2009: The year kirk broke
As in: broke out, not broke down.
For at least this former Jedi-wannabe, 2009 will be remembered not as the last year of the first decade of a new millennium, but as the fateful year where the cultural wave of Star Wars broke and rolled back against a new generation’s vision of Star Trek. Where Trek (and I never thought I’d write the words) became cooler than Wars.
Just in time for the holiday season, J.J. Abrams’ newly-suited and re-booted Star Trek is now available on Blu-ray. When in theatres it did over US$250 million at the domestic box office alone. The entire principal cast is locked for the sequel. And no matter how many more it spawns, or new projects it off-spins, it won’t make anything close to the bloated, bursting, Jabba-like business machine that Wars has become. But the fact remains: This is the year when Kirk outclassed Kenobi.
Pre-1999, the line in the sands of Geek was easily drawn. To put it in five word sentences: Star Trek was Space-Science. Star Wars was Space-Magic. Think of all those real life news stories of tri-corders, tractor beams, cloaking devices and teleportation machines that periodically pop up. This is technology we are actually going to get. Why? Because Nerds watched Star Trek. Nerds that grew up, got engineering degrees, then did anything they set their IP addresses to. We will never get lightsabers, moon-looking space stations or the ability to “choke a bitch” with our minds, because it’s Magic. And no reputable Institution of Anything acknowledges a degree in Magic.
Science is logical but limited. Magic doesn’t freaking exist. Thus it has no boundaries. Wars is Magic in space, so we got all the appeal of cosmic derring-do without any time spent explaining the nuts and space-bolts of exactly how one makes the jump to hyperspeed. Apparently there are calculations necessary, but they don’t take very long and you can have hands like mops and still shake out the right numbers. Vader himself, after being challenged by General “Choke Me” Motti, asserts that the Death Star, the very pinnacle of Imperial military, detention and planet-busting technology is “insignificant compared with the Power of the Force.” Magic trumps Science. Trek, however, required a constant stream of techno-babble to qualify its adventures. Dilithium crystals, warp cores, Jeffries tubes, modulations, fluctuations and continuums. You needed a textbook and a protractor to keep up.
Pre-’99, Wars’ conflicts were simple and easy to get behind: The heroic Rebellion vs the Evil Empire. Every kid that got picked after the 5th round of the Gym Class Draft has felt like the world was against him, but that crop-dusting farmboy had to fight a galaxy of fascists. I mean Stormtroopers, the hammering fist of the Empire, set Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru on fire. This was Authoritarian Evil at its most one-dimensionally sadistic. Wars was always Robe Black and Polyvinyl White. Bad guys were bad guys, and really bad shots.
Now Trek’s Federation took issue with anyone that didn’t lock-step with their Prime Directive, which was (regardless of its adherence to non-involvement with emerging species) still a set of rules on how to live. It got a little suspect morally. Can you think of any planet or species that declined to be a part of their oligarchy and didn’t get cast with a villainous brush? The Federation was The Man. And one neither should nor can, trust the Man.
But then, in 1999, the “Trade Federation” went and ruined everything. Episode One brought economics, politics (just barely) and the word tariff into the lexicon of Star Wars. The New Three ham-fistedly pushed social and fiscal science into a galaxy of space magic. The spell was broken. It was as if Lucas et al were compelled to root the origins of their fantasy in some twisted truth and not in myth, where it should be. We waited with bated breath for the outcome of council votes, rather than battles with Rancor beasts.
Cloning a Kiwi bounty hunter immersed us in the moral quagmire of genetic engineering, and forced retroactive continuity changes to the Episodes Lucas, Inc actually got right. They made the conscience decision to mess with the good to legitimize the bad. All for the sake of introducing science.
2009’s Star Trek excused any deviation from canon with a continuity panacea. No matter what New Kirk and crew did, it would neither impact nor detract from any previous incarnation. Perhaps Abrams had learned from Lucas’ missteps, but he nonetheless wrote himself a get-out-of-brig-free card with the hold-out traditionalists: this is still Kirk, but in a slightly different direction. They returned a sense of swash-buckle to Trek, which had grown increasingly stilted and well, boring with the TNG movies (for the record I grew up watching Riker out-beard Picard, so that last sentence stings even me).
Trek is where we’re going, but Wars – evidenced by its own famous opening line: “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” – we’ve already missed. Tatooine, Hoth, Dagobah; these worlds were gone a long, long…you get it. We all collectively suspended our disbelief and agreed that perhaps physics worked differently back then and over there. That willing disbelief is one of the most elusive and valuable commodities in movies, especially in science fiction. Lucas Inc was free to do anything, with millions of fans willing to follow them wherever they chose to jump. And they chose to make the magic in their universe dependent on midi-fucking-clorian levels. They attempted to bring science and logic into a realm of blue floating ghosts and small green wizards. They made Force strength test-tube measurable. Does that mean just any nerf-herder can get an injection to top up? Qui-Gonn, say it ain’t so.
Trek pulled time travel out of its ass, made a mining vessel capable of giving a planet an imploding nuclear enema, and reduced “red matter” to something you can wield with a jazzed up turkey baster. Oh sure, phasers were on maximum and full impulse power was called for, but what saved the day in the end? It wasn’t recalibrating the main deflector dish’s tachyon emitter. It was Spock’s emotions and the seat of Kirk’s pants.
Avatar has just surpassed Star Trek in advance ticket sales. It’s safe to assume we’re getting a legitimate contender to the twin pillars of science fiction cinema here. Or maybe we’re getting Battlefield Earth again. Regardless, the far off Galaxy’s luster has, for now, faded with this particular Fanboy, in favour of voyages through the Final Frontier. I’m shelving my Boba Fett action figure and sourcing some Vulcan ears. I am dying to see what Abrams does next, but couldn’t give a womp-rat’s ass about anything Lucas, Inc has done since Last Crusade. Help me J.J., you’re my only hope.
