So the new Star Trek movie comes out tomorrow, and the more good things I hear about it, the less I want to know. My normal position on movies I want to see is that I avoid previews and reviews as much as possible; trailers usually show many of the best parts, and I have such a good memory that I find myself during the movie thinking, “Okay, I know he’s going to fight the giant spider-beast of Graktar V, because I saw it on the preview.…” Or the trailer gives away a major plot twist that I didn’t want to know about in advance. Either way, I have found out the hard way that trailers rarely enhance my enjoyment of the final film, and often diminish it.
But with the latest Star Trek…well, to be honest, I just wasn’t that excited about it. Nemesis was painfully dull, poorly thought out, and really stabbed the movie series in the heart. So with that in mind, I really had no expectations for the latest film, and certainly didn’t imagine that it might revive the…>shudder<…franchise.
Then the reviews started pouring in. “Fun,” “accessible,” “great storyline”…okay, now I’m starting to get excited. So, paradoxically, the more good things I hear about the movie, the less I want to hear. Then Wayne passed along a review from another friend, saying it was the best sci-fi movie since The Empire Strikes Back. And now I find myself trying my hardest not to get excited about the film, because I am afraid that the more I am looking forward to it, the worse I will be let down by the end result. (See Spider-Man 3 or Indiana Jones and the Stupid Crystal Alien Head for other examples of this phenomenon.) All I know so far is that Kirk is apparently some sort of captain, Spock is torn between two worlds, they punch each other or something, a bunch of spaceships fly around and shoot phasers, Sulu fights on the hull of a spaceship, and someone sky-dives (space-dives?) past a giant space station that is exploding all around him. Oh, and Scotty thinks something is exciting. That’s all I know, and frankly, it’s already too much.
I’ll let you know what I think after the movie tomorrow.
