Star Trekking
May. 21st, 2013 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayhapI saw Star Trek this weekend with my dad and let me tell you, I have been dodging spoilers for this movie so long now that it feels wrong just reading those words without my eyes skittering off of them into a safe corner where the spoilers can't get me.
The thing this movie really brought home to me is that AOS!Kirk is my favorite. Like, not just my favorite Kirk, but also my favorite AOS character and possibly also my favorite Star Trek captain, although give me some time and my baseline Picard preference will probably reassert itself.
A lot of people have written extremely cogent things about how different the characters' relationships are from those of their TOS counterparts, especially the TOS movies, which are set when everyone is adorably middle-aged (Shatner's paunch is, like, a character in its own right ♥) and have worked with each other basically forever, and this is, of course, very true. It's just that these changes might as well have been conceived for my personal gratification.
I love how openly broken and needy Kirk is, and how desperately he clings to his ship and her crew. I love the way he chokes on his own stubborn pride but then begs so beautifully for Kahn to do whatever he likes with him but spare the others. I love his hothoused relationship with AOS!Spock, how overheated and fragile it is, both of them needing desperately and fumbling towards something that they know is theoretically possible even though neither one of them is anywhere near understanding themselves or each other yet. It depends on their TOS relationship in a deeply intertextual way, but I feel like the borrowings are meant to highlight the contrasts. (Or if they aren't, they should be. Death of the author, yo.)
I have some thoughts about Khan and intertextuality too but they're not particularly coherent. Mostly I think they used him pretty well as a foil/dark mirror for AOS!Kirk, but did not really engage with him as a character in his own right or as an alternate version of TOS Khan who had diverged for discernable reasons, so basically the only reason that he was Khan and not some other super evil dude from the same batch of super evil dudes is so that TOS!Spock can recognize his name and AOS!Spock can do the KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! shout. And both of those things are fun, but I don't feel like the fun is earned here at all, especially with the shitty bad faith casting thing. But it's been like ten years since the last time I saw Wrath of Khan, so off the top of my head I don't know how I would have written AOS!Khan, besides definitely Not Like That. So ugh.
But the entire Enterprise crew was adorable and I love them almost as much as Jim loves them. Which is a lot. Because Kirk/Enterprise OTP 4EVA ♥
The thing this movie really brought home to me is that AOS!Kirk is my favorite. Like, not just my favorite Kirk, but also my favorite AOS character and possibly also my favorite Star Trek captain, although give me some time and my baseline Picard preference will probably reassert itself.
A lot of people have written extremely cogent things about how different the characters' relationships are from those of their TOS counterparts, especially the TOS movies, which are set when everyone is adorably middle-aged (Shatner's paunch is, like, a character in its own right ♥) and have worked with each other basically forever, and this is, of course, very true. It's just that these changes might as well have been conceived for my personal gratification.
I love how openly broken and needy Kirk is, and how desperately he clings to his ship and her crew. I love the way he chokes on his own stubborn pride but then begs so beautifully for Kahn to do whatever he likes with him but spare the others. I love his hothoused relationship with AOS!Spock, how overheated and fragile it is, both of them needing desperately and fumbling towards something that they know is theoretically possible even though neither one of them is anywhere near understanding themselves or each other yet. It depends on their TOS relationship in a deeply intertextual way, but I feel like the borrowings are meant to highlight the contrasts. (Or if they aren't, they should be. Death of the author, yo.)
I have some thoughts about Khan and intertextuality too but they're not particularly coherent. Mostly I think they used him pretty well as a foil/dark mirror for AOS!Kirk, but did not really engage with him as a character in his own right or as an alternate version of TOS Khan who had diverged for discernable reasons, so basically the only reason that he was Khan and not some other super evil dude from the same batch of super evil dudes is so that TOS!Spock can recognize his name and AOS!Spock can do the KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! shout. And both of those things are fun, but I don't feel like the fun is earned here at all, especially with the shitty bad faith casting thing. But it's been like ten years since the last time I saw Wrath of Khan, so off the top of my head I don't know how I would have written AOS!Khan, besides definitely Not Like That. So ugh.
But the entire Enterprise crew was adorable and I love them almost as much as Jim loves them. Which is a lot. Because Kirk/Enterprise OTP 4EVA ♥
