{"id":228,"date":"2009-05-08T18:25:33","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T17:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/?p=228"},"modified":"2009-05-08T23:23:08","modified_gmt":"2009-05-08T22:23:08","slug":"the-new-star-trek-film-its-about-the-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/2009\/05\/the-new-star-trek-film-its-about-the-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"The new Star Trek film… It’s about the consequences…"},"content":{"rendered":"

(5\/8\/2009)<\/em><\/p>\n

Puck’s Review – A+<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went to see the new Star Trek film last night and the thing that struck me was that all the reboots of recent franchises like Batman, James Bond, and Star Trek are grittier and more difficult for the characters.<\/p>\n

American action movies developed this cliche where the hero would punch some trash-talking bad guy and then recite a canned pithy statement.\u00a0 It was tame and safe violence that reinforced the cowboy aesthetic that we were always right and violence was justified.\u00a0 We’ve lived through the Bush era now and Americans as a culture have begun to understand that the pithy cliches have consequences in the real world.<\/p>\n

In the film Witness<\/strong>, we see this play out magnificently when Harrison Ford is accompanying an Amish community into the local town.\u00a0 When a redneck heckler starts bullying the Amish, Harrison Ford punches him.\u00a0 It’s classic cowboy cliche and we’re all prepared to lean back and feel good about it until the camera remains on the scene and we start to see the uncomfortable consequences of the violence.<\/p>\n

In the first five minutes of the Star Trek film, we see an unwinnable conflict in which people die.\u00a0 I remember when Americans thought women shouldn’t be in combat, but here you see women not only fighting, but dying as well.\u00a0 It’s harsh, jarring, and more sincere.<\/p>\n

It’s clear that these characters are paying a price for their actions.\u00a0 When Kirk fights in the bar it isn’t Smokey and the Bandit<\/strong>, it’s more like Fight Club<\/strong> and his face is so bloody and battered at the end, that you worry he’s going to lose teeth.\u00a0 Kirk’s life is hard and he’s struggling to cope.\u00a0 His battered face and the visible emotional struggle behind it are light years away from Shatner’s suave, father-knows-best character.<\/p>\n

That’s what makes the film so fresh and powerful.<\/p>\n

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(5\/8\/2009) Puck’s Review – A+ I went to see the new Star Trek film last night and the thing that struck me was that all the reboots of recent franchises like Batman, James Bond, and Star Trek are grittier and more difficult for the characters. American action movies developed this cliche where the hero would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,13,6,10,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.puckandmary.com\/blog_puck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}