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Dan Carlson
Houston, Texas

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of certain TV shows — for starters, "The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April Is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," "Look Who's Stalking," "The Garage Door," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "Wind Sprints," and "Corner Boys" — you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings, or at any rate a heartfelt attempt to interpret them. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Review: Slumdog Millionaire |Main| By The Way, This Is The Second Time Today I've Been Kicked Out Of A Room, And I Go Pleasantly And Without Incident. »

November 17, 2008

Why The Latest Star Trek Trailer Works

By Dan Carlson

"Star Trek" and its multiple television and filmic entities have always been completely lame. It's amazing that a fictional universe with so many supposedly warring civilizations hasn't been able to drum up a single interesting conflict aside from the one Nicholas Meyer drummed up for The Wrath of Khan. There are no good villains or epic battles; it's just a lot of people driving around and classifying new planets and avoiding rock monsters. There's not much interpersonal conflict, the action is boring, problems are easily solved, and the only costs ever paid in service to exploration come from nameless red-shirted ensigns.

The series and its inhabitants are interminably dull, and it looks like J.J. Abrams is out to change that. The film aims to be a reboot of the story, a kind of new Genesis that runs parallel to the other works, which is something not usually attempted outside of comic book adaptations. Granted, this is still just a trailer, but it makes me use a word I've never before applied to the franchise: exciting.

Here it is:

Comments: 2

Jonathan Grubbs

I just hope Abrams doesn't Anakin-ize the Kirk as kid origin story. When I first watched the trailer I thought: "Action? What?" Then the second time I watched it I thought, "Action, say, that's just what the Star Trek universe needs: actual intrigue"

Plus, having worked in the trailer business for a few years, I know Paramount is afraid to show any semblance of interesting character interaction in their trailers when there are explosions somewhere in the movie.

Nov 18, 2008 7:04 AM

Josh

The trailer rocks.

Star Trek has plenty of good plotlines and interesting conflicts. I believe your accusation to be baseless.

Nov 18, 2008 7:40 AM

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"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael

"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

"I hope I strike a blow for chubby bald men everywhere. I hope they rise like an army."
— Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

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