Flashback: Star Trek (2009)

Time to add another entry to my flashback series, and I'm going with J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of Star Trek I've seen every episode of The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine, every movie and decent amount of the Original Series (though I haven't actually sat down and watched every episode, yet), but even though it's blasphemous to die-hard fans, the newest film is my personal favorite. The biggest reason for that is the amount of storytelling that takes place in this film. True, it lacks much of the socio-political and cultural commentary that made Star Trek what it is, but unlike the other series that had years to develop their characters and find a mix that worked (goodbye Tasha Yar, hello Seven of Nine), the new film had two hours and 122 pages to do the same amount of work. True, it had some audience recognition on its side, but a quick look at the box office numbers will show just how far this film outstripped the previous entries in the franchise. There're good reasons for that, and I'll take a look at them after the break.

Full Super 8 Trailer

Super 8, the highly secretive film that for a long time was simply known as the J.J. Abrams tribute to Steven Spielberg is one of the movies I'm most looking forward to this year and has new full-length trailer that actually shows what the movie's about. And it's awesome. Abrams seems to have captured the wonderment of Spielberg's early alien movies Close Encounters and ET perfectly, while bringing his own lens-flare visuals. Basically, this movie looks like cross between ET and Cloverfield, and my brain just won't make that into a bad thing.