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Answer: When it is the new Star Trek movie.
The tag line “The future begins” is true.
George told me he was boycotting Star Trek. After I saw it the second time, I called him and raved about it. I asked why he was boycotting. He said, “they totally changed Spock’s character. He has emotions!”
I said, “I understand. They f*cked everything up, but trust me, THEY STILL GOT IT RIGHT!” I told him that if he saw it and did not agree with me, I would refund him the price of the movie.
First, there are many, many homages, some of which I am sure I am still missing, so, including, but not limited to the bug-eyed alien in the bar in one of the first scenes, that looks like it should be in Star Wars, not Star Trek, which clues us to how much the new Kirk is going to be like Hans Solo; the way Scotty is shoved through a water pipe, as if he is going to the Juicing Room in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and all of the homages to Star Trek itself, which you can see for yourself when you get there.
Then there is the way that they are reframing how Kirk (intuition) and Spock (logic) interact and get to know each other, which I found just mind-blowing. Mind blowing.
One of the best things about the new Star Trek is that WE ARE FINALLY BACK TO THE BIGGER MORE ARCHETYPAL THEMES THAT GENE RODDENBERRY WAS *SO* GOOD AT!!!!
All due respect to Mr. Rick Berman, but his worlds were smaller, his stories more political, more this-worldy, less interesting to me than Roddenberry’s. I did not have the chills and sense of rightness and wholeness that I experienced when I saw Mr. Roddenberry’s worlds and works.
In the new Star Trek movie, this is back.
At first, I was disturbed by the lack of the mostly closed set, the use of tons of computer animation and graphics that is so updating the way Star Trek is portrayed. But as the story grabbed me and held me and breathed me into that sense of rightness I so loved in Roddenberry’s Star Trek, I realized that they had done it. They have really done it.
It’s Star Trek. It is really Star Trek.
