Saturday, April 25, 2009

Star Trek

I have the feeling that nostalgia is going to get the best of me...again. I am planning on going to see the new Star Trek movie when it comes out. I have hopes for it, but they are mediated by similar situations in recent years. I am a little excited and very concerned to see what J.J. Abrams will do with Star Trek. I liked Alias for a little while, then it got weird and imploded. We didn't even bother watching the last season or two. I am still watching Lost, but know that it has gotten past the possibility of making sense. I want to see what he does with it, not much more.
He has a habit of beginning something on a really clever idea and then letting it roll. I get no indication that he knows where his plots need to end up. I am hoping he can do better with a simple 2 hour timeframe, but we'll see.
The other thing that concerns me is his very postmodern worldview. I have seen it writ large on both Alias and Lost, very Matrix-esque with lots of symbolism borrowed or stolen from other contexts, and am a little concerned about how it will affect something as modernist as Star Trek. I watched Quantum of Solace recently and was amazed at how postmodern Bond has become. Gone are the modernist toys of Q as well as other basic Bond standbys. It was eerie to watch it.
I half-expect the new Star Trek to be this way as well, to some extent. It is sci-fi after all, a typically modernist genre anyway.

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