Thoughts on Trek

When I started this Blog, I kind of promised myself I'd restrict it only to Star Wars. Thus, a post on the new Star Trek movie might seem out of place (even 'blasphemous' to some rabid Star Wars fans). But trust me on this—I have a reason. 

First of all, let me start by saying that I am a Star Trek fan, but by no means a 'Trekkie' (my area of geekish expertise is Star Wars). I enjoyed the old and new TV shows (with the exception of Voyager and Enterprise). I liked the good Star Trek movies (II, IV and VI). And I like the new movie. Judging from the amount of uproar I've seen on the net, a lot of Trek fans don't. 

How this ties in to Star Wars is essentially this: Would I feel 'betrayed' if someone rebooted the Star Wars franchise—because 'betrayed' seems to be how a lot of Trek fans feel about this new movie. The criticisms I've heard (and I don't subscribe to all of them) seem to center around that. Many say that by 'updating' and changing the characters you're abandoning everything that made the original series what it was. To a certain extent, that's true. As the movie taglines said: This isn't your father's Star Trek. It certainly didn't feel like a Trek movie, but then, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I personally was able to 'get past' all of the baggage associated with Trek and look at the new movie as just that—something new. Oh, sure, there were plot-holes and things I would have done differently. But I enjoyed myself. And more to the point, I want to see where they're going to go with all of this from here.

Its a lot like the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. I know there are still some fanboys out there lamenting the fact that Starbuck wasn't a dude. I got over it—pretty fast, really. It wasn't the BSG I remembered, so I was able to just accept it as something new and enjoy it on that level.

But could I do the same with Star Wars?

I would like to think that I can, but looking back at some of my earliest posts, it seems that I spewed a lot of bile on the prequel trilogy—and even subsequent games and novels that 'messed with' MY Star Wars. How much MORE would a remaking of my 'beloved' original trilogy impact me. I know I would likely be hyper-critical and sensitive to how it was handled. But I also think that if I was 'assured' that this was an alternate version of what happened rather than a 'rewrite', that I could accept it, and (if it was well done) enjoy it. 

I think that's probably what ticked me off about the prequels. They weren't telling a 'new story', they were mucking around in the background of something I loved and occasionally trampling over some of the things I loved MOST about it. That just isn't the case in Star Trek. Yeah, a lot of people call the alternate timeline a cliched thing or even a cop-out, but it works for me. It helps me disconnect emotionally from the old and see something as entirely new. It doesn't change or belittle anything that came before. And for people emotionally invested in something, that's nice. 

So, as long as they don't give Star Wars Reboot to McG or Uwe Boll to direct, I think I'd be cool with it.

Probably.

Maybe.