One other thing.

Best Saturday night ever: DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, homemade snowcones made with Bailey’s Irish Creme, and couch-snuggles with the boyfriend. No computers, no phones, nothing but quiet snow falling outside and both of us yelling “THAT’S NOT HOW INERTIA WORKS IN SPACE!” or “DAMMIT GEORDI, THAT’S SO FRICKIN’–NO! NO! YOU DON’T–GAH!” at the screen. Or cackling madly at Jean-Luc Picard’s awesomeness, and Counselor Troi’s godawful outfits. Seriously. Turquoise high-heeled slouch boots. No. Hell no.

Also, Worf. “Good tea. Nice house.”

And Santa should have brought me a uterus so I could have Brent Spiner’s creepy little love child.

After the insane stress of Christmas eve and, to some extent, Christmas day…I really needed this weekend to just lie back, relax, and not think about work, writing, or in-laws. Even when I have time off, I never really take time off. I never really shut down, instead always feeling like I should make productive use of the time (and even when I don’t, the expectation is hanging over my head to create the same pressure and stress as if I was working on something). Getting to cut loose and really relax this weekend shouldn’t be such a unique experience for me.

I need to do this more often.

Prologue – Perilous Men

These are no longer the days of perilous men.

Think about it. Look around you. Look at your house, your job, your significant other. Any minute, any second they could be taken from you, these creature comforts that make your life soft and complacent, that drive you in the same rhythm day after day. Would you fight for them? Would you give them up for something that mattered more? Or would you take the safe way out?

In 1877, thousands of men walked off the line in the great railroad strikes. They raised torches, burned buildings, destroyed locomotives, made their voices heard. Dozens died–and when they died, their deaths meant something. What will your death mean? Will you go down fighting for something that matters to you, or will you rot away in a nursing home somewhere, waiting for someone to change your diaper, mourning the lost years when you could have done something, anything?

I’ll tell you the choice I made. I chose to look the other way, chose to keep my mouth shut. And here I am, shitting my pants and waiting for Nurse Clara to sponge my ass dry and swap out my Depends. I can barely see this goddamned laptop, the cataracts are so bad. I should have died years ago. I think I wish I had, but I can’t die. If I die, everything’s forgotten.

And some things I can’t stand to forget.

I wish I stood for something. Once, I did. We all did. There were four of us, then. When there were only three, we asked each other what the hell it was all for.

I’ll tell you what it was for. It was for glory. For honor. It was for the magic that comes when you stand for something, when you truly think you can make a difference–because sometimes you do. It’s a risk, it’s a gamble, and we’re not a gambling society anymore. We’re all about the safety nets, the savings accounts, the padded walls that cushion the impact of life.

But sometimes you gamble, and you come up gold. We were gold, I tell you. We were gold.

This is the story of four boys who walked the wire. We thought to be perilous men. Maybe we were never a danger to anything but ourselves.

But for a while, we were beautiful.

——————————————

Not really sure what this is, where it’s going, or if it’ll go anywhere at all. Believe it or not, it popped into my head while I was watching the new Star Trek movie and thinking about how the message of the original show affected not just one generation, but every generation that followed. How it struck a chord with man’s need to explore, to adventure, to experience the unknown – to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

And somehow that led to thinking of how most people don’t do extraordinary things anymore, wouldn’t even dream of it–because extraordinary things would jeopardize the promotion, the mortgage, the steady paycheck. And suddenly I’m seeing four gangly older boys in long, patched peacoats, scarves swaying, kicking up snow as they walk down a narrow street and rattle two-by-fours against rusted tin trash cans. And thinking, “These are no longer the days of perilous men.”

Spock vs. Wolverine.

(Reposted from my LJ and edited for profanity and vulgarity.)

Star Trek: So. Effin’. AWESOME. There were a few things that spat in the face of canon, but it was executed well. The ending/explanation behind a central plot theme had a bit of deus ex machina and really felt like a gaping inconsistency, but it’s my only real complaint. The rest of the blatantly-defying-canon stuff was so entirely forgivable for the wonderful characterization, gripping action scenes, well-done dialogue & scripting, hilarious one-liners, and the fun game of “spot the canonical tribute” as they worked in SO many things that just make you go “squee!” in recognition. The opening scene made me cry; it was extremely powerful and well-done, although the rest of the movie did seem to lack impact in comparison just because they opened with something so strong. There were a couple of spots where the plot started to lose me just because it got so, “Oh, PLEASE, you’re kidding me,” too much glossed, too much rushed through…but it kept redeeming itself.

It’s definitely Star Trek for a new generation, though, designed to tell a story that will appeal to an audience that’s too new for the existing franchise. It reinvented itself with some details changed, and was as much Star Trek as it wasn’t Star Trek. Strict canon-lovers probably love it, hate it, decry it at every chance. I only have one thing to say.

Young Spock? Effin’ SEX.

Now. Wolverine.

Huge letdown. HUGE. The pacing was clunky, the scripting poorly done, the scenes badly timed, the CG godawful, and the physics of certain things so outlandish that you can’t accept it even in a comic book world, where disbelief suspends itself over the gorramn Tonga and waits for the inevitable long drop. There were fewer deviations from canon, but the crimes were more heinous; rather than feeling canon up in a back alley, this movie dragged it out into said alley and [you really don't want to know what was originally here; trust me].

The thing is, I don’t mind deviations from canon. I really don’t. What I mind is when they’re badly done. Star Trek deviated from canon terribly, but it was still a fun, enjoyable movie (albeit a “don’t think too hard about this or your head will explode from the logical fallacy” kind of movie). Wolverine deviated, but it didn’t make those deviations fun. They weren’t exciting, they weren’t interesting, they weren’t anything other than badly-performed attempts at being deep, angsty, profound, or all of the above. I like movies that make me think. I don’t like movies that obviously stage everything to try to force a moment of introspection, but just come off as false. Plus: plot holes, horrible inconsistencies, and far too many moments of “What the hell, why didn’t they/why isn’t there/where’s the mother effin’ ____________? This makes no sense/would never happen!”

The storytelling was just…so bad. Yes, the story was easy to follow, but you shouldn’t have to follow a good movie. A good movie catches you up and carries you along in a headlong rush, swept on the tide of every charged moment. This? This plodded along, leaving you to trudge in its wake, following behind only because there’s no other path to walk.

God, the dialogue was horrible, too. Wholly unbelievable, and there were so many instances of people saying unrealistic things only vaguely related to the topic at hand just to give someone a chance to fire off a pre-planned one-liner.

And Gambit. Oh, Remy…Taylor Kitsch did unspeakable things to you, and wasn’t even attractive while doing them. When I first saw you, I thought you were either Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, or that freak from Clockwork Orange. I didn’t think you were Gambit. I didn’t believe you were Gambit, and you destroyed one of my favorite characters. I didn’t care about him at all, and movies like this don’t work if you don’t care about any of the characters.

Overall, the execution was just entirely flawed for this kind of story and this genre; it smacked of a director who doesn’t know how to tell an action story with heart, and thus just bludgeons the audience with transparent attempts at shallow on-screen character development. If not for a lot of sweaty Hugh Jackman, wet Hugh Jackman, shirtless Hugh Jackman, and naked Hugh Jackman, I think Hikaru and I would have walked out.