The Big Smoke

Director Nicholas Meyer Cast Guess Part of my 100 Best Movies in History Series.

There's a lot of reasons to hate Star Trek. It's probably the most annoying fucking nerd-fad in movie history, save the Matrix Philosophy 101 teen angstheists. But, you know, I grew up on it as a kid, and I have a lot of fond memories (of watching TV). And I can say, without a doubt, that this movie is the best of the lot. I'm gonna try to do the impossible here and try to convince you, the Star Trek hater, why you should see the movies.

 

1) Star Trek fans are annoying asshole freaks.

 

This is totally true, by the way, but in the age of internet anonymous, you can easily watch this movie without being seen with the DVD case, or giving off any indication to anyone that you've ever watched this movie at all.

 

Aside from that, Star Trek has sucked for a good ten years now, even by it's own standards. You might have a lot of dark memories of fat people in tight, tight latex giving lectures about fraternal love, but even the most hardcore fans have pretty much given up on it.

 

The real low point in Star Trek Fandom was the Nitpicker's Guides. These were book where actual fans of Star Trek would bitch about their continuity errors in their favourite show/life purpose.

 

Anyone who bought these books needs a serious fucking beating with a twenty fool poll. If you're going to dedicate your life to a low budget TV series, at least have the niceness to its creators not to fucking bitch them out over every small mistake you think they've made.

 

If Trekkies should be angry at the creators for anything, it's the fact that they've wasted their entire fucking lives on the franchise, and they, the creators, still couldn't come up with any alien makeup more creative than pointy ears and melty face.

 

2) Gene Rodenberry is a hippy retard.

 

The shows and the movies were really fucked up by the fact that Gene Rodenberry (who didn't actually write much of it) made every episode fit to some narrow, insane guideline that conformed to his Grateful Dead worldview. Fortunately, by the time this movie was made, the producers and writers had told Rodenberry to fuck off, and he died a lonely, disappointed man. Thank god, that talentless hack.

 

This movie is actually amazingly smart for Star Trek, and said a lot of interesting things about the cold war. Most of all, it's not excessively preachy (omfg don't be racist!!!). Released in 1991, it's about the fall of the Soviet Union, which is pretty good fucking timing. The movie looks at how both Americans and Russians were faced with having to deal with a world where they had to live without an invisible, mysterious enemy they could constantly blame for all their problems. Sadly, the movie fails to predict that both sides would just find new foreign scapegoats in the Middle East and Chechnia. Oh well.

 

3) The Shitty Acting

 

It's as bad as ever, but it works. For Shatner especially. Here, instead of playing a young cool suave guy who screams and stutters a lot, he's playing a biggoted old military man who has to scream and stutter a lot. Having to sign a peace treaty with the people he hates most in the world, and who he has spent his entire life killing, actually makes his overreactions seem not bizarre. Him being a depressingly old man also helps him seem a bit more natural, because old people scream a lot, and talk funny.

 

All in all, if you're gonna watch a Star Trek movie, it should be this one. This might not convince you, but at least try to go in it with an open mind.