The Devil's Avocado

I find it telling that the original Star Trek theme music doesn’t make itself known in it’s full glory until the very end of the movie, when the characters disappear and are replaced by the credits of the people who played those characters, the letters whizzing past the screen, waving goodbye, go home, goodnight.  Not until then is one of the most recognizable music themes allowed to grace us.

What it tells us, I’m not so sure.  It’s likely one of two things:

• 1) They wanted to “save” the theme for a big closing “payoff”, choosing only to “hint” at it in tantalizing sound-bytes buried under lesser-known noise when someone would “beam up” or “Leonard Nimoy” would “say that thing he says” and the “audience” would go, “Oh yeah….‘Star Trek’“.
• 2) They were embarrassed of the theme music and wanted to keep it in the closet as long as possible.

Either way, it is clear to me that it was a choice.  They chose not to play the stuff until we were on our ways home.  They were conscious that we were waiting for it, would recognize it, would respond to it, would judge it.  They were conscious that they were required to have Bones say “Dammit, (fill in the blank), I’m a doctor, not a….” They were conscious that they needed to find a cool sci-fi explanation for a retelling of the Star Trek lore.  They were conscious of beaming up, of warp speed, of Scotty’s Scottish accent.  They were conscious that we would get a kick out of Kirk screwing a green chick. 

They were…Self Conscious, you might say.

You can’t blame them, I suppose.  This is a 40-plus-year-old franchise we’re talking about here with the biggest budget by far it has ever been rewarded.  Abrams and company are responsible for keeping generations of zealous fans happy, plus wrangle in millions of people who used to beat up those fans precisely because they were fans.  And others, of course.  MILLIONS of others. 

That’s the plight of the Summer Blockbuster - to be as pleasing to as many MILLIONS of people as is inhumanly possible. 

But, hey, the movie’s pretty cool - I liked it.  Really, I did.  There were bunches of funs to be had throughout.  The thing had spunk and adrenaline - LOTS of adrenaline.  I didn’t think Erick Bana and the rest of the Romulans were particularly effective, nor did I care much for the climactic moments - a bit mind-numbingly jam-packed with not very much, if you ask me. 

But I liked the cast, I liked the kids playing Spock and Kirk (I shouldn’t say kids - one is nearly exactly the same age as me, the other is three years older - but they LOOK and FEEL like kids when in those roles), I liked the look of it, I liked liveliness.  The story wasn’t particularly interesting (not a good thing in the sci-fi world), but I like how all involved handled it - with brevity, with off-handed intensity, with balls out. 

I liked the creepy, looming chunks of colossal sci-fi future buildings silhouetted in the Iowa background.  I REALLY liked Leonard Nimoy.  I thought he was…eloquent. 

But then they played the music, the real music, the motherfucking Star Trek theme music - not that rambling clamor throughout the rest of the movie - at the end credits…and I was like - “Oh yeah…Star Trek.”  You know?

There’s that stately governmental-sounding stuff at the opening of the theme, but then it goes into this cool-ass Rumba, this zesty salsa soundtrack for the lounging heroes plunging into the depths of a tripped-out universe with cocktails on their minds, with warm beds and a bar and a bridge that must be frequented only when something really big is going down.  Nightmare planets and utopian ones with twelve suns and violet skies riddling monsters and sexy aliens and moral dilemmas and swinging EVERYTHING - that’s what I want to see.  That’s what that theme is.  That’s what Star Trek is.

Not that I’m a huge Star Trek fan…so it doesn’t really matter all that much to me.  Just saying, is all.  Hopefully, the next flick will relax a bit and branch out.  We shall see.  In the meantime, this one will is perfectly fine divertissement. 

Oh.  And why was Winona Ryder in this movie? Playing an old woman?