The Trekker’s Guide to Prequel Flop Survival
April 28th, 2009 by Jack
Jack Gamble AKA Man Overboard is a nuclear systems engineer by day and renegade geek by night. He blogs loudly at www.babeled.com.
I am a Star Wars fan. Face it Trekkers, we’ve had our differences over the years. But I feel a moral obligation to warn you of an impending disaster. I cannot sit idly by as yet another travesty of a prequel decimates an established science fiction storyline. And so I have traveled across the cosmos from my home planet of Babeled to bring fair warning of yet another science fiction prequel destined for failure.
As a diehard fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, one can only venture a guess as to the suffering I endured at the hands of George Lucas and his unrelenting campaign of sub par storyline, excess CGI, and unbridled merchandising. I have no desire to see my Trekker brethren succumb to the same onslaught.
So get out your duct tape and plastic. Stock up on canned goods and bottled water. Replace your power couplings and raise shields. Above all, heed my advice. Follow these 12 easy steps to survive disaster; from one sci fi geek to another:
1. Keep your standards low. You’ve been spoiled all these years. Face it, nothing on the screen will satisfy the expectations you’ve set. Try this: go into the movie expecting a flop. This way you won’t be disappointed. Who knows, the movie might surprise you.
2. Forget the story and focus on the minute details. After I had accepted defeat in the Star Wars prequels, I began to take amusement elsewhere. For me, the phrase “I have a bad feeling about this” which appears in every Star Wars movie at least gave me a brief chuckle. For the Trekkers, try picking out the next random nondescript ensign on the away team that is sure to meet an early demise.
3. Ignore any and all floppy eared, grammatically challenged, clumsy aliens that are clearly a pathetic attempt at mass merchandising only to fail miserably and be forced into early retirement with only brief cameos in subsequent films. No loyal fan should be made to suffer such blasphemy.
4. DVDs: After the initial shock of the cinematic catastrophe wears off, take refuge in the delight of your tried and true DVD collection. The Wrath of Kahn, First Contact, and even the stupid whale movie are sure to cheer you up.
5. Go back in time and kill the director. I mean come on. If there is one thing that happens over and over again in Star Trek it is temporal anomalies. Surely you’ve learned something by now. Pull a slingshot around the sun or bounce off a worm hole at warp 10 and correct this potential mistake.
6. Find something that doesn’t belong. We all know the Nebula Class Starship didn’t enter service for another 300 years. Prove your geeky mastery of the story and be the first to spot the ship in the lower left corner at 1:48:15 into the movie (I made that up).
7. Don’t act surprised when a cheaply written time travel plot twist occurs. Come now, this is Star Trek after all. You can’t honestly tell me you were expecting the writers to ignore their favorite crutch.
8. Do not go to the movie dressed as a Klingon. The only thing that could make a terrible science fiction movie experience worse is the sight of a teary eyed Klingon with runny makeup.
9. Don’t be upset by seemingly advanced technology in a prequel. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was when people told me The Phantom Menace should not have featured Darth Maul’s double-bladed light saber because it appeared to be “more advanced.” The new Trek movie is a modern take on a 40-year-old series. Unless you want to see 1966 special effects, I would not dwell on this issue.
10. Cut Spock some emotional slack. Remember he is half human. I would expect to see a young Spock accidentally demonstrate some emotional weakness because he has not yet learned to control his latent human emotions. Even pureblooded Vulcans are not entirely devoid of emotion. It took the civilization ages to develop their pragmatic outlook on life. Some leniency is in order and certainly not outside the confines of the existing storyline.
11. Remember, it could be worse. At the very least I would not expect the writers of this movie to attempt to make some kind of off the wall geopolitical message about saving the whales. Nor would I expect Spock’s half-Clinton brother to show up and start feeling everybody’s pain.
12. Resistance is futile. Admit it. No matter how much this movie might suck, you will buy the DVD and watch it another 100 times until you have memorized every bit of poorly written dialogue.
Images used in post published under the CC license
Technorati Tags: movie, film, movie genome, star trek, star wars, sci-fi, geek, trekkie
Popularity: 12% [?]
April 28th, 2009 at 7:02 am
[...] The Trekker’s Guide to Prequel Flop Survival [...]
Add a reply
April 29th, 2009 at 5:37 am
The only thing worse than a teary-eyed Klingon is a Borg - period!
Many good points, but most followers will enjoy the movie regardless of whether it is good or not. I know I will, but I am most looking forward to Simon Pegg’s take on being the younger version of Scotty.
May the Force be with you. (Screw ‘make it so’ - there were only two real Captains - Sisko and Kirk!)
Add a reply
April 30th, 2009 at 6:19 am
Funny you should mention that, I have written about the topic of best Star Trek captain before and then called for a vote from the readers. Captain Picard won by a landslide. Although I am definitely a fan of Sisko’s shoot first ask questions later mentality, something Star Trek has always lacked in my opinion.
Add a reply
May 5th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Sweet, I enjoyed this article immensely.
Add a reply
May 13th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
[...] Gone Before By Jack Gamble - Man Overboard | Published: May 12, 2009 Well, I was right. The new Star Trek movie was garbage. As I sat in the theater giving myself a stomach ache with the [...]
Add a reply
May 21st, 2009 at 2:05 am
Having seen it I want my money back….I want those minutes back and I want to have this erased from my mind. As a follower of not Star Trek but the belief systems Gene created for his universe I am saddened and even sickened by the destruction of his lifes work and what he was trying to show us was wrong within ourselves.
This movie DESTROYS THE WHOLE TIME ARC AND STORY LINES AND PLOT BIBLES created by h Gene while he lived.
IT was written and directed by a teenager for teenagers. Not for the fan base which actually pays buy seeing these things time and time again.
I know I won’t be waisting my money on the DVD even. I will say the franchise ended when the last episode of Enterprise ended. And I will not collect any further star trek movies or TV series even though I am sure that withonly a couple of Seasons of NG and all the Movies (besides this abomination) yet to buy Paramount would have eventually made another $700.00 or more out of me it will not happen. I will go back to collecting Babylon 5 and Genes other work.
Add a reply
May 26th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Al,
I am totally with you on the boycott idea. Problem being, there is more money to be made with this empty crap then there is with a well thought out story filled with philosophical dilema and internal conflict. Despite the lack of support from the traditional fan base, this movie will on reinforce this garbage to the idiots thaty made it. Unfortunately, this will not be the last.
Add a reply
May 29th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
“This movie DESTROYS THE WHOLE TIME ARC AND STORY LINES AND PLOT BIBLES created by h Gene while he lived.”
Are you kidding? This movie renewed a fan base for the series and allowed for an amazing new line of movies that are all still in continuity to the original series.
This movie made fans of people that hated star-trek and make people forget about the absolute travesty that was Voyager and Deep Space nine.
Most true fans hate TNG and good ole’ Gene was involved in creating it.
This movie was amazing and I refuse to take you seriously.
Add a reply
May 30th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Trekkers -> people who like Star Trek and “walk with us”
Trekkies -> people who like Star Trek and sit at home and watch it.
This guide should be for Trekkies not for Trekkers because Trekkers should be more “modern” because they live in society rather than Trekkies who shut themselves out.
Add a reply
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
This movie was garbage. JJ Abrams is incredibly lazy, and decided he would not even bother to write a script that would fit into the Star Trek universe that many people know and love. Instead, he wrote a script that ignores science (something Star Trek never did), and substituted glitzy special effects for decent story telling.
By ruining the established Star Trek universe, JJ Abrams freed himself to make one craptacular sequel after another. To my surprise, it actually worked for him. Almost every critic loves this movie, despite it’s lack of logic, science or an original plotline. I guess for a generation that thinks Transformers is great cinema, Star Trek (2009) is more of the same. “Why is that dude talking about a plot, look at all the cool shiny stuff!”
Add a reply