Coming Soon...The Star Trek Saga

In the coming weeks I shall endeavor to create a series of blogs that detail my personal feelings regarding each and every Star Trek show and movie.

I'll most likely start by dissecting each TV show and include for each my selections for the best episodes (in countdown form), my personal favorite episodes (regardless of relative quality), and my picks for the worst episodes as well. I'll go in chronological order of when each show aired to avoid moderate confusion for any carry-over storylines.

Then I'll go on to review each Star Trek film separately and consider how they distinguish themselves from their respective series and how they should probably be regarded by fans. I say this now because it will become very significant later on when I discuss JJ Abrams' recent foray into recreating the Trek franchise effectively from scratch. 

What I'll say here for now is that one of the key aspects to understanding and appreciating Star Trek for what it is is almost completely dependent on the given viewer. Most fans of Trek usually pick a specific series as their personal favorite and what that choice is is fairly reflective overall of how that individual views the entire series itself. Much has recently been made of Into Darkness and how it connects to the entire previous Trek franchise and how it should be considered in the grand scheme of things. I'll get into specific detail for that movie much later on in this series of blog posts, but for now it is sufficient I think to say that some may be choosing to interpret the Abrams' franchise only in regards to the rest of the established Trek universe. Given the nature of what his franchise is attempting to do, such an interpretation is theoretically problematic at best. Furthermore, this entire matter connects back to yet another aspect of viewing Trek fandom specifically- that Trekkies and Trekkers have a tendency to become rather...resolute in their ways and opinions. Because there is a frequent tendency for fans to pick one personal favorite show over another it colors a bit their perspective on what Star Trek overall is meant to be as a science fiction series and a cult phenomenon and a Hollywood franchise. I personally like to think that Trek is all of those things, not necessarily all of them at the same time, but nonetheless it fits the bill for any of those labels to a T and so can be viewed and analyzed from various perspectives. Essentially what I mean is- Trek means different things to different people and in the way that religion is oftentimes quite specific to certain people, so is Trek considered by different people in different ways. Some like to think Trek means 'THIS ONE THING' while others say it means 'THIS OTHER THING ENTIRELY.'

Again however I should reiterate that this is only MY perspective on things. I am not attempting to blow smoke up my own ass by saying I have all the answers nor that my opinions should be taken as complete truth. Everything is relative.

The Sort Of Problem With Star Wars

So I've been ridiculously busy with school (inexcusably so considering I only had three classes, but such is life) which is why I haven't been posting of late (always a fucking excuse with me). But I'm back. I'm done with school for the semester and am now relatively officially on summer break. And while I busy myself with metric shit-tons of screenwriting work of my own and continue my seemingly endless and arduous search for a job I shall hopefully be rather more frequent with my posts on here.

Without further ado then, I present a brand spanking new little diatribe about my semi-dislike (but mostly just mild exasperation) with the continued popularity of Star Wars as a mega-movie franchise.

This will probably be wildly all over the place in terms of a consistent point but that's mainly because there's a great many things I want and could say about Star Wars in general and it's tricky to try and articulate what that specific point is.

Here's the thing, and I wanna get this out of the way now before I press on with my criticisms, I like Star Wars. I really do. I think they're wonderfully fun and entertaining movies and they did a great deal for the film industry in terms of creating a whole new form and process of how a film can get made and sold (whether or not what they did was a good or a bad thing I'll try to address later). This post isn't intended to slam against the idea of Star Wars in and of itself. Star Wars exists as it does and I respect it on a certain level and I enjoy it on another.

But the issue is this- is Star Wars actually good? As a franchise it has experienced enormous popularity and made literally billions of dollars. That's all fine and dandy, but what does that mean ultimately? I recall a class I took several semesters ago that required for the final project that each student get up and give a presentation on a given cultural icon. It really didn't matter who the person was, but we were supposed to examine what they had done and why those actions had significance on a cultural and social level. What did such a person do that affected people and made them think about something?

I chose Marilyn Manson. He was notoriously controversial when he was super popular in the late 90's and early 00's. He was prominently featured in the documentary Bowling For Columbine where he discussed the incorrect interpretation many people had made of him and all of his work. Many assumed he was simply a violent monster who wanted to spread evil and hate and that his music and imagery had subliminal messages regarding Satanism. They were wrong. The point is this- he had a clear and obvious cultural influence for a time. He made people think, whether or not you agree with him or his message or like his work is all irrelevant.

Another student chose Dane Cook. He played several clips of his material. I didn't laugh much (I just personally don't find him that funny). He examined his life and upbringing and explained how he had become a success. He cited reasoning like- "He's won awards and made a great deal of money and broke stand-up comedy records. That's what makes him a cultural icon."

Um...no. Financial success and continued popularity does not in any way equal the status of a cultural icon. What did he do? I, in fact, dread the day that Dane Cook becomes a cultural icon of any significance.

That's the analogy I draw in comparison to Star Wars.

What is it actually about? I won't go over every last minute detail of each movie's plot or else we'd be here all day. Suffice of to say the storyline for each movie really isn't that sophisticated. Like at all.

Like AT ALL.

Why does everyone seem to remember the plot to A New Hope so well? Because every step of the way the movie follows the classic hero's journey. In like every way.

Every. fucking. way.

And really, that's my issue. The entire series rarely takes any dramatic risks. It's all driven by the machinations of the plot. There's no character to anyone because they're all painted in such incredibly broad strokes of archetypal paint. Han Solo is the Rebel. Luke Skywalker is the Hero. Darth Vader is the Villain.

So what we're left with is a gigantic film series intended as little more than an entertaining adventure story. Which would be fine, except even then everything's so incredibly and utterly predictable.

You see, even movies that are largely just genre films have something going for them. On a thematic level. On a character-arc level. There is something that is being explored or talked about or considered. Even if that thing is largely a metaphoric symbol for something else, it's still there.

I think of a movie like Skyfall and I see how it comments on the complex nature of its hero in the way The Dark Knight did for Batman. Or to look at even A View To A Kill, ultimately it's a dreadful movie as far as Bond films go, but even then, underneath everything that's exploding and being sexed there's still a running socio-political commentary on the then new advent of the microchip. It's at least attempting to say something about the nature of the rich and corrupt and how those traits affect the way in which us mere mortals are treated by those same powerful businessmen. A silly comparison, but it's still true.

What does Star Wars say about the nature of evil? It...exists. And then it's vanquished. And that's pretty much it. Sure it sort of corrupts Luke a little when it seems he's enjoying the horrible stuff he's doing and it certainly does so with Anakin. But other than the incredibly simple and obvious statement of fact that bad stuff is a thing in the universe and that we shouldn't like it for reasons a, b, and c, there's not much else that's really being addressed in these movies.

Yes, I get that entire worlds were created from scratch. Languages invented and planets built. The technical stuff is all quite impressive. But what does it all add up to other than a good time at the movies?

And I should stress again, I LOVE a good time at the movies. I love fun action flicks and silly adventure films. There's nothing wrong with that. But why should I settle for competence and mundanity in movies like Star Wars when much better and more intriguing science fiction in the form of stuff like Blade Runner and 2001. Those films say something about the human condition. Or even to look at movies like Aliens or Minority Report, which are chock full of action scenes and clearly manufactured sequences of artificial and situational suspense, there's the underlying exploration of characters and ideas. We care about the stuff that happens in those movies because we're both emotionally connected to something intrinsically interesting and intriguing about what's happening.

With Star Wars I am never empathetic to Luke's initial plight as a farm boy who wants more because he's little else beyond just a farm boy who wants more. His first lines of dialogue are so obviously just statements of his desire to break away from the life he leads that he comes across more like a whiny dick than a sympathetic character. It's cool to see what he does with Obi-Wan and it's fun to see him become a Jedi. But what the hell else is there to be said about Star Wars beyond just the concept level?

I recently had a discussion with my brother about why I liked Iron Man 3 more than he did. I thought it took risks in terms of crafting a new and unexpected story. Sure it had its ridiculous continuity issues but even then I thought it was cleverly just thumbing its nose at other comic book movies and saying "Fuck it, you guys do whatever the hell you want with your storylines, why can't I? Sure I'm attempting to be semi-introspective about the character in the first couple acts of the movie but you guys always ALWAYS throw those two acts out the window for the sake of the big final battle in the third act where pretty much everything gets solved conveniently. So I'll do the same. It really IS just a comic book movie, so I can be as absurd as I feel like being, right?"

But my brother said he didn't like or fully get why Tony was out of the suit for half the movie. He wanted more explosions and action and fun, that's, after all, what he PAID for. And he concluded with the point that the majority of audiences just aren't smart enough to get it when they're being given something semi-genuine in their big summer blockbuster action movie. But does that mean we shouldn't endeavor to make something significant in those same films? Should we just give up and completely sell out just so we can make a shit ton of money? He said no, of course not, that it was more a matter of compromising, finding an agreeable middle ground. I agreed completely.

And that brings me back to Star Wars in general. It made a great deal of money when it was first released because it was everything that was wholly unexpected in the film industry. It was so huge and so epic and so different on virtually every technical level and on every movie-making/selling level that it was almost guaranteed to be something of a significant success when it came out. But as with the cultural icon thing, is that enough?

In my opinion- no. Not at all. I know for myself that I don't want to sell out and sacrifice whatever artistic integrity I have for the sake of making a lot of money. Money is good, I know. But for me, when I consider how much I genuinely care about movies in general, the prospect of saying "FUCK IT" to writing actually good scripts is both absurd and a little offensive. I, as many many others are, am struggling to make even the smallest of names for myself. It takes time and a great deal of effort and while I would certainly say I'm flexible and willing and able to take constructive and helpful and collaborative criticism in the processes of writing any and all of my work I would certainly also say that I would never consider letting any of that go to make some big bucks. Does that make me a stubborn snob? Maybe. I don't know.

I don't know anything really. This is all personal and relative and specific to me. I know what works for me and what I want out of movies both in terms of viewing them and crafting them. There is no one singular significant tell-all answer to the problems of making the perfect film. No film is perfect, nor should one endeavor to make a perfect film. It's a little silly and naive to think that a film will be flawless and to objectively state as such is foolhardy and creates issues later on with the development of that work. I become unyielding and unwilling to budge and change things if I convince myself everything must be just so.

I can be different with viewing movies though. I'm only watching them. I don't pretend to know what happened behind the scenes. All I can see is the final product. And if that final product isn't something I personally care for than so be it. I'm not going to judge others for liking or disliking something I do or don't care or not care for myself.

Recently, with the same brother as before, I had a chat about how waiters/waitresses choose to leave the bill at the table. They often leave it with the man. I thought it was semi-sexist (which it is). My brother said that it was simply the way things are and that there was no point in me alone attempting to challenge that fact. I disagreed. I said that for me personally it is sometimes enough to, at the very least, acknowledge the existence of something that could be interpreted as wrong regardless of my ability (or lack thereof) to do anything to change it.

Films in and of themselves change very little. They exist as documents of our projected thoughts and feelings and observations of life. We are crafting imaginary people and worlds to explore things in ways we can't in real life. We are effectively speaking our minds on a given subject and drawing our own personal conclusions about that matter. Sometimes something as simple as an effective movie can make someone do a good thing or change their mind about something. It's a rare event to be sure, but along those same lines, it's equally as rewarding to hear someone say that they were moved or provoked to think about a given thing because of something I might have said in my own work.

Back to Star Wars.

I never think about such things when I think of Star Wars (and a great many other movies as well come to think of it). There's nothing inherently wrong with Star Wars per se. But when I think of the dozens of other sci-fi films that exist in the same ilk as Star Wars I wonder why it specifically endures above all else. I don't think it's because it's a flawless work of brilliance. It really isn't. It's because Star Wars works on such a gloriously basic and fundamental level of creativity that almost no one doesn't like it in some regard. Everyone I know has seen it (I think it's safe to assume). Which would all be okay with me, but the lack of ANYTHING of great interest about it is just irksome. For me personally it's annoying to think that all the majority of people want is a 'fun time' at the movies. That they're all willing to say 'give me explosions and special effects that we've seen a hundred times before over all that story and character crap.' It genuinely bothers me.

But like I said, I'm not here to judge. I'm here to provide material for viewing and judgment. But I adamantly refuse to give in and not take some kind of creative risk when I write something. I want to do something that's new and original and different, I don't want more of the exact same. And to me that's all Star Wars is. The exact same. The lowest common denominator.

I will conclude by saying (ironically so) that Empire Strikes Back is the only truly great Star Wars movie in my eyes. I give it five stars. It tries the hardest to be something a little more than entertaining and, for the most part, it works surprisingly effectively. If the other films had aspired to be more like Empire I probably wouldn't have said any of this. But whatever...