Wars vs. Trek

[anotheranon]

My time being sick this week was not wasted. Between coughing and Nyquil naps, I watched the first 6 Star Trek movies (i.e., the ones with the tv show's original cast).

Disclaimer: while I was raised on Star Wars, I only have dim memories of the pre-TNG movies. I think I'd seen all of them before this week as I remembered bits from most, but they weren't ubiquitous in my childhood home the way the Star Wars trilogy was. As such I'm not super-aware of the context in which they were released, though I'm sure for fans of the TV show the first one was a huge, huge deal. Having said this:

• I do think the Trek films got cheated by not having the best special effects available. Maybe I was spoiled by early Industrial Lights and Magic, or I just have nostalgia goggles on, but the first Star Trek movie (1979) looks downright cheesy compared to A New Hope (1977).
  
• Most of the acting in both properties was...lacking, but Star Trek had fun with it: the scenery chewing face-off between Ricardo Montalban and William Shatner in Wrath of Khaaaaaaan was magnificent! In the SW franchise, the truly bad acting was just bad (the deleted scene of Luke and Biggs is just painful).
  
• The Star Wars movies are stories within a larger arc (the fall of the Empire/redemption of Darth Vader), but the Trek films have much more a stand-alone feel to them, even though 2, 3, and 4 take place one immediately after the other.
  
  Indeed, some of them read as fillers for episodic tv at best - IMHO ST 3 and 5 are rather forgettable. 2 has the most fun. 6 has the most internally coherent/interesting storyline.
  
  
  
• I can't make up my mind whether the nods/winks to earth's history are fun or annoying. In the case of ST 4 ("the one with the whales") I found it painfully anachronistic all the way through - how did it read when it originally came out?
  
  
  
  • I'm aware that all costumes in sci-fi movies reflect the times in which they were made, but the women's hair SCREAMED 80s from start to finish (Except for Ilia, obviously). SW looks more timeless to me, but again - that could be the nostalgia talking. Could it have been budget constraints? (though it seems odd to me that franchise popular enough to spawn 6 films would have problems getting good costuming).
    
  
  
• DeForest Kelley's Bones was easily the funniest character throughout - Karl Urban nailed his cranky put-uponedness. And the writers gave Nimoy's Spock a pleasantly surprising amount of dry humor to play with.
  
  
  
  • I now "get" most of the ST reboot movie's "call-backs" to the original now.
    
    • And the Kirk/Spock subtext is greater in the original films :P Maybe it's just Shatner emoting all over the place.
    
    
  
  
• Was I the only one to notice that in movie 6 it seemed like Uhura and Scotty were awfully affectionate? Frankly I think the new movie's Uhura should dump Spock for Scotty, if only 'cos dating your teacher is unprofessional.
  
  • Besides, there'd be Moar Pegg on screen!
    
  
  

I still like Star Wars best. Yes, even after the prequels: the story seems tighter and has more of a definite trajectory, and I think they also had more budget/effects magic to realize Lucas' vision (even before all of the recent remastering/meddling). Yes, I do realize that Trek was coming out of episodic tv. That, and I grew up with the characters - for me there was never a time that there WASN'T Star Wars.

Still, Trek does have a lot of fun in it's little 'verse galaxy quadrant :)

Comments

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

The best of Star Wars was when George Lucas stuck with what he's good at: broad story arc plus art direction/world building. That he tried to write dialog and direct the prequels was his downfall: it takes rare lack of talent to squeeze bad performances out of the likes of Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman :P