Age of the Geek

By: 
Travis Fischer

The force has awakened. What’s next?
     It’s good!
     Contrary to last week’s hype-deflating pessimism, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” turned out to be a good movie. It officially has the Age of the Geek Seal of Approval.
     Without getting too much into spoilers, I’ll say that the new characters are all likable and interesting, the action is well done, and the dialogue is considerably better than it would have been if George Lucas was still running the show.
     Overall, it’s a good beginning to a new era in the Star Wars franchise.
     That’s not to say the movie is without its problems. Like “Star Trek Into Darkness” before it, J.J. Abrams can’t seem to decide if he wants to make a new movie, or simply a remake of a previous one. There’s also some truly questionable science in the movie, but those problems are more forgivable in Star Wars than Star Trek.
     Speaking of Star Trek, the first trailer for “Star Trek Beyond” was released last week and the reaction to it has been kind of strange.
     Now directed by Justin Lin, best known for the Fast and Furious movies, the third film in the reboot series still looks virtually identical in tone with the previous two movies. Just another round of Kirk and crew wrecking the Enterprise, running from danger, and jumping off of high objects. The same sort of things we’ve been seeing from the franchise since 2009.
     And yet reaction to the trailer has been almost universally negative.
     Classic Star Trek actor George Takei politely noted that the trailer shows no trace of Gene Roddenberry’s vision and even Simon Pegg, who not only stars in the movie but co-wrote it as well, could only say that he “didn’t love it.”
     So what has changed? After all, if Episode VII’s record shattering opening is any indication, movie-going audiences haven’t stopped appreciating big, loud and dumb space movies.
     It’s not just Star Wars either. “Independence Day: Resurgence,” the sequel nobody asked for, has been met with generally favorable response.
     Maybe that’s the problem.
     In 2009, Hollywood wasn’t giving much love to space adventures. In fact, the last big space-based movie before “Star Trek” was “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” in 2005. “Star Trek” filled a niche that wasn’t being met by anything else.
     That’s not the case anymore. Space movies are back in a big way. Not only do we have Star Wars and “Guardians of the Galaxy” to give us fantastic space adventures, but movies like “Gravity,” “Interstellar” and “The Martian” have proven that there’s a market for more cerebral science fiction out there as well.
     Star Trek has traditionally occupied a spot between the two extremes. A forward thinking studio might take notice of the change in the market and move the Star Trek franchise back towards its strengths. A more short-sighted studio may simply conclude that what worked in 2009 will surely continue to work in 2016.
     Not that there isn’t cause for some optimism. Mixed in with his criticism of the trailer, Pegg went out of his way to assure fans that the trailer didn’t accurately reflect the film he helped write. He theorized that the trailer was presented the way it was to “bang the drums” and get people’s attention.
     I’d question the logic of making a movie look dumber than it really is to attract a larger general audience, but to be fair it has been a winning tactic in the past. That’s a different column all together though.
     All in all, there are worse things than pondering the future of the two big sci-fi franchises. “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” came out less than a week after the last episode of “Star Trek: Enterprise” aired on television. At the time, it looked like fans would never have anything to look forward to from either franchise ever again.
     Today, Disney is promising a new Star Wars movie for the rest of our lives and Star Trek is on its way back to television. That both franchises seem to be at the beginning of a second renaissance is a Christmas miracle.
 
            Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and hopes the force will live long and prosper.

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