| The Diary of a Mad Black Fleet Admiral |
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Hail Fleet Admiral Perry! Unless you’ve been recovering from lasik surgery for the past couple of months I’m sure you’ve probably noticed that there’s a new Star Trek movie out. Yes, they’ve gone the prequel route and decided to explore the rebellious upbringing of Kirk and the rebellious (by Vulcan standards) of Spock. Helming this latest venture is J.J. Abrams, the maestro behind needlessly convoluted TV series Lost and Fringe, who thankfully made a movie that will appeal to people who don’t wear Vulcan ears on their class picture day. That being said, keep an eye out for a few recurring things in the new Star Trek: 1) Glaring inside jokes. In this case only the people with Vulcan ears understand them 2) Time travel or time traveling themes 3) Enemies forming grudging friendships and eventually becoming lovers, I mean friends 4) Tyler Perry I can respect Mr. Abrams for trying to please both Trekkies and normal people at the same time and really can’t complain too much about how he went about it. I will say though that after the first few obvious inside jokes I began to feel awkward about not laughing with everyone else. Eventually I just started laughing along with the Vulcan ears just to fit in, which is pretty sad in itself that I’m trying to fit in with Trekkies. Of course technically this movie isn’t really Star Trek considering that Abrams and Co. disregard almost every bit of Trekkology in their pursuit of an actually palpable movie that people who aren’t fluent in Klingon would enjoy. Sometimes disregarding mythology in favor of a more streamlined plot is a wise choice, but there’s always that one guy who decides to ruin the movie by pointing out all the things wrong with the continuity and portrayals of the characters. Thankfully the use of time travel, black holes, space-time paradoxes, Eric Bana, and alternate universes render those annoying forum junkies impotent by creating an entire alternate universe for the movie to exist in. Maybe if these wannabe Trekkies put on Vulcan ears I might be more inclined to listen to them complain. Or at least I’d laugh along with them. Moving onto the subject of Kirk and Spock’s close friendship I’ll go ahead and avoid lynch mobs of Vulcan ears by not getting too detailed about their “closeness.” Then again I can’t help, but point out that the little tryst between Spock and Uhura seemed like it was sort of hastily tacked on at the last minute. Maybe they realized there were a few too many Top Gun moments between Kirk and Spock that needed to be offset by someone didn’t have a penis (I assume Vulcans have those). Thankfully Tyler Perry was there to offset the awkward guy moments by bringing a touch of his trademark sassiness. No, calm down he wasn’t wearing his Madea fat suit while playing a Federation Fleet Admiral, but you could just see in his eyes the mad black lady just itching to unleash itself on the Star Trek universe. Admittedly the one black female character might not be sassy enough for many people, but props must be given to J.J. Abrams for making the difficult decision to tone the sass in favor of coherent dialogue and logical progression to the plot. Fleet Admiral Perry, are you taking notes? |
