Written by And how one man is running both…
After seeing both the new Star Wars and the trailer for the next Star Trek movie I feel I need to express my feelings on what the mean to me and where they are currently. This may contain some spoilers but they will be minor. For the most part I am going to talk about Star Trek, not the new Star Wars. I will say that if you have not seen The Force Awakens then you should spend the time to see it on the big screen.
The interesting thing about the two is that the last two Star Trek films and The Force Awakens were both written by, and directed by the same person, J.J. Abrams. For the most point I really like this director. He is able to create great characters that can really pull you into the story. Also he can come up with some amazing original ideas, even if they never seem to fully pay off.
When Abrams did his reboot / alternate time line Star Trek I really enjoyed that film. I thought he found some great actors to reprise those iconic roles and opening 10 minutes is simply incredible. But as much as I really liked that film it had a few things that kind of nagged at me. Because the rest of the film was so good I was able to ignore them. When the sequel, Into Darkness, came out these flaws where amplified to such a degree that I came out of that film hating it. There are few films I hate. I can write off a bad film and it will quickly fade from by memory, but a film I hate is something else.
The first major flaw is the lack of respect for the rules for the universe. Now Star Trek, in general, is not known for sticking to the rules, but when it does break them, it does it in smart ways that try to give some scientific explanation. In the movie Abrams introduces a teleporter that goes beyond beaming from the surface of a planet to a ship, it can beam someone on to a ship travelling at warp speed. In the sequel he increases this to have it transport some one across the galaxy. Now think about that, he introduced a technology that nullifies the need for star-ships in a show about star-ships.
When the transporter was introduced in the original series it was done to save production costs. But they gave it some scientific explanation and added a lot of restriction that directly related to the science behind it. This made it feel real and at the same time dangerous. Star Trek The Motion Picture started with some people dying in a transporter accident.
The second flaw is the lack of respect for Space and traveling through it. Space is really huge and in Star Trek travelling through it, even at warp speed, took a long time. Half of Star Trek the Motion Picture was spent trying to get the ship to a place where they could intercept Vger. In Into Darkness J.J. Abrams really wanted the finally battle to be over Earth, but the ships were in Klingon space. He solved this by having the ships go to warp for a few minutes. Not a few minutes of screen time, but a few minutes of actual time. This journey should have taken days.
The third flaw was how he showed mankind. And this might be the most telling. He showed humans as a much darker thing. There was corruption and a lot of internal conflict in Star Fleet. The plot of the second film was driven by this. Now think back on the the past Star Trek films and TV, there was none of this. Sure there was some conflict over how to solve a problem, but everyone was on the same side. It chose to show mankind in a way more positive light.
Now to be fair to J.J. Abrams, he has stated on numerous occasions that he does not understand Star Trek. When talking about Into Darkness, he said: “I found myself frustrated by my choices, and unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story. So then I found myself on that movie basically tap-dancing as well as I could to try and make the sequences as entertaining as possible.”
As much as Into Darkness was a horrible movie and a disgrace to Star Trek we can all rejoice that J.J. Abrams has moved on to Star Wars. Star Wars is something he understands and is a huge fan. The Force Awakens still suffers from some of the problems he had with Star Trek (ex. traveling between star systems still takes minutes). But these faults are overshadowed by amazing, fun characters battling with their inner darkness; as well as being full of many huge epic battles, which make sense in this universe. This is exactly the type of movie I want Abrams to be making, like Mission Impossible 3 before it.
I had a really fun time watching Star Wars in IMAX. Seeing the Millennium Falcon and having the classic score kick in brought me back to what it felt like watching the original movies as a kid. That said it did hang its hat a little too much on nostalgia. The plot is so similar to A New Hope that the script had jokes about it. Also as cool as X-Wings and Tie Fighters are, I would have loved to see some more variety. Even A New Hope had more than X-Wings during the Death Star assault.
In conclusion, I think the reason J.J. Abrams does not understand Star Trek is that he was only 6 when we were last on the moon. He missed out on that thrill of seeing mankind rise to transcend an impossible challenge. The original Star Trek series was on TV at that time, and it captured the spirit of the time. Gene Roddenberry created a show about a group of humans, from all walks of life, coming together to explore the galaxy. “to boldly go where no man has gone before”. Comparing these shows to each other is almost pointless. One is a western about good and evil with space as a back drop, the other is conceptual science fiction which portrays man as he might be and ought to be. Both have their place and can be enjoyed in their own way. Just don’t have someone who does not understand this point to be the show runner.