Yes, I know I’ve already written an entry about the drive in, but I went to the drive in. So I figured I would at least review a the two movies I saw.

Transformers 2

The first was Transformers 2. Ugh, it was an awful movie. Honestly, this movie does not make any sense. It’s hard to follow, and it’s characters are flat at best. The only good things about this movie was Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf. Fox had a pretty good performance, and it’s a plus to look at her the whole movie. LaBeouf was really the only thing that held this movie together. He’s always just goofy enough to be believable.

I am a life-long Transformers fan. Yes I grew up right in the heart of the Transformers craze. I saw the first cartoon movie at the theater. This movie, simply, sucks. Be warned, the language is aweful. The robots curse the entire movie AND they are not funny.

Star Trek

I’m avoiding spoilers, so this post is rated Everyone. My take on the new Star Trek movie, not so good. I didn’t like it. I think it does what many Star Treks have done since the death of creator Gene Roddenberry. It trades Star Trek history, science, philosophy, culture, character, and continuity for FX and action. It’s as if JJ Abrams doesn’t want to be a nerd. That’s fine, but you can’t be a Star Trek director without a little nerd. The characters are flat despite wasting a bunch of time on their back stories. The science is awful, glazed over and twisted to the point that suspension of disbelieve is impossible. No regulations or any thing to do with Star Fleet, let alone how an army in space would operate. Can we put a bunch of cadets on a ship and then replace the engineer at will without ever having an engineer or transporter chief in the first place? This guy, this guy, this guy are all going to be captain! No body back in command will mind that we are giving command of the flag ship to captain that has no experience! I have an aunt that might be able to take command. Let’s take a character like Sarek of Vulcan, that fans have known for say 40 years, and make him act completely out of character.

Storyline? Sucked.

Anything good? Yes, the action was good. The FX is great! The FX in this movie does what star trek fan’s imagine used to do when they watched the old series. It’s one thing to want your franchise to be popular. It is another thing all together to trade almost everything you have that makes you unique in an attempt to make a blockbuster.

If you are not a fan of the series, or if you have little background in the series, you might like the action in the movie. I don’t think the storyline will be all the interesting to you. I think some of what happens will be unbelievable, and it won’t make any sense, but you might find the movie mildly entertaining.

If you like Star Trek and have been a fan, I think you might find that a lot of what you love about the show is missing from this movie. To me it felt like they just pasted the names on characters and ships from the show and called it Star Trek.

I like FX. No I love good FX, and this movie has a lot of it, but why can’t you have fast action and great FX and still make a great Star Trek film that has good science, congruent characters, and a meaningful philosophical message?

Looking at it just from a story telling perspective, they missed far too many opportunities at themes and human insight for it to be anything other than a shoot ‘em up space movie.