I have seen Star Trek!

[timepiececlock]

My family pulled through, after all, and after I helped with some serious labor-intensive stuff this afternoon we all went out to dinner and saw the movie! It was a nice surprise.

As for the movie...I can tell you many more posts will follow. I adored it. It's one of my favorite sci fi movies in years. Splendid.

And now I can't help but wish that someone would make an all-ages Spock video to the song "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire.

Comments

[gojira007.livejournal.com]

That's probably the safer bet, and I do dislike handheld camera versions of movies (the image quality is always so terrible X3), so yeah, let's go with that. ^_^

And I think it's funny that Spock/Uhura already being underway is one of the reasons you liked it, 'cuz it was probably the biggest reason it so confused me, coming out of (seemingly, though in hindsight there are some pretty strong hints) nowhere for me. XD

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I'm a very casual Star Trek fan. I've seen all the movies, some when I was only a kid, but I've only seen maybe half a dozen original ST episodes. So I know all the characters, and when I first got spoiled that there would be something between them in the movie, I was surprised. But I am not mentally devoted to the original canon enough to be bothered by it. Actually, I liked that they were already established not from a fan perspective, but from a movie-fan perspective. It means the film didn't waste time on having them flirty without any follow up, no UST, no "forbidden because he's a vulcan" starcrossed bullshit. Instead, their relationship was part of the AU, concrete within the story and an important element to both their characters.

It gives a whole new dimension to Spock, because now we know that he engaged in a relationship with her while she was still a cadet and he was an instructor, possibly when he was *her* instructor. There's some mystery there--why would he, of all characters, violate regulations like that? (I assume Starfleet has regulations against it like most militaries, though i don't know if they actually do in canon) How different is this world, if Kirk grows up as a sloppy, insulting, good-for-nothing youth with father issues and Spock grows up to be a lot more emotional, rebellious, and full of repressed anger than we remember?

Uhura doesn't have as much characterization to deviate from than Spock, but I liked that her character was portrayed as being a peer to Spock intellectually, and that their relationship wasn't a plot-problem, but something supportive (and kinda sweet) for both characters.

[gojira007.livejournal.com]

Pretty sound logic, I'd say. For me, who's always had a sort of distant affection for "Star Trek" in its many forms, I think the confusion by deviation was almost subconscious; I wasn't thinking, "Wow, Spock and Uhura weren't like that in the Original Series", I was thinking "Wow, that came outta nowhere!" without fully realizing that the former kinda caused the latter.

Also, that Zutara icon made me LOL pretty bad. X3

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Thanks! The icon was one I made for akavertigo's fanfic Tempest In A Teacup. It's a wonderful story, one of the best k/z fanfics out there, and was the first to use the AU idea of Katara being raised in the FN as a war child expatriate.

I wasn't thinking, "Wow, Spock and Uhura weren't like that in the Original Series", I was thinking "Wow, that came outta nowhere!" without fully realizing that the former kinda caused the latter.

The whole thing is a big like an AU fanfic... people are in dramatically different situations than we're familiar with, and are introduced in the midst of new relationships.

When I saw Casino Royale, I thought it was what what a Bond movie would look like if a fanfiction writer got a hold of the script and then gave that script to a great director. In many ways, I think this Star Trek has a similar feeling... it has a complicated time-travel plot but focuses heavily on character development and character interaction, and it displays aspects of characters in small, personalized ways that we're not used to from canon Star Trek...and some of those displays are not "safe" storytelling that we're used to...like Spock and Uhura's implied teacher/student relationship, or Jim's blatant smarmy jerk attitude while openly cheating. (as i recall, the fact that he cheated was not so well-known in the original canon.)

[gojira007.livejournal.com]

I recall reading bits and pieces of "Tempest in a Teacup" and being quite fond of it, but that was from before Zutara had really sunk its teeth into me and so I didn't make it a priority to finish, a mistake I hope to one day rectify. ^_^

"Casino Royale" and "Star Trek" definitely have a similar kind of feel to me, actually. I mean, obviously, they're both Reboots to their respective franchises, but a very specific kind of Reboot that I think you describe perfectly. Take the emphasis off Big, Plotty storylines and put it on the characters and their relationships, make the Action sequences Cool as Cool can be, and play around with some witty in-jokes and references. The result in both cases are Movies that have all the things that make their franchises so cool without being anchored down to what came before. It's an approach with some real merit to it, I think.