Moe Lane

‘This’ being the problem that there are two franchises, and only one JJ Abrams.

See, I don’t know which side I identify with more, because it depends on circumstances.  I watched both Star Wars and Star Trek.  I read the ST books, not the SW ones.  I play the SW video games, not the ST ones.  I know the back-story to ST better than I do SW; I know how to roleplay a SW character better than I know how to roleplay a ST one.  I’m torn even when it comes to the franchises themselves: I love the ST reboot because it’s deliberately evocative of TOS, but SW desperately needs a reboot, if not a a finger-down-the-throat purge.

It’s a puzzler.

I predict three things:

1. There is going to be a tremendous amount of bitching, moaning, whining, yelling, thoughtless ranting, thoughtful ranting, justifiable complaints, baseless complaints, and pretty much an open state of kanly among the science fiction community over every. Single. Scrap of news that comes out between now and opening night.
2. We’re all going to be there opening night anyway.
3. Sometimes between now and then, JJ Abrams will get caught – seriously, he keeps trying to keep a lid on it, publicity-wise – doing something very decent for somebody wrt access to his Star Wars movie.

Moe Lane

PS: Reading the stories on this… dammit, Cloverfield deserves more love.  I had fun watching that flick; I always wanted to know what it was like to have a worm’s eye view of a Godzilla attack.

…who likes to do decent things for people when he doesn’t have to.  You may remember that Abrams brought the first Star Trek movie and the stars of it over to Kuwait in advance of its commercial release, solely to entertain the troops; he seems to be carrying on the tradition of finding little grace notes to strike.

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Daniel Craft, director of the New York Asian Film Festival, was allowed to see an early cut of the upcoming Star Trek film nearly five months ahead of its release date.

Anyway, I am of course moderately looking forward to this movOHMYGOD THAT’S SHERLOCK AS THE VILLAIN AND THAT ACTRESS ISN’T NURSE CHAPEL SHE’S CAROL MARCUS THIS IS GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY INSANE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN

…sorry about that.

Moe Lane

(H/T: AoSHQ Headlines)

I meant to post on this story about the Star Trek movie and crew over the weekend, but never got around to it until AoSHQ reminded me:

I am in the Army and currently deployed to Kuwait. We have a movie theater on post that shows “second run” movies, meaning that we get the movie about a week or two after they are released in the states. At times, a special effort is made to show the movie here on the same date it is released in the states. With that being said, I was shocked to see the movie schedule that was published for the first half of April. According to this schedule the new Star Trek movie will have a “special premier” on April 11th. I found it very hard to believe that we would be able to view a big “summer time blockbuster” movie that won’t premiere in the States for another 27 days.

Sure enough, the movie actually did get played today and I was able to get in to see it not just once, but twice. Not only did the movie arrive in Kuwait, but J.J. Abrams and most of the “bridge crew” cast (Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, Eric Bana and Karl Urban) were here as well.

(more…)

“All parties, by the way, absolutely detest answering questions on this subject, knowing any response they give will spawn headlines and inevitably get them yelled at by somebody”

The above is from this article speculating – speculating! – that the upcoming release of the new Star Trek movie could result in a reboot of the franchise for television. I don’t know what I’m grimacing more at, though: the thought of what the author called “Gossip Girl in Space”(both I and Allahpundit winced at the trailer, which makes this allegation altogether too horrifyingly believable); or the first line of the article, which claims that faster-than-light travel is theoretically possible [UPDATE: unless it doesn't; see comments below].  I am given to understand that this is wrong in a fashion that makes physicists gibber; I look forward to testing that in the near future*.

Canceled Enterprise or no, there’s money in Star Trek.  It’ll be back.  Whether it’ll be back in the highly bizarre – if not really implausible – fashion suggested above is another story.

Moe Lane

*Yes, I know about tachyons.  That’s why the physicist is gibbering.