nixsight

The internet is doing what the internet does with the newly released JJ Abrams Star Trek trailer.

The “five things” format seems to be working out quite well for me, so here’s five things about it, after the jump.

I like it. It has the right combination of action, fast cuts and fan-service for a blockbuster trailer, while giving enough teasing treats to draw you in and make you ask questions.

Though the opening does a good job of pulling a switcheroo on the viewer, giving you something you weren’t expecting and conning you into being in the middle of a trailer for a sci-fi movie, I could have done without Lil’ Kirk, who manages to pack enough androgyny and precociousness into his five seconds to make me dread seeing him for longer in the movie-proper. And also, there’s a moment when he’s dangling over the edge where it doesn’t look like he’s holding himself up at all.

For the people getting worked up: Listen, at this point you either accept that the film is going to exist under the conditions of its production, or you don’t. Criticism of the trailer/movie is reasonable under it’s own terms, but every comparison to “old” Trek should be prefaced by an acknowledgment that you are a huge nerd who struggles to accept that you’re getting older, and the stuff that you loved back then was good because it was back then, and it was formative to you.
Which is to say, I’m a huge nerd who struggles to accept that I’m getting older, but, you know, I accept that a cloned Shatner performance and a cloned Nimoy performance would make me cringe now, and I’m already emotionally invested in this movie. If the original takes on the franchise were still going strong, we’d have a basis for complaint, but as based on the success (or lack of it) of the last few outings the studios can’t even rely on the loyalty of the fans to get the numbers where they need to be, we need to be realistic, here. Abrams et al have to make a movie for an audience who don’t know about Trek at all, because it can no longer be taken as read that the teen-plus population know it as anything other than something old people talk about with watery eyes.

The trailer establishes blockbuster cred, at least – lots of solid ‘splodey stuff, things flying around, and all the faces swooped in on – plus a suggestion of conflict between the crew-members, but no complicating details to them. I’ll always remember that the first proper, modern epilepsy-inducing movie trailer I ever saw was for a Trek movie – either Search For Spock or Voyage Home – on BBC2 show “No Limits”. They seemed to set the mould for this sort of thing, and I’m still a sucker for it.

And I like the idea of the Enterprise being built in orbit a lot, but I can live with the fact that it clearly isn’t here. Perhaps because I’ve seen that, now. What I haven’t seen is an Enterprise built on the ground, and who knows – maybe they decided to build the next one in zero-G because it was such a pain in the ass doing it on the ground?