There I was, sitting at the early matinee, watching Star Trek with my wife, her cousin, and her brother. Two of them are among the world’s most passionate “Trekkies.” And then there was her cousin who told me, “I just want to see some action, have some fun.” I was in the same mood that day and, as it turned out, it was the perfect way to enjoy the movie.
I’ll come right out with it. The Star Trek fans in my midst were decidedly disappointed. The movie makes a rather ballsy move and throws the cherished Star Trek universe out the window. To listen to my wife, creator J.J. Abrams (Lost) thumbed his nose at all Gene Roddenberry had spent his life creating. My brother-in-law was more dramatic: “Sacrilege!” he said.
My wife settled down later though after reading the issue of Entertainment Weekly she’d been refusing to read for days, she hates spoilers. It argued – quite correctly – that Star Trek had grown too big.
After five television series, ten prior movies, and a bazillion novels all requiring official Star Trek sanction; the writers of this latest adventure must’ve felt stifled, even crushed, by the weight of official Trek history. They were likely terrified by the certainty of sequels to come. They had to do something, quickly, and once and for all.
I won’t describe the exact nature of this “sacrilege,” but I’ll say one thing. It didn’t bother me a bit. As merely a casual observer of the television incarnations, as one who is weary from lugging his wife’s box of vintage Star Trek paperbacks from house to house, and as one who can’t believe there have been that many movies (I lost track after Spock saved the whales); I didn’t even realize how history was being trampled until I watched the planet Vulcan collapse.
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