In some ways it wasnât as awful as Iâd heard, and in some ways it was worse. On the plus side, it had giant robots blowing stuff up, and they put more thought into the story than I expected them to. And there were certainly good moments spread throughout the film. On the minus side, the visuals were so complex that they were hard to follow. Thatâs a problem I had with the Transformersâ designs in the first film, too â they look insanely cool in still shots, but start them moving and you end up with two clouds of shrapnel fighting each other. Plus Michael Bay has a very different sense of humor than I do, which didnât help. And amazingly enough, the movie was tedious. I donât know how you can possibly take a movie about giant robots and explosions and make it dull enough that I checked my watch at least five times during the film.
In summary, Iâm glad I waited for the second-run showing and only spent $1.75.
I went with a friend to watch a screening of Ghostbusters. It really holds up! The jokes are still funny, the story still works, and even the effects hold up pretty well. (The main exception would be the stop-motion version of the terror dogs, which is probably a combination of compositing and lack of motion blur).
One thing I noticed was that the story itself is treated 100% seriously. The humor is in the characters, the dialogue, the attitude. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, for instance, is incredibly silly â but because thereâs a logical in-story reason for it, and the characters treat it as a real threat, it works.
The friend I saw it with was remarking about how tightly the movie is put together. It starts with their breakthrough, goes their first case, and then right onto the main plot, with montages serving to fill in the gaps.
I wonât say much about the plot, because itâs better without spoilers, butâŠI hated the first hour of the movie. Just couldnât stand it. The two leads were just acting so stupid and self-destructive that I couldnât sympathize with anyone except the police inspector, and even that was probably in part because he was effectively narrating the story.
If it had been a two-part TV miniseries, I wouldnât have bothered with part two.
But I stuck through with it, and the tone changed significantly in the second halfâŠand then the ending was so good that it completely made up for everything that had bothered me about the beginning.
Yeah, I was watching Star Trek during the earthquake. Right at the point that they open a huge, loud, grinding door to a remote outpost. Fortunately it was small, the movie kept playing, and we all kept watching.
Judging by audience reaction (to the movie, not the quake), there were definitely lots of people seeing it for the first time today, so Iâll keep this non-spoilery as much as possible.
What I Liked
The film manages to recapture the Kirk, Spock and McCoy dynamic that gave the original show its heart.
Each character gets at least something to do, even if it does focus heavily on Kirk and Spock.
The actors really manage to convey the same characters, rather than new characters with the same names. Especially McCoy and Spock. Karl Urban in particular seems to be channeling DeForest Kelley the way Ewan MacGregor channeled Alec Guinness in the Star Wars prequels. (And yes, Kirk is different, but thereâs a reason for it, and that reason is critical to the story and his characterâs journey.)
The plot moves and holds together (mostly).
The effects of course are incredible.
They remembered that Trek can have humor â something that ST: TNG and later shows seemed to avoid as if it would somehow taint their artistic value (except when Q was around).
The nods to established elements of the series, from character quirks to design elements to music cues, that are there if you know what to look for, but donât bog down the story if you donât.
What I Didnât
I had no problems with the obvious canon changes, and thought that the huge event 1/3 of the way in was probably the best way they could recapture dramatic suspense and establish the idea that anything can happen.
In fact, the things that bothered me have very little to do with other versions of Star Trek. Again, trying to be as non-spoilery as I can for the people who havenât seen it.
Supernovas are not that dangerous unless youâre in the same solar system. For planet X to be destroyed, it would have to have been that planetâs sun that went supernova.
Another planet, to provide the view that it offered of a significant event, would have to have been a moon of the planet on which that event took place.
Engineering doesnât look like a spaceship. It looks like a brewery.
It relies heavily on the same dead-relative-as-motivation trope thatâs bothering me so much in Flash: Rebirth. But I can see what they were going for and why they did it.
A piece of miracle technology is invented which would revolutionize space travel to the point that it would make any further voyages irrelevant, and will most likely be ignored because of this. (Of course, the TV series did the same thing all the time.)
Music
Also, while I liked Michael Giacchinoâs music in context, itâs very repetitive. The theater was playing the score while we waited for the film to start, and an awful lot of it is the same theme, over and over, in different arrangements.
My favorite Star Trek music is a toss-up between James Hornerâs scores for The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock, and Cliff Eidelmanâs score for The Undiscovered Country. We were talking about the music before the movie, and neither of us could think of anything else Eidelman had done, so I looked him up on IMDB. It turns out that heâs written music for about 20 films since Star Trek VI, and I recognized almost all of themâŠI just hadnât actually seen any of them.
Well, it took 2Âœ months during which I took breaks to read at least three other books, but this weekend I finally finished the first book of George R.R. Martinâs fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones.
By all rights I should have liked this book. I frequently like big epic fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkienâs Lord of the Rings, Greg Keyesâ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, Robert Jordanâs Wheel of Time. Actually, Wheel of Time is probably the best comparison, given the sweeping scope of the series, the number of viewpoint characters, the emphasis on political intrigue, and the length of the books.
On the other hand, no Robert Jordan book has taken me longer than a month to read.
About a year ago, a friend recommended the books to Katie, and gave her the series so far (4 books) for Christmas. It took a while before she got to them, but when she did, she tore through them in about a week. (It helped that she had the free time.) She recommended them to me, but I didnât pick up the first book until sometime last November.
And I just couldnât get into it. The characters I found most interesting seemed to get the least attention. Of those, one characterâs chapters were difficult to read because sheâs in the wrong genre: a girl of 10(?) who wants to grow up to be a warrior princess in a world that would casually kill her before she had the chance. And while Iâm sure itâs a matter of morally gray=interesting, itâs basically âKingdom of Aâholesâ (maybe not as poetic as âThe Knights Who Say Fââ but more accurate, at least for the first book). The only adult character who isnât morally gray or worse is so stuck on honor that he canât handle the compromises necessary in politics. So itâs not so much a question of whoâs the best choice to be in charge, as whoâs the least bad.
The first book is about 95% straight medieval-setting political/military drama, with hints at supernatural elements here and there. The prologue sets up an otherworldly menace that is subsequently ignored for most of the book, thereâs the occasional sword described as magic, it gradually becomes clear that the dragons are a historical fact, rather than legends (the previous king had dragon skulls mounted along the walls of the throne room) and that seasons frequently last years. âWinter is comingâ is a key phrase, and the motto of the family that provides all but two of the viewpoint characters.
After 400 pages of tedious setup establishing just how brutish, brattish, or manipulative everyone is, things start going off the rails. And boy, do they go off the rails. You know how, when reading a book, you get to a point where you figure it canât get worse? It does. Repeatedly.
About 200 pages from the end I decided I was going to make an effort to finish the book and get it out of the way. So I had a marathon reading session one Sunday, then made an effort to read during lunch over the next week, and then finally finished it over this past weekend. (For contrast, with each of the first two or three Wheel of Time books, when I got within 150 or 200 pages of the end I had to finish, even if it meant staying up until 2am on a work night.)
Actually I guess itâs kind of like some of the later Wheel of Time books in terms of sheer detail and trudgery. Except those have the advantage that youâve probably read the earlier ones, which were quite good. (Iâve often described the WoT series as 5 novels of one book each followed by one novel that spans 7 books.)
The last 50 pages or so, particularly the final chapter, are considerably more interesting. If it had stopped at 750 pages, Iâd probably be inclined to just leave it there, but I might actually pick up the second book at this point.
