I’m sorry, Squiders, I know I promised you The Ancient One discussion today, but the fact of the matter is that all the electronics on my stove exploded on Saturday night and then caught fire, and it’s completely thrown me off my groove.
(Luckily, the fire burned out pretty quickly once power was disconnected, so the worst of the damage is that the wall is charred and a bit melty in a couple of places. Oh, and that I have no logical way to cook dinner. On the other hand, I did finally get my toaster oven out of the box. But you cannot cook a whole pizza at once, even. It’s like a tiny, useless oven that you only use to…I don’t even know. Probably why it’s been sitting in its box for two years.)
I’m finally starting to get back into things, though, so Thursday we should, hopefully, finally get on with our discussion. I would say definitively, but a tree will probably fall on my house if I make any promises.
So, instead, let’s talk about the newest Star Trek movie, which the husband and I managed to see on opening day (like, actual opening day, not midnight the day before). We went at, like, 5 pm and the theater was half empty, which was a bit odd, but hey, I got prime seats so I’m not complaining.
My overall thoughts are: I liked it? I think?
It’s weird. In terms of general Trek-ness, it’s no doubt the best of the three reboots. There were a lot of aspects that I liked a lot. Yorktown is super cool, as is the Swarm. There’s Spock/Bones time! Crewmembers that are not Kirk and/or Spock get to do things! Kirk and Spock do things with people who are not each other! Also, Jaylah is awesome and I liked her a lot. Also, I thought the way they handled Leonard Nimoy’s passing in the film was very well done. Intellectually, I like it quite a bit.
But I left the theater feeling somewhat underwhelmed, and I can’t quite figure out why. Something about my mood? I feel like maybe I kept getting distracted by other concerns. I also feel like every now and then people were out of character, and Uhura, for the most part, is still being sidelined as girlfriend/damsel. (Though, to be fair, I didn’t mind their relationship in this movie as much as I have in the previous ones.) Plus it’s hard to watch a film when one of the actors has just died. Anton Yelchin finally got to do things that weren’t just yelling and running around like a hyper puppy in this film, and we won’t get to see anything more from him.
I seem to be the odd one out on this lukewarm-ness. I have at least one friend who has declared it the best movie of all time. Beyond that, everyone seems to agree that it was a good movie and a decent Trek film (ranking it somewhere in the middle). And I feel like I should like it. As I said above, I liked a lot of it. There was just something missing overall. Some sort of…spark. I dunno.
Maybe I’ll like it better the next time.
I do want to say, though, that I totally dig the re-design on the dress uniforms. And the away team uniforms or whatever they’re supposed to be are also really neat. A+ to the costumer designer, you rock, except the neckline on the men’s on-ship uniforms go up the neck a little too far and it looks a bit wonky.
(I want to be clear that I mean “dress” uniform as in “uniforms that are dresses” and not “formal uniforms.”)
(Also, I went and saw Ghostbusters again yesterday and it’s still excellent.)
Seen Star Trek Beyond, Squiders? (Kind of a silly title, actually, and doesn’t have anything to do with the actual content of the story.) Thoughts? Want to talk about Ghostbusters? Because I will talk about that all day long.
