it was a 2 point victory for Obama.  That is closer than anybody would care to admit.  By the way, I don't think this had anything to do with race.  I would like to have voted for Obama on a personal basis.  I just don't like his party or their political slant, as mild as that slant might be.  Ergo, I stayed home.

The fact that 41% of the voting population of the United States is non-aligned is a deep terror to both Republican and Democrat alike.  It has produced unprecedented levels of voter volatility.  We now have some unpredictability in the system.  It used to be that every congressional seat was safe if occupied.  That is not exactly true now.  Worse still (from the point of view of the typical asshole in Washington) we have the most fertile conditions in American history for the arrival of a new 3rd party with some serious voter torque in its crankshaft.  Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats want that to happen.  They have co-constructed an election system which supposed to prevent that from happening.  This handiwork may be the only thing preventing a major third part from emerging.

Make no mistake, the Democrats are absolutely thrilled with their new domination of Government.  Make no mistake, they feel this is the way things aught to be.  Nevertheless, they are terribly insecure about this victory they won in 2008.  Given the number and percentage of independents, they know there is great volatility in the system.  Their victory next year is uncertain at best.  Political capital deposits can evaporate very quickly.  You can hit a political liquidity crisis fast in this environment.  

For this reason, the Democrats are doing a lot of post-sale evangelism.  Under the heading of advanced pop-culture analysis the libs are attempting to sneak some rhetorical black-magic past us.  That is why pessimism is now a conservative agenda according to the liberal columnist.  That is why the Republicans are now the part of NO!  That is why optimism is now a liberal thing.  This is why the new Star Trek, destined to be the biggest hit of the summer, is now the very artistic embodiment of the liberal spirit of Obama.

I just wish they would not mis-characterize my Star Trek in the process.  One Utopian liberal editorialised the question "Can the peaceful utopia of Star Trek happen in reality?"  The presupposition is utterly false.  Believe me, there was plenty of combat in Star Trek.  The new Trek has Romulan commanders destroying entire worlds with minature black-holes.  The Trek universe was not in a constant state of war, but it always seemed on the brink of a war.  Many Trek plots have to do with diplomatic attempts to head off war.  There were neutral zones like Berlin Walls separating Klingons and Romulans from those of the Federation.  They blew each other up often enough.

Frankly, the statements of Star Trek's political optimism, liberality, peacefulness and Utopianism is vastly overstated.  It shows how people project their biases upon the objects of their affection.  It also shows that a shaky and nervous party will now try to co-opt the movie biggest hit of the summer in an attempt to build a long-term friendship & solidarity with the people.