Just got back from a private showing of the hottest movie in the country, “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Well, practically private. I think there were about three others at the Tuesday 1pm matinee at Century theaters East. I know it’s typical for me to pee and moan about the movies I see; too expensive, too blaringly loud, too peppered with pointless profanity, or too far away from the toilet but none of that this time. Let’s talk about this movie in particular and why I was kind of disappointed in how it played too fast and loose with reality. Wait a minute, Lund, you’re watching a film about science fiction where humans and aliens hop around the universe at warp speed armed with phasers and photon torpedoes..and you’re questioning the “reality” of it all? Now, before you trekkies write me off as someone who just “doesn’t get it” let me explain that, while I’ve never attended a Star Trek convention and don’t have even one piece of Star Trek memorabilia, I have seen every TV show and theatrical production of the franchise since it began in 1966. I’ve bought in to every one of them..save the last two. Now don’t get excited I’m not going to spoil anything if you haven’t seen it or comment beyond what you’ve already noted in the trailers. My beef, I guess, is that when the late Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek his ideas about zipping around the galaxies in a star ship..encountering strange new worlds, always seemed believable to me. It’s just that technology hadn’t yet caught up with his wonderful imagination. What Roddenberry didn’t do was allow his human characters to somehow become super human which is what’s happened in the latest films. Kirk, Spock and Scotty leaping from dizzying heights onto moving platforms a hundred yards below without so much as a bruise much less ending up in a crumpled heap of broken bones. Speaking of Bones, Dr. McCoy’s character has been annoyingly dumbed down in this installment and there are so many inside references to past and popular Star Trek stories that it’s like the crew stops and breaks character long enough to wink at the audience.
I haven’t seen a movie in 3D since Avatar and, am still not sold on it. I’m not sure that having space junk appear to fly right over my head is enough to justify the extra cost or the murkiness of images on screen due to the special dark glasses you must wear for the desired effect.
On the plus side, I think the young actors playing the main characters are very good and the latest villain is particular menacing. And even though the sound of the Enterprise engaging into warp drive lifted me and the three other theater patrons about a foot out of our seats, I was entertained. After all over 80 percent of the movie critics give “Star Trek Into Darkness” positive reviews so perhaps I’m picking nits based on some old fashioned loyalty to the original premise. I just hope kids who see it don’t try to leap tall building in a single bound like the new Superman, Captain Kirk. As Spock and Gene Roddenberry would say, it’s not “logical.”
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I was pleased that photographer, Paul Horsted, became a Facebook friend of mine this week. I’ve long admired his talents..especially when he seeks out a location in the Black Hills where a picture was taken a century ago. He then shoots a new image and displays the two side by side revealing how much..or how little..the landscape has changed in the last one hundred years or so. He’s published several books that illustrate his technique.
Horsted was able to locate the exact spot where George Armstrong Custer posed with a bear he’d shot while exploring the Black Hills in 1874.
Check out his website. It is..as Spock would say, “fascinating.” http://www.dakotaphoto.com/#/11
I thought of Paul today as I took a look out our French door to see green grass and lilacs in bloom..a far cry from a few short weeks ago when it sounded like the world was crashing down on us.
I was so proud of my Keloland colleagues who produced this week’s Keloland 60th Anniversary Special. (Still available to see at Keloland.com) It was a terrific program and demonstrates that the TV station’s legacy is in good and caring hands. May Keloland and the talented crew who make our starship keep functioning on all thrusters, “Live long and prosper.”