I am not a diehard Star Wars fan by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, I've marathoned Episodes I-VI in a single sitting, I own several lightsabers, and I can tell a Sullustan from a Selkath, but I didn't grow up on Star Wars the way everyone else did. I was a Star Trek kid; I'd already been exposed to iconic sci-fi characters, weird aliens, cool action sequences, and unforgettable soundtracks by the time I finally watched A New Hope all the way through. For me, Star Wars is just another sci-fi franchise, no different than Firefly/Serenity or Mass Effect. I can geek out about it, but it's not my franchise.

That's why I can tell you with total seriousness that, despite their horrendous flaws, I enjoy the Star Wars prequels at least as much as the original trilogy. That's why I can say with a straight face that I like the Special Editions and don't mind any of the changes that were made—well, except in Return of the Jedi; Prequel Anakin and his creepy smile have no place at that bonfire, and angels somewhere are still weeping about the removal of "Yub Nub." Whether we're talking Clone Wars (the movie, the TV series, or the good TV series), Rogue One, The Force Awakens, or Caravan of Courage, I'm pretty accepting of Star Wars in any format. With no deep personal attachments to this universe, all it really takes to make me happy is stuff blowing up real good.

I think I may need to revise my standards. For years, I've made people wince when I talk positively about the prequels; now I finally have some understanding of the pain they must have endured while watching Phantom Menace for the first time. Never before had I spent nearly two and a half hours wishing a Star Wars movie would either get better or end already. Never before had I seen The Last Jedi.

This is where the spoilers kick in, and where I start running from the angry mob that's starting to form outside.

I went into The Last Jedi more out of fanboy obligation than genuine interest. Entertaining though it was, The Force Awakens failed to get me overly excited about a new trilogy. It isn't a proper sequel to Return of the Jedi, and it isn't a strong foundation for future movies to build off of; it's a nostalgia-drenched reboot that happens to introduce some characters and ideas that could be developed in a sequel. Too many mysteries for the sake of having mysteries; too many important details left unexplained so you'll go buy the book that fills you in on the backstory you're missing. I had no real hopes or expectations for the next episode, because frankly, I had no idea how anyone should follow up on a movie like The Force Awakens.

It should be gratifying, then, that The Last Jedi looks at the plot threads it's been handed and proceeds to tangle or burn every one of them. Luke's first words to Rey? Don't care. Rey's parents? Don't care. Who is Snoke? Don't care. Ben Solo turning to the light side? Let's make it interesting. Captain Phasma? Let's make it a running gag that she's an afterthought who keeps falling down holes. I could go on. This is a movie that revels in subverting expectations, and I respect that—but at the same time, it feels less like an attempt to delight the viewer with surprises, and more like a big middle finger to JJ Abrams for providing a lousy foundation for a new trilogy.

"You are no Vader. You are just a child in a mask." That's not Snoke speaking to Kylo Ren. That's a scathing commentary on The Force Awakens, delivered with a subtlety worthy of Star Trek. As someone who enjoyed the spectacle of The Force Awakens but was disappointed by the derivative story, I find The Last Jedi to be refreshing in its efforts to clear the slate and give this new trilogy a better identity. Unfortunately, that makes it abundantly clear that this was not the direction the trilogy was intended to go. When the plot twists and dialogue so frequently feel like one writer/director trying to undo or criticize the work of another writer/director, it's hard to stay fully immersed in the story. I want to be engrossed in the power struggle between the First Order and the Resistance, not the power struggle between JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson.

Lack of immersion is the single biggest problem I had with The Last Jedi. From the very beginning, the film drives home that it is not to be taken seriously. The first problem is that I misheard "General Hux" as "General Hugs," which instantly gives your villain zero credibility, especially when his superior has a doofy name like "Snoke." The second problem is that Hux is a caricature of a villain—and his interaction with Poe Dameron drives home that not even the heroes take him seriously. "LOOK AT ME, I'M SO EEEEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL! YOU WILL RESPECT MEEEEEE!" Then Snoke's ridiculously large head shows up and eats Hux, further demonstrating that these villains are to be mocked, not feared. NOM NOM DARK SIDE NOM NOM. The first scene of a movie sets the tone for the entire thing, and the beginning of The Last Jedi is outright goofy.

Except...it's weirdly serious, too. Suddenly there are ships exploding and heroes dying in droves. But also Finn lumbering down the corridor leaking fluids everywhere. But also the Resistance getting slaughtered. I found myself having extreme difficulties settling on a mindset for this movie; this was not "serious, with forced comic relief" like Phantom Menace, nor was it "serious, with well-timed organic humor relieving the tension" like Rogue One or Empire Strikes Back. This felt disjointed and inappropriately irreverent, especially following The Force Awakens, which was reverent to a fault. Compare this with Thor: Ragnarok, which expertly uses its opening scene to reset expectations for the series before juxtaposing its newfound sense of humor with anything of weighty consequence.

Another issue with The Last Jedi's opening scene is that it's completely unbelievable. Who flies their bombers so close together that they can all be taken out in a chain reaction because of one stray TIE fighter? Who designs bombers so slow, ungainly, and poorly defended that they can't even reach their target? Who the heck thought it was a good idea to put the bomb deployment button on an easy-to-lose handheld device instead of on a freaking control panel where it belongs!? I'm on board with Poe's poor leadership decision getting the whole Resistance into trouble, but the way it's handled is incredibly contrived. Still struggling to wrap my head around what kind of a movie this was supposed to be, I started to settle on the only answer that made any sense: "poorly written."

For the next two hours, I fought to suspend my disbelief long enough to get immersed in the film. It never happened. I started noticing all the nitpicky holes in the story that you're not supposed to notice on a first viewing—like how our moron heroes never bother to ask Maz Kanata for any personally identifiable information about the codebreaker they're pinning all their hopes on. "The dude is probably wearing a flower" is the kind of clue you settle for in a Carmen Sandiego game. And don't get me started on the whole "let everyone think we're going to run out of fuel and die" plan, which is more about creating drama and setting up a plot twist for the viewer than it is about the characters actually trying to stay alive.

If it wasn't the story taking me out of the moment, it was the visuals. Yoda looked fine at a distance, but strangely terrible and fake close up—a problem I never had with him as a puppet in the original trilogy or as CGI in the prequels. None of the Force-enhanced movement looked natural; when Leia returned from the cold void of space and when Rey got pulled across the throne room, it looked like someone was dragging clipart around a PowerPoint presentation. And for as awesome as that fight sequence in the throne room was, I couldn't get over how the room itself looked more like some planet from the original Star Trek than the inside of a spaceship. Does it look cool to a movie audience? Yes. Is it plausible that Snoke would have chosen to decorate the room that way if a movie audience weren't watching? I'm not so sure.

Time and again, I was reminded that I was watching a movie. After I gave up on trying to get immersed, the movie started looking ridiculous and childish, and it hurt to disengage so brutally from the experience. Sci-fi has always been my favorite form of escapist fiction, and I've never wanted so badly to escape from the fiction. The Last Jedi left such a sour taste in my mouth that I've started skipping Star Wars music when it comes up on one of my playlists. I don't want to be reminded of how uncomfortable and detached I felt watching this film. I don't want to think about what a terrible mess this latest trilogy—and by extension, the whole franchise—is turning into. I'm already bracing myself for Star Wars: Episode IX: Let's Reboot This Trilogy One More Time.

Say what you will about George Lucas. Rian Johnson ruined my childhood, and JJ Abrams made him do it.

Every good hero has an origin story. Often, the stories are rooted in tragedy; family members of heroes-to-be have an alarmingly high mortality rate. Accidents, coincidences, even destiny itself have been known to set a hero on the path to adventure. No matter the details, origin stories all have one thing in common: they bore me to tears.

When Frodo Baggins finally leaves the Shire, or when Harry Potter finally arrives at Hogwarts, then things get interesting to me. I outright refused to see the reboots of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man; I don't need to spend at least half a movie waiting for these mundane characters to turn into superheroes again, having just watched it happen a mere decade ago. Heroes are like meals at a restaurant: I don't mind learning about how they're made, but I don't need to see the whole process every single time. More often than not, origin stories aren't even appetizers; they're the waiter standing there with a tray of food, talking about where it came from instead of serving it to you.

If I want an origin story, I want an origin story. Batman: Year One is one of my favorite graphic novels, despite being nothing but an origin story, because it spends all 96 pages telling a compelling, self-contained tale that just happens to take place earlier in Bruce Wayne's life than we're used to seeing. The path to becoming a hero is the story, not just the first third or half of the story that takes away from the time I could be spending watching Batman be Batman.

That's why I like the first Iron Man movie as much as I do: Tony Stark is Iron Man, and there's no waiting involved to see the character you signed up for. The only difference is that he gets cooler tech as the story progresses. As the movies go on, Tony's origin story continues to play an instrumental role in his development. This is not some one-and-done explanation of how he became a superhero; the shrapnel in his chest and his fixation on building a legacy before he dies are persistent reminders of his origin story. The origin and the story are too intertwined for the former to feel like a roadblock to the latter.

That's why I also like Captain America: The First Avenger, despite it being yet another origin story (set during a time period that's been overdone in film, no less). At first, Steve Rogers is hardly the shield-slinging super soldier he goes on to become, but he's still a hero in his own right. Cap's roots as a scrawny, straight-laced, diehard patriot are essential to appreciating who this character is and what he stands for, and we don't need to wait for him to power up before he starts growing a personality or dealing with conflicts of any real consequence.

Compare this with Star Wars. (Yes, I'm about to criticize Star Wars.) Luke Skywalker lives on a boring moisture farm on a boring rock called Tatooine doing boring jobs for his boring uncle. It's abundantly clear that Luke (and the audience, if the audience is me) desperately wants something—anything—interesting to happen. When adventure finally finds him, there's a transition period where Luke is still a naive, excitable farm boy seeing the galaxy for the first time...and then he's suddenly a confident action hero, with little or no trace of his previous character traits. By the start of the next movie, nothing that happened before meeting Ben Kenobi really matters anymore. It's origin stories like this that drive me mad. Yes, it's important to Luke's character arc to show his progression from an average teenager to the savior of the galaxy, but we don't need to spend so much time with his old friends, adopted parents, and drudgerous life on a moisture farm to understand what he's leaving behind, particularly if the story never refers back to them after a certain point.

A narrative doesn't always need to develop a full backstory for the heroes, nor does it need to present all the backstory in chronological order. Super Mario Bros. for the NES drops you right into the action; there's no time wasted on playing as Mario in the real world for the first few levels so you can appreciate his humble origins as a plumber. Firefly is selective about how its characters' origin stories are conveyed, leaving much of the past shrouded in mystery until it's narratively rewarding to reveal more. In the case of origin stories, I believe that less is generally more; you can always shed more light on a character's past as a story progresses, but you can never give back time spent setting up the story people came to see.

I think the solution may be to drop the "origin story" designation altogether. Just tell one good story, instead of two separate stories that need to be told together. If we learn something about the hero's background in the process, so much the better.

March was another busy month. No sooner had I submitted my entry for the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest on Sprites INC than another contest opened up: designing any number of six-screen level segments for the upcoming Mega Man Endless fangame. Between friends, family, work, and my deadline-driven side projects, I was going almost nonstop by the end of the month. It was exhausting, but it was also a reminder of how I thrive on having a variety of activities to keep me occupied. Let's see what all I have to show for myself.

This Website:

I might not write many posts anymore, but the ones I do write are ones I want to hang on to. The story of my concert experience with Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage is one of my favorite things I've written for this blog, and I think it's the biggest indication that I've finally moved away from the "general bitterness commentary" that weighed down my writing only a year or two ago. Also, I've decided to start linking to my individual Series Opinions articles once they're finished, regardless of whether everything else on the page with them is finished. I've still got a lot of Star Trek and Mega Man to write about (and rewrite about, because opinions are subject to change), but I'm one step closer to having my definitive take on every part of my favorite entertainment franchises all in one place.

- Retrospective: February 2016
- The Ultimate Voyage
- Series Opinions: The Misadventures of Tron Bonne

YouTube:

Due to all the time I spent making Mega Man levels in February and March, I wasn't able to focus on playing Mega Man levels, (meaning my playthrough of Mega Man 8 got delayed)...but I did subject one of my friends to a level I made, so we can call that a compromise. I did keep another one of my recording projects going, though, carrying on with the next installment in what is possibly my favorite first-person shooter series. I like MotS less than its predecessor, but I think I like this playthrough more than the one I did for the original Jedi Knight. So it balances out. Pardon the choppiness of the first video; it gets better.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 1: The Noisy Asteroid of Ugly Awfulness
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 2: Wireframed and Imprisoned
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 3: A Pirate's Death for Me
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 4: Nothing I Want at the Swamp Meet
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Mysteries of the Sith (Live) - Part 5: Taking the Bonus Level for a Bespin
- Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest - "Maze of Death" Blind Playthrough (With Special Guests)

GCDotNet:
- The GameCola Podcast #90: A Not-So-Spooky Halloween

The Backloggery:

Wow. This portion almost isn't worth mentioning. My wife and I played one round of LEGO LotR and were put off enough by all the glitches and gameplay issues that we haven't found the motivation to go back yet, and I played just enough of Nintendo Land with friends that it qualifies as Beaten by my standards. Oh, and I chipped away at X-Men Legends and played a little more of the 3DS Mega Man Legacy Collection, so it's not like I completely abandoned my favorite pastime.

Started:
- LEGO The Lord of the Rings  (Wii)

Beat:
- Nintendo Land  (WiiU)

...And that's just the stuff I finished in March! April oughta be pretty big, and I'm in a great mindset going into the month.

2016 is off to a great start. In the absence of GameCola (the main site is still in disarray), I've been dedicating my free time to a select few side projects and my New Year's resolutions. Not only have I been very productive, but I feel generally more relaxed than I've felt in a long time. What you see here might well become the format for the year.

This Website:

If you're only going by what I've posted on this blog, I've hardly done anything. But there's more to this site than the blog.

I've made a great many updates to my Mega Man series opinions, chipping away at Mega Man X3 and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and finishing off my review of Mega Man Powered Up. In fact, I might start giving each game its own page (instead of grouping them by category) to make my reviews easier to read and keep track of. I've also made serious headway with my Star Trek series opinions, as you'll see below. All of these posts are perpetual works in progress, mind you; the more I write, the more I'm reminded to go back and refine what I've already written.

As far as regular blog posts are concerned, there's the obligatory Retrospective, but the one about New Year's resolutions is easily one of my favorite things I've written here, and perhaps one of the most important.

- Retrospective: December 2015
- New Year's Resolutions 2016
- Series Opinions: Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS)
- Series Opinions: Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT)

YouTube:

Not a bad month for videos. One of last year's most popular podcasts finally made it to the GameCola YouTube channel, and my latest Mega Man Fangame Sampler livestream was especially well received. The Fangame Sampler before it also went pretty well, with me beating one of the games on my first try without losing a life. Lastly, I finished off a playthrough of one of my all-time favorite video games, and the whole experience was fun enough (for me and my audience) to try tackling the rest of the games in the series in the months to come.

Behind the scenes, I've been practicing my showoffery for Mega Man 8, the next video series I have planned for my GeminiLaser channel. I don't think I've been this excited about a recording project since Mega Man 5, which is especially surprising if you've read my Series Opinions on the game. If all goes as planned, you'll see the first video in March!

Flashman85LIVE:
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #6: Scramble!!, DOS Remake, Star Man Upgraded
- Mega Man Fangame Sampler #7: Hard Hat 2, Foo-roo's Flight, An Uncertain Future
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 4: What, Fisticuffs!?

GCDotNet:
- The GameCola Podcast #88: When this Podcast Hits 88 Miles Per Hour

The Backloggery:

That New Year's resolution about my video game backlog has pushed me to change my gaming habits for the better. I tried a bunch of games. I removed them when I wasn't totally sold after the first play session. I powered through the last of Dragon Age: Origins in order to free up my lone, self-imposed PC game slot for something more my style. By the end of the month, my wife and I were back in the swing of co-op gaming on a regular basis, capping off one LEGO game we'd been working on for months and diving into a new one we'd just received for Christmas. Finally, in going through my Backloggery to finish writing mini-reviews for all the games I'd beaten before joining the site, I discovered a criminal offense: leaving a Mega Man game marked as less than Complete when I'd clearly met the requirements.

Started:
- Bullet Candy  (Steam)
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers  (PC)
- LEGO Jurassic World  (WiiU)
- Mushroom Men: Truffle Trouble  (Steam)
- Osmos  (Steam)
 
Beat:
- Dragon Age: Origins  (Origin)
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers  (PC)
 
Completed:
- Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers  (PC)
- LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4  (Wii)
- Mega Man X4  (GCN)
- Mega Man X4  (PS)
 
Removed:
- Bullet Candy  (Steam)
- Mushroom Men: Truffle Trouble  (Steam)
- Osmos  (Steam)
- StarFox Assault  (GCN)

Overall, a very good month. Let's hope things keep getting even better!

2015 ended on a high note for me. Good time spent with friends and family, some of the best weeks of work I've had all year, plenty of vacation time, meaningful personal development, and a change of focus that I hope will lead to a joyful and productive 2016. You'll note one big absence on this list: GameCola.net suffered a catastrophic server failure early in the month—the day before the shortest review I've ever written got posted, as though the website couldn't cope with me writing anything of substance shorter than 700 words.

Normally we'd revert to a recent backup version of the site, but due to mysterious technical issues, the latest backup we had was from sometime in November. An executive decision was made to put the site on hiatus to give our webmaster time to look into recovering the lost data, but also to give the Editor-in-Chief time to work on GameCola 4.0, a revised version of the site with all the modern bells and whistles we've been missing. I'll no doubt write more about the situation as time goes on, but in the meantime, I've been devoting my free time to other side projects that have been languishing for too long.

This Blog:

It's good to be writing again on a regular basis, and writing more positively, at that. In addition to the posts below, which hopefully represent a return to the kind of writing I used to do for Exfanding Your Horizons in its heyday, I was busy working on my Series Opinions for Star Trek: The Original Series and Enterprise, which I'll formally link to once they're complete.

- Retrospective: November 2015
- Star Trek Beyond the Point of No Return
- Always in Motion Is the Future
- Running With Superheroes

YouTube:

One GameCola contribution managed to slip through, despite the main site being out of commission. In honor of the new Star Wars movie, I kicked off a playthrough of one of my all-time favorite games, and it's been helping me refine my livestreaming style. The third installment of Jedi Knight and the second Backloggery Choice stream are two of my favorites so far (if nothing else, watch the Paperboy section of the first video below).

Of course, no mention of YouTube videos would be complete without a celebration of the true, final, real end of the Mega Man 7 recording saga. One of the funniest things I've ever released, according to me, and a joy to assemble.

Flashman85LIVE:
- Backloggery Choice #2: Crystalis, StarTropics II, Metal Storm, Paperboy
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 1: The Force Awakens
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 2: Elevator Action
- Star Wars: Jedi Knight (Live Playthrough) - Part 3: Confusing the Commentator

GeminiLaser:
- Mega Man 7: Audio Outtakes

GCDotNet:
- Hacks'n'Slash #10: Mario & Sonic Christmas Special

The Backloggery:

December is always a bad month for my struggle against the evil Bak'laag. Between Christmas, winter sales on Steam and GOG, and holiday travels that take me near used game stores, my game collection always seems to inflate around this time. At least my patience has run out for games that aren't worth my time; I'm abandoning bad and unrewarding games with a vengeance nowadays, and I've decided to go back to playing only the games I think I'll like—anything that's culturally worthwhile but not worth the effort is something I can watch someone else play on YouTube.

New:
- Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze  (WiiU)
- Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition  (PC)
- Final Fantasy X  (PS2)
- Final Fantasy X-2  (PS2)
- Gun Metal  (Steam)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis  (PC)
- LEGO Jurassic World  (WiiU)
- Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team DS  (NDS)
- Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus  (NDS)
- Rokko Chan  (Brwsr)
- Star Trek: 25th Anniversary  (PC)
- Super Smash Bros. for Wii U  (WiiU)
 
Started:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- StarFox Assault  (GCN)
- Wario Land 3  (GBC)
 
Beat:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- The Misadventures of Tron Bonne  (PS)
 
Completed:
- Final Soldier  (VC)
- Gargoyle's Quest II  (NES)
- Love  (Steam)
- The Misadventures of Tron Bonne  (PS)
 
Removed:
- Wario Land 3  (GBC)

That about wraps it up for 2015! Off we go into another year.

I'm not the world's biggest comics fanboy. I have a respectable collection of graphic novels, enjoyed the X-Men arcade game back in its heyday, and still have a few Batman toys from when I was a kid, but I'm only casually interested in comics. I am, however, a big fan of continuity. When books and games and movies sow seeds for future plotlines and make references to previous events, I am a happy camper. Fictional universes seem larger than they really are when nothing happens in a vacuum, and it's rewarding for diehard fans to notice little details that everyone else might overlook. That's why I got hooked on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), despite having only a mild passion for superhero stories.

Iron Man, at the time, was a cool-looking action movie that happened to be based on a comic I'd never read. The film was funny, engaging, and explosive enough to convince me to sit through The Incredible Hulk, which was rumored to connect with Iron Man somehow, despite my complete lack of desire to see what I (more or less accurately) predicted would be 90 minutes or so of either a green guy punching things or a wimpy guy not punching things. I looked forward to Iron Man 2, which cemented my interest in this Avengers movie that these new Marvel films were working toward. Fantasy and mythology generally aren't my cup of tea (or mug of ale, as it were), so Thor was a strictly perfunctory viewing that left me no more excited about the character and his world than before. Captain America was the last obligatory piece of the puzzle; WWII is an interesting time period but overdone in the entertainment world, and Cap fell into the "mostly just punches guys" category of superhero that doesn't usually interest me. Fortunately, the film exceeded my expectations and got me genuinely invested in its characters. So that was two Avengers out of four to get me psyched for the team-up movie.

The first half of The Avengers is everything I'm tired of seeing in movies: origin stories (in the form of assembling the team), heroes spending more time fighting each other than the villains, and mind control making the good guys either ineffective or subservient to the bad guys. The second half is everything I want out of an action movie: eye-popping visual spectacle, great one-liners, and heroes being awesome. I was more excited than ever to see the continuing adventures of Tony Stark in Iron Man 3, but Thor 2 still couldn't get me to care about the Norse god of gratuitous shirtlessness. Captain America had proven himself worthy of my interest (I say that like it means anything), so I was curious to see Winter Soldier. Guardians of the Galaxy probably would've had my money regardless of its affiliation with the MCU, because I've never been one to turn down comedy and action in space. Phase 2 of this huge film endeavor was in full swing, and with the connections getting stronger and the movies looking more up my alley, I was officially hooked.

To gear up for Avengers: Age of Ultron, my wife and I started getting caught up on the MCU TV series, starting with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Everyone loves Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson, but I had trouble connecting with the other characters at first. I quickly warmed up to the show as those connections I love kept working their way into the story, and as the show kept subverting my expectations. There were several times where my wife and I would go, "Noooo! Don't tell us you're going to do that to us!" and then they didn't. AoS was different from your average monster-of-the-week espionage show (assuming those exist), and it had both humor and heart, so I was willing to forgive a few of the less-desirable plot points along the way. The first season ended on a very high note, which made the second season's incongruously serious tone, loss of focus on external connections and character development, overemphasis on the generically evil main villains (to the point where we started calling it Agents of Hydra), and insistence on doing exactly what you expect all the more unpleasant.

Agent Carter proved to be a more evenly enjoyable experience. My wife raves about how they nailed the time period and how Peggy Carter is a wonderful example of how to write good female characters. While I agree, I also found myself missing the superpowers and high-tech gadgetry that are so integral to the rest of the MCU, despite the best efforts of Howard Stark. I also don't feel like I have as deep of a sense of the characters as I'd like, but there's always next season.

As for Age of Ultron? Well. There's a story behind that one. It's called the Ultimate Marvel Marathon.

Previously, my longest movie event was approximately 20 hours of Harry Potter, eight films in all. Similarly, the longest I'd ever stayed awake continuously was 36 hours—rising early to sing at a summer church service, hopping a plane to France, not sleeping on the plane because I was a fool, and sightseeing for an entire day before hitting another pillow. I knew I had it in me to do this.

This, of course, being two days at the movie theater to see Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor 2: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron, one after the other, with a break of 20 minutes or so between films. I lost track of how long I'd been there after the 30-hour mark. Between striking up conversations with strangers in line next to me, packing a change of clothes and a stick of deodorant in lieu of showering, and not sleeping until my body shut down on me during Snore 2: The Dark Theater, it was just like being at a comic book convention.

My brother-in-law and I got there a good five hours before the start of the marathon. You might think that's excessive, but when you're also reserving seating for your wife and your father, and when the alternative to waiting is risking front-row neck strain for 11 straight movies, queuing up early sounds downright sagely. The challenge here was that the marathon didn't start until the evening; despite my best efforts to sleep in, I had already been awake for several hours before arriving at the theater.

Every other crazy marathon I've done has started in the morning. Wake up, roll out of bed, Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Extended Edition. You don't start a marathon, let alone one of this magnitude, around the time most people are getting home from a full day of work. I can trick my body into thinking I'm staying up extra late if an all-day marathon spills over into the next day, but there's no way to disguise a 20-hour extension to the part of the evening reserved for warm milk and pajamas.

The odds were against me staying up the whole time, but smart planning and a lot of unexpected support kept me going.

What worked: Sleeping in beforehand. A trunk full of outside snacks, including muffins, Pop-Tarts, Clif bars, fruit snacks (shaped like sharks, because that's important), apple juice, assorted chips, and snack cakes. Meals from the snack bar at meal times, and snacks from the snack bar only when nothing else would do, and never the same thing twice. Drinking caffeine-free root beer throughout Day 1 and water throughout Day 2. Between movies, stepping outside for fresh air and sunshine (when available) and enforcing a mandatory bathroom break. Chatting with people. Cheering with the rest of the theater when something satisfyingly cool happened, or when Agent Phil "Everyone's Favorite Character" Coulson showed up. Having the theater manager and a local YouTube comedian interact with the audience every other movie, asking trivia questions and giving away posters.

What didn't work: This wasn't my living room.

I think about all the marathons I've done at home, from the aforementioned Harry Potter one to the 2012 Mega Man Megathon, and they were successful in large part because of the venue and structure. You can stand up, walk around, grab hot food or a drink refill, make a pit stop, change seats, and crack wise at the screen without worrying about bothering the people around you, tripping over things in the dark, getting caught waiting in line, or having to wait for the fryer to heat up. You can cut the break time between movies down to however long it takes you to swap out the discs after the credits are over (which would have trimmed entire hours off of this marathon). You can plan a proper breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert at the times you need them the most. There's something to be said about the energy of a movie theater crowd and the spectacle of seeing these films on the big screen, but the Ultimate Marvel Marathon almost felt like more of an endurance test than a marathon.

The entire first half of the marathon, I was fine. I was excited, well fed, making notes between films, and asking my family for a critical assessment after each film. (Age of Ultron notwithstanding, we'd seen them all before; amusingly, one of the other people in the theater was seeing all of these films for the first time!) There was a stretch during the wee hours of the morning, somewhere between Thor and Captain America, where I began to question how I was going to make it through another day after this, but when I stepped outside during the break to find that the sun had returned, simply knowing that it was time to wake up and start the day was good enough to keep me going.

Eating nothing but packaged snacks and concession stand food for two days has a way of making you reevaluate any aversion you ever had to vegetables. When everything available is fried, salty, sweet, or some combination thereof, you need to be a tactical genius to eat well enough to stay awake and feel good about it. On the plus side, I have now tried everything on the concession stand menu that ever piqued my interest, except (regrettably) the Oreo churros, so I need never gamble on untested movie food again. Spicy chicken is delicious.

As a side note, if you ever do a marathon like this one, plan your budget like you're spending the day at an amusement park.

In addition to food and drink, the concession stand was selling Marvel figurines; the largest drink cups had a lid with a divot on top where the figurine base would plug right in. As we waited in line, people were trading figurines like they were pogs on a playground. Iron Man, Thor, and Ultron were common sights, with the occasional Cap and Hulk, but there were rumors of the elusive Black Widow. The figurine packages were unmarked, but it wasn't long before people started realizing they could tell which figurine they had in their hands by pressing against the bag to determine the shape of the figurine inside. Those poor cashiers spent the next couple hours being asked to feel their packages.

I was less discriminating and took the first figurine I was given...which turned out to be none other than Black Widow. Very cool. Plugging her into my drink lid was a mistake; her glowy blue nightsticks almost poked my eye out every time I leaned in to take a sip from the straw.

There are plenty more stories to tell from the marathon, but two things I took away from the event were a greater appreciation of Tony Stark's character arc, and a sense of wonder at how so many movies from so many different directors and writers and actors could not only have such seamless continuity, but also maintain a consistently high standard of quality. Each and every one of those movies is at least a 3 out of 5 in my book, with even the weakest entries being no worse than "merely average." Eh, I suppose The Incredible Hulk is really more of a 2.5, but still. The MCU is a vast, rich place with some superbly developed characters and an ever-complexening (is that a word?) history. I was psyched to come back for more.

Then there was Ant-Man. Like practically everyone else who said, "...Ant-Man?", I was not terribly excited (and besides, if we're talking shrinky people, I prefer The Atom). I've read a bit of the earliest Avengers comics, so I had an idea of what I was in for...but I didn't expect to like it so much. A few story flaws, sure, but overall a very funny and exciting addition to the MCU.

Daredevil was a bit of a departure from...well, everything else in the MCU, not to mention everything I normally watch. Dark, both visually and tonally. Violent. Normal. In a world of superheroes, it's a show about lawyers and thugs and corruption. Well done? Most definitely. My wife and I are only five or six episodes in, but so far it's an intriguing and engrossing show. It's also emotionally exhausting to watch. And this is where I see my dedication to the MCU beginning to waver.

I watched a trailer for Jessica Jones. It looks great. It looks like something I won't enjoy. I think back to The Dark Knight, what an incredible piece of cinema it is, what great performances and cinematography it has, and how I really don't like it. I can recognize when something of good quality is not my style, and as the MCU continues to diversify, I'm going to see more and more films and TV shows I wouldn't choose to watch under normal circumstances. And considering it's taken more than a year to get through those few episodes of Daredevil, I predict it's the TV tie-ins that are going to be my downfall. I can sit through two hours of another Thor movie, but I don't know if I can commit to 17 more hours of AoS if it's anything like the second season (which, based on the trailer I saw, seems all too likely).

Beyond that, the MCU has competition. Star Wars is back in full swing with the first installment in a new trilogy, two spinoff movies in the works, and countless more to come—and my wife and I are barely through the first season of The Clone Wars and haven't even started on Rebels. Star Trek has a new movie and TV series coming out next year; my expectations are low, but if the latter ends up being any good, it'll likely take priority over anything else I'm watching. At least I've given up on staying current with the DC Comics film and television universe, which strikes me as disorganized and unattached to the source material.

Still, I'm excited for what will be in theaters during Phase 3 of the MCU. Even if I can't keep up with the universe at home on the small screen, any excuse to get out to the big screen is usually a good one. And who knows? Maybe I'll have trained my body to go without sleep for three days straight the next time an Ultimate Marvel Marathon rolls around.

Following the release of the first official trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I made some predictions about the film. Having returned from the movie theater a few hours ago, it's time to see how I did.

[SPOILER ALERT]

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I'll throw in a few more lines here for good measure.

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[NO SPOILERS AHEAD—WAIT, JUST KIDDING]

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PREDICTION: Han Solo dies. At the very least, someone you care about from the original trilogy will not survive to the end of this trilogy. Probably two or three characters, really. Maybe the droids.

RESULT: Bingo.

PREDICTION: Copious callbacks to the original trilogy that straddle the line between reverence for the original trilogy and pandering to the fans who love anything that references the original trilogy.

RESULT: I was sure I'd get this one right, but I had no idea how right I'd be. If you take out all the sections that closely parallel anything in the original trilogy, you almost don't have a movie. If nobody told you the name of the planet, you'd swear Jakku was Tatooine. Starkiller Base is the Death Star carved into the planet Hoth. There's a lot of time spent running around wooded areas that look like they'd fit right in on Endor. The whole adventure starts with Stormtroopers chasing a droid with critical information across a desert. Somebody with no gunnery experience uses a turret to fend off TIE fighters. The Millennium Falcon flies through the guts of an Imperial vessel in a high-stakes action sequence. People use the Falcon's secret cargo compartment in the floor as a hiding place. There's a confrontation on a catwalk over a huge chasm. The inside of Maz Kanata's castle bears a striking resemblance to the Mos Eisley cantina, complete with one of the heroes chartering a ship out of there. The Rebels plot an assault from their tiny base and suffer heavy casualties in a major battle. The heroes go sneaking around an Imperial stronghold. One of the heroes gets grabbed by a tentacle monster. Need I go on?

The Force Awakens has the courtesy to do its homages respectfully, and everything familiar has a meaningful twist that keeps it from being a straight rehash of the other movies, but man alive. We tolerate it now because it's so well done, and because we've been craving a thoughtfully planned and superbly executed new Star Wars film since 1983 (or 1980, if you're one of those people). In time, I expect The Force Awakens will become the Mega Man 3 of Star Wars marathons—the one that's fine on its own, but a little tiresome when you realize how much of it you just saw.

PREDICTION: A sudden realization that the actors from the original trilogy are way older than everyone else in the movie.

RESULT: I am relieved to say that I mostly got this one wrong. There's a broader age range than I was expecting, with a good mix of middle-aged and older actors rounding out the cast of young'uns (heck, one of the characters is 1000 years old!), and the younger actors demonstrate a maturity I'm no longer accustomed to seeing from their demographic in the cinema. What could have been another case of "Look, Leonard Nimoy! Anybody remember him?" ended up being a graceful merger of old and new. I also credit the costumers and makeup artists, who captured that 1977 fashion aesthetic and updated it to look just contemporary enough not to feel dated—one look at Poe Dameron's hair, and it's like we were prepping for the Death Star trench run all over again. Everyone looks like they belong in the same universe.

However, I credit myself with a minor victory here. The first time you see BB-8 and R2-D2 together, the latter really looks like a relic of a bygone era of sci-fi. It's less pronounced once Artoo is moving around again, but I've never seen everyone's favorite astromech droid look so much like a quaint old prop made from a trash can.

PREDICTION: Ideas repurposed from the old Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends).

RESULT: I'll admit that I'm not well-versed enough in the Expanded Universe to catch everything that might've been in the movie, but Han and Leia having a Force-sensitive child, Luke training a new generation of Jedi, and Stormtroopers being used by a new regime in the wake of the Empire's collapse are all part of the old Expanded Universe. I was kinda hoping for Mara Jade, but there's still time.

PREDICTION: An earnest attempt to convince you that the prequels aren't all bad.

RESULT: Well, you can't win 'em all. I found no trace of the prequels here, aside from the marketplace scene toward the beginning reminding me a bit of Phantom Menace. Though, to be fair, all that time spent reimagining parts of the original trilogy left no room for an attempt to convince us that the prequels aren't all bad.

PREDICTION: The heroes get captured, because that's pretty much a requirement nowadays.

RESULT: Yep. Poe, BB-8, Rey, Finn, Han, and Chewie each get captured by the end of the movie (and Rey almost gets captured once as well). For bonus points, the heroes turn the tables and capture Captain Phasma to shut down the shield generator (oh, and there's another original trilogy parallel—somebody's gotta shut down a shield generator). Fortunately, being captured is usually an inconvenience that serves as an opportunity for character development, and it never sidetracks the heroes on some elaborate escape plan that interferes with the main plot (I'm looking at you, Doctor Who).

PREDICTION: Despite starring a woman and a person of color, the film will still manage to screw up equal representation.

RESULT: I am so happy I was wrong about this one. The film goes out of its way to throw gender, race, and age conventions aside and give every character an equal chance to shine. Hollywood has needed a big-name movie to remind the general public that a woman can be strong without being an indestructible man-hating machine, a black man can hold a leading role in a film that makes no mention of skin color, and people over age 70 can be in good enough shape to be action heroes.

PREDICTION: The soccer-ball droid will have more charisma and depth than at least one of the other main characters.

RESULT: I would argue that BB-8 has a smidge more depth and charisma than Poe, but that's probably because the former has more screen time. As suggested above, the characters feel like people, and for once, the novelty character doesn't steal the spotlight from everyone else.

PREDICTION: LENS FLA—oh, wait; wrong film. A moment where you could swear you're watching one of the Star Trek reboot movies.

RESULT: The Force Awakens is a film by people who are clearly passionate about Star Wars and who also know what they're doing. Although the film never once reminded me of the Star Trek reboot movies, it gave me a glimpse of what Star Trek 2009 could have been like with different writers and a J.J. Abrams who had grown up loving the franchise. All that near-rehashing of old material I mentioned above? That's exactly what you do with a reboot. Star Trek could have been the homage melange with heartwarming character beats, and Star Wars could have been the brand-new story with a few references to old material here and there, and everyone would have been happy. I might've gotten this prediction wrong, but the result is eye-opening.

PREDICTION: No matter what the movie is like, the fan community will not be able to agree on whether it's any good.

RESULT: It's still too early to say too much on this point, but so far it looks like I'm right on the mark. A little bit of Googling reveals that the film is indeed polarizing among at least a small sample of fans, with most loving it and a few hating it—little or no middle ground.

For my part, I enjoyed the movie. More than I expected. Despite a small twinge when I saw his name pop up in the credits, I'm proud of J.J. Abrams—and everyone involved—for doing Star Wars justice. The film isn't perfect, and I'll need to rewatch it after this trilogy is complete to draw final conclusions about it, but it does a lot of things well that Star Wars—and Hollywood—have needed to do well for a long time. It is my hope that The Force Awakens will be a stepping stone that helps move us beyond squabbling over casting choices and directorial decisions and puts our focus as fans and filmmakers back on telling and enjoying a good story in that galaxy far, far away.

With the recent release of the final trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII: Pretty Much Everything Else Isn't Canon Anymore, I feel it's a good time to make some predictions about this upcoming film. The last time I did this, my predictions turned out to be surprisingly accurate, so you might want to take notes. Here's what I'm expecting:

- Han Solo dies. At the very least, someone you care about from the original trilogy will not survive to the end of this trilogy. Probably two or three characters, really. Maybe the droids.

- Copious callbacks to the original trilogy that straddle the line between reverence for the original trilogy and pandering to the fans who love anything that references the original trilogy.

- A sudden realization that the actors from the original trilogy are way older than everyone else in the movie.

- Ideas repurposed from the old Expanded Universe (now Star Wars Legends).

- An earnest attempt to convince you that the prequels aren't all bad.

- The heroes get captured, because that's pretty much a requirement nowadays.

- Despite starring a woman and a person of color, the film will still manage to screw up equal representation.

- The soccer-ball droid will have more charisma and depth than at least one of the other main characters.

- LENS FLA—oh, wait; wrong film. A moment where you could swear you're watching one of the Star Trek reboot movies.

- No matter what the movie is like, the fan community will not be able to agree on whether it's any good.

I'm not a betting man, but I'd put money on that last prediction. That's because The Force Awakens is arguably in an even tougher spot than the prequels were. Multiple generations of fans have had an immensely personal connection with those first three films. When Episode I debuted, it only had to live up to the impossibly high standards of the original trilogy, For Episode VII, being as good as the original trilogy won't be enough. It needs to be better.

In the last 20 years, the Special Editions have become the face of the original films, much to the chagrin of Star Wars purists. The prequel trilogy—an endless source of outrage for countless hardcore fans—and its spinoffs (e.g., The Clone Wars) have changed the landscape of the fandom, making the original trilogy a smaller and smaller part of what it means to be Star Wars. Episode VII is, perhaps, some fans' only hope of salvaging this fractured franchise. And with the Expanded Universe—the one place where Luke, Vader, the Alliance, and the Empire were still king—being thrown out almost wholesale for the sake of a new continuity, Episode VII needs to prove itself worthy of discarding the beloved Thrawn trilogy (and numerous other works) to make room for itself.

"At least it's better than the prequels" won't cut it. There is a lot riding on this movie. It's a real-life Anakin Skywalker: The one we've all been hoping for to bring balance, but the one that's probably going to tear us apart for it to happen. Whether the movie ends up being marvelous, mediocre, or mortifying, I don't imagine it will simultaneously be able to satisfy those who long for the original trilogy and those who like all of Star Wars, justify rewriting the continuity, and unite fans in excitement about the direction of the entire franchise.

So wait. You're telling me that Star Wars: Episode VII, Ghostbusters III, Indiana Jones 5, and Beetlejuice 2 are all real movies that are happening or likely to happen in the next few years? Look, I'm all for a sequel if there's a good story to be told, but I think everybody missed the boat here. If we've learned anything from the likes of Star Wars: Episode I, Indiana Jones 4, and Terminator III, it's that sequels made 10+ years after the last installment consistently fail to resemble the movies they're following (which is occasionally advantageous; just ask Men in Black III or Rocky Balboa). More to the point, I'm concerned about this apparent resurgence of interest in continuing film franchises where half the people involved in the original film are either dead or of retirement age.

You had all of the '90s, guys. This isn't some long-lost parent you reconnected with in the twilight years of their life; these are properties that have happily been in the public consciousness for decades, enjoying continuous merchandising and no end to the books and comics and video games that have continued the story you could've been telling on film this whole time. I don't pretend to know how long these filmmakers have been trying to make sequels to these films, but I have to imagine at least one of these planning sessions went something like, "Jeez, Harrison Ford's getting up there, isn't he? Guess we'd better start making sequels again before he's too old to lift a whip or a blaster. You know, I'd completely forgotten he was still acting until I saw a few minutes of Air Force One on TV last night. That was only from a couple years ago, right? He looks great!"

There might be hope for Star Wars: Episode VII, which is being brought to us by the very same director who brought us the last two Star Wars movies (Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness). Otherwise, I'm skeptical. Unless the people involved—new and old—profoundly understand both what makes the originals good and how to effectively pick up with a story some 10, 20, even 30 years later, I think I'd rather save my money and catch Joe Dirt 2 whenever it arrives on Netflix.

Four years. I've waited four years for this. Four years of inner turmoil. Four years of disappointment, denial, and anger.

Four years since J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot. If you couldn't tell, I was not entirely pleased.

After four years of discussing, debating, and speculating, I finally have the resolution I've so desperately craved—I finally have a sequel. It's called Star Trek Into Darkness, and it's allowed me to sort out these conflicting emotions and make peace with my beloved entertainment franchise.

If you're familiar with my work at Exfanding Your Horizons, you know I've written about this at length. No need to click on all of these, but they're here if you'd like a refresher or some background on the matter. Plus, I really like some of these titles.

- Star Trek RIP, Part 1
- Star Trek RIP, Part 2
- Reconnecting with the World
- Abandon Fandom!
- J.J. Abrams, Please Stop Killing People
- Star Trek by the Minute
- (Re)Star(t) Trek
- New York Comic-Con / Anime Festival 2011 Recap: Part Two (scroll down a ways)
- Star Trek Into Darkness of the Movie Theater Again
- Lastly, from this blog: A New Hopelessness

Now, brace for impact, kiddos; sensors are detecting spoilers on a collision course.

First off, let's review my predictions for Star Trek Into Darkness, based on what transpired in the first movie (discussed in the penultimate post above):

Things We'll Probably See:

Nurse Chapel, whose only function is to scream at scary things, and give McCoy somebody to talk to, 'cuz he really doesn't seem that tight with Kirk - Close! We got Carol Marcus, who screams at scary things and has her biggest scene together with McCoy. And she mentions Nurse Chapel, so there you go.

An impromptu Gorn battle that completely interrupts the flow of the story - There's a brief moment at the beginning where Kirk shoots a big animal that appears out of nowhere, and they do mention the Gorn...so I'd say that's close enough.

Vulcans behaving completely out of character - Actually, I think the writers understand Spock better than anyone else, and Spock's the only Vulcan I saw...so I guess I whiffed on this one. Blame it on the scuttlebutt I'd been hearing about the videogame tie-in.

A reference to a classic Trek scene or quote, which inadvertently devalues the scene or quote if you think about it too hard - "Reference" is putting it lightly. Half the film was a remake of Wrath of Khan, though that devalues this film, and not the one it's referencing. More on that later.

LENS FLARE - PROBABLY. MAYBE I MISSED IT.

An incredibly important plot point that's barely explained and/or makes absolutely no sense if you think about it too hard - If you want to avoid detection by the indigenous people of a planet, why fly your starship into their ocean instead of staying in high orbit and sending down a shuttle? Why did Kirk steal that scroll that got everybody chasing after him? And let's not even start on haphazardly promoting crew members (seriously, your tactical officer who has been shadowing the chief engineer is a better candidate for a replacement than anyone else who works in engineering?), Marcus loading cryofrozen war criminals into torpedoes, plotting to sabotage the Enterprise, and escalating to wanton murder of Kirk and his crew in a matter of moments.

Adults who are absolutely useless in crisis situations, leaving the young'uns to take matters into their own hands - I'm pretty sure Kirk was the only person at that staff meeting who didn't stand there and wait to get shot.

Petty bickering over a woman (I'm already blaming Uhura) - What? A lovers' quarrel between Spock and Uhura? Couldn't be!

Someone getting killed off for plot convenience and/or a cheap emotional response - We didn't need Pike anymore, right?

No Klingons, or worse yet, pointless Klingons - Or, worse yet...actual Klingons. But they all died like punks.

Really awesome action sequences that make you forget about everything I just mentioned - The Enterprise rose out of the ocean! Stuff blew up real good! Lots of punching! ...What were we talking about?

Needless to say, Star Trek Into Darkness was very much what I expected it to be. The original press release was a bit misleading, talking about someone "from within their own organization" (not really) who "has detonated the fleet" (not really), but I still laid my money on Khan as the villain well before the speculation took off. As a side note, the teaser trailers were misleading as well; try watching any of the later ones after seeing the movie, and note how cleverly they took scenes out of context and out of order, showing you just enough to make you think you know what will happen.

So I've gotten pretty good at figuring out how an Abrams/Orci/Kurtzman production is gonna pan out. The question is, how does Into Darkness compare with its predecessor?

Let me put it this way: I might be inclined to watch this one again. It's been four years, and I have yet to rewatch the first one.

I'll break this down the same way I did with Oblivion: by reviewing the lessons that subsequent films in this new Star Trek continuity could stand to learn from Into Darkness—and from any other Star Trek, for that matter.


Lesson #1: You've got 40+ years of continuity. Make references.

Carol Marcus. Christine Chapel. The Gorn. A tribble. The NX-01 amongst the model ships lined up in Admiral Marcus' office. Uniforms in the style of Star Trek: The Motion Picture's. Klingons. Adaptations of the main TOS and TNG themes in the end credits music. Section 31. The destruction of Vulcan. "The Mudd incident." Star Trek Into Darkness makes references of all sizes, some more obvious than others, and they help form meaningful connections with the franchise as a whole. A well-placed reference can be a rewarding treat for attentive viewers, and it's an acknowledgement that there's more to Star Trek than just this film.

However, some discretion is required, lest we forget the quotes and references that were ham-fistedly crammed into the first movie: the Kobayashi Maru scene trivialized one of Star Trek's best untold stories for cheap comedic effect, some random planet nowhere near Delta Vega was called Delta Vega just to reference "Where No Man Has Gone Before," and Spock Prime's first interaction with Kirk was peppered with familiar sayings that ring hollow without the emotional context originally associated with them. Simply dropping a reference isn't good enough; it needs to fit with the story, regardless of whether there's an audience watching.


Lesson #2: You've got 40+ years of continuity. Treat it with respect.

One of the reasons I got so angry at Star Trek (2009) was the lack of reverence for the source material. With such a long and rich history, you'd think there'd be no shortage of plot threads to follow and new aspects of the galaxy to explore...but instead of building on the foundation already in place, the film proceeded to destroy everything from Romulus to the core personalities of some of Star Trek's most memorable characters, merely to have a fresh slate to tell a (mediocre) story.

Uhura went from a strong, subtly sensual communications officer to a floozie who probably served some function on the ship (my guess: Flirts Officer. Ha ha.). Sarek, a true Vulcan of commanding presence and profound wisdom, was relegated to a generic fatherly role. McCoy's nickname of "Bones," previously derived from "sawbones" (old slang for a surgeon), lost its meaning when Kirk picked it up from McCoy's passing comment of being nothing but "a bag of bones" after his divorce. The list goes on. The names are the same, but they're not entirely the same people.

Perhaps because the film is only accountable to its predecessor, which did all the dirty work of introducing characters and severing almost all ties with the previous continuity, Into Darkness has some breathing room to (a) insert references without trying so hard to appease any dubious diehard fans, and (b) let these versions of the characters develop more naturally.

Scotty has gone from "happy comic relief Scotsman" to "friendly, expert engineer who cares deeply about his ship," for example. However, I still have no sense of this Uhura's personality other than that she's Spock's girlfriend, and that she speaks Klingon more fluently than she did in Undiscovered Country, where she was condemning food, things, and supplies. (That has to change.) There's certainly room for interpretation when a new actor or director is working with a character, but especially when dealing with an alternate timeline, that core personality should remain intact—after all, as far as the story's concerned, it's only the appearance and aftermath of Nero that should account for any differences in a character's character.

Into Darkness does a better job than its predecessor of respecting Star Trek continuity because it works within the boundaries of what the previous movie established. Instead of bulldozing the foundations and framework to make way for something new, it fleshes out what's already there—and because it pulls so much of the story from "Space Seed" and Wrath of Khan, Into Darkness naturally feels more like Star Trek than last time.

That's the kicker: It's not just adherence to canon, but embracing what it means to be Star Trek. It's the interplay between characters. It's the strange, new worlds. It's the new life and new civilizations. It's the thought-provoking questions about social issues and human nature that arise from combining all of the above. Into Darkness seems to get more of its details straight about who these characters are and what their universe is like, but it's still missing the heart—or the brain, if you will—that elevates Star Trek above any other sci-fi action movie. We're getting there, but we're not there yet.


Lesson #3: You've got 40+ years of continuity. Boldly go where no one has gone before, for cryin' out loud.

The purpose of a reboot, as I see it, is to do things differently—or better. To its credit, Into Darkness features some great action sequences, turns Spock's iconic death scene on its head with a clever role reversal, and utilizes the full potential of Khan's genetic enhancements (something I've always felt Wrath of Khan skimped on a bit—"Khan, I'm laughing at the superior intellect!"). There's a lot of good in this movie, and a lot we haven't seen before...but not enough.

For starters, it would've been brilliant to have Khan, defeated on the bridge of the USS Vengeance, shouting "KIIIRRRRKKK!!!" at the top of his lungs.

I wanted to see any other antagonist—Gary Mitchell, those mind-control parasites from "Conspiracy," the Suliban, Trelane, the Borg (Kirk versus a female foe, particularly the Borg Queen, would've been interesting...), even Gary Seven could've somehow been worked in as a villain in this alternate timeline. A reboot offers the freedom of choice, and they chose a bad guy and a situation that led to all the same major plot points that were hit before. Nemesis already rehashed Wrath of Khan to a certain degree; now we're doing it again?

How was it that Khan put it? "You should have let me sleep"?

Reuse villains. Recycle familiar plotlines. But do so in a way that's worthy of a reboot. Take the story in wildly unexpected directions; combine elements that couldn't possibly have been combined before; give the old stories and characters the kind of depth and complexity they've never had. Into Darkness offers some of that, but it squanders the opportunity to offer something truly novel to the Star Trek universe, opting instead to flesh out and fudge some of the details of an existing story.

There's an excellent comic miniseries called Star Trek: The Last Generation. It plays out a "What if?" scenario, wondering how TNG might've looked if, at the climax of The Undiscovered Country, Kirk and his crew had failed to foil the assassination attempt at the Khitomer conference. It's a rough-and-tumble, post-apocalyptic kind of setting in which the Klingons have conquered Earth, and the Federation looks more like the Rebel Alliance. Due to the situation, certain characters find themselves in very different roles, and interacting with very different people—Worf is a villain; Sulu is an almost mythical freedom fighter; Ro Laren and a decidedly not-dead Tasha Yar are a couple—yet they are the same people. Picard is Picard, Troi is Troi, and Data is Data, just in radically different circumstances. Their universe is almost unrecognizable, but it still feels like Star Trek because the characters, technology, and flow of history stay true to their roots.

Compare this to a bunch of irresponsible brats who get their own starship and redo Wrath of Khan.


Lesson #4: You are not Star Wars.

Lobot doesn't belong on the bridge. And only Imperial officers are allowed to wear those doofy hats. Knock it off.


Lesson #5: Separate your heroes from time to time.

One of my favorite seasons of Deep Space Nine allows something to happen that I'd never seen before on a television show: the heroes go off to war, and they don't immediately come back! For the majority of the season, half the main characters are on opposite sides of the quadrant, and it's fascinating to watch the story and character development when everyone is so far removed from each other, and from the space station they call home.

Into Darkness has the guts to kick Scotty off the ship before it leaves Earth, yet he remains as involved in the story as anyone else, ultimately being in a unique position to save the day because he was separated from the rest of the crew. Uhura faces a group of armed Klingons with no one beside her as backup. Spock finds himself trapped in an active volcano. Being alone is one thing; being separated is another entirely—there's dramatic potential that's difficult to tap any other way.


Lesson #6: Blend the comedy and action into the story.

Star Trek (2009), like most any Star Trek movie, has its moments of levity. Unlike any other Star Trek movie, the flow of the action grinds to a halt as neon signs light up, saying, "THIS IS THE FUNNY PART! TIME OUT FOR COMEDY!" and/or, "HERE'S THIS COOL THING WE WANTED TO DO! LOOK! HERE IT IS!" Scotty getting stuck in the tube in engineering. Random monster battles in the snow. Kirk's anatomy inflating. (Side note: I should probably be more specific; that could be misconstrued.) Into Darkness works the humor and whiz-bangery into the story, smoothing out the edges so there isn't an abrupt shift between storytelling and technically unnecessary digressions. The movie as a whole flows much better this way.


Lesson #7: Big ships are cool. Don't overdo them.

The Scimitar was a big ol' beastie of a ship. The Narada was a big ol' beastie of a ship. The Vengeance is a big ol' beastie of a ship. Impossible odds are easy enough to find; be careful not to fall into a rut, no matter how cool that rut may be.


Lesson #8: Make sense.

Look, we're talking about a science fiction franchise that once had Spock's brain telling McCoy how to do surgery on it. Suspension of disbelief is a necessity. But there's a fine line between "makes sense in Star Trek," and, "buh...WHA!?" With the first ten films, you were supposed to think about them long after the credits rolled—give those Big Ideas time to simmer. With these new films, the pacing is such that you don't have the chance to think about what's going on; consequently, the writers aren't held as accountable to craft a coherent plot. As long as it's entertaining, who cares whether anything gets a proper explanation?

I'm not saying the films are completely unintelligible; I'm saying they don't seem to stand up to scrutiny as well as most of the other films. "Because it's cool" is a better explanation for much of what happens than, "because it makes sense within the context of the story." Refer to any of the items mentioned in my one prediction above.

"Because it's cool" is not inherently a problem for me—after all, I've run plenty of D&D campaigns where logic was relegated to the corner just so I could drop an ethereal filcher on the party—but it's a concern when it becomes the primary explanation, especially in a Star Trek film. Deliberately masking incomplete or incoherent plot points with grand set pieces and special effects is tantamount to lying to the audience; inadvertently doing so is a demonstration of carelessness or incompetence. When a franchise is defined by the intelligence and integrity of its characters, it's not unreasonable to want the storytelling to share those traits.


Lesson #9: Get the dialogue right.

There's a Next Generation comic miniseries called Atonement. I don't remember much about the story—something having to do with the inventor of transporter technology being a man out of time—but I do remember the dialogue. At least, the style of the dialogue. Throughout the entire story, something felt "off," and I couldn't put my finger on it...until I realized the lines Picard and Data were saying were written for Kirk and Spock. Star Trek feels inauthentic when the dialogue doesn't fit with the characters; voice is just as crucial as plot when it comes to a character-driven story.

All throughout Into Darkness, I tried to imagine what these lines would sound like as spoken by Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan, Nichols, Takei, and Koenig. (I gave up with Besch and Montalban, as they themselves sound nothing like Eve and Cumberbatch.) Sometimes, the lines felt right. Sometimes, I had flashbacks to my high school English classes. The words got the point across in those cases, but the characters didn't own them.

Example: If memory serves, Scotty calls Kirk "Jim" at least twice in the film. I've heard Scotty refer to him as "Jim Kirk" when talking about him, but when talking to him, it's always been "Captain." It's that lack of nuance that's making it harder for me to buy into the assertion that these are the same characters I grew up watching. The preponderance of modern vernacular doesn't make these characters sound more relatable; it makes them sound like they've got script writers who planned out all the action sequences and a couple of quotable lines before realizing they needed more dialogue to pad the empty space between them.


That's all for now. I have no doubt I'll continue to ruminate on the new movie, and the old movie, and all the movies—this is merely my first stab at putting my thoughts down on virtual paper. Ultimately, I enjoyed Star Trek Into Darkness. It's fun, it's a neat twist on a familiar story, it's a visual spectacle. It's almost Star Trek. I still have my misgivings about the film and the new continuity as a whole, but I've mellowed considerably since I first saw the trailer that heralded a new era of the franchise I hold so dear.

Having seen more of Abrams, Orci, and Kurtzman's films in the past four years, I've come to understand how they operate. Abrams doesn't make the kinds of movies I like, plain and simple—but he keeps attaching his name to films that sound right up my alley until I find out he's involved. Orci and Kurtzman write movies like they're comic books; like George Lucas, they need somebody to act as a creative filter to translate their ideas into something more cinematically structured. I see Damon Lindelof's name in the writing credits; knowing absolutely nothing about him, I'm already attributing the more cohesive and Trek-like feel of Into Darkness to his influence.

As a side note, I'm noticing an alarming trend in the movie and TV previews I've seen in theaters recently. See if you can detect a theme here: Defiance. Olympus Has Fallen. White House Down. After Earth. Oblivion. Elysium. World War Z. There's only so much "fall of civilization as we know it" I can handle, you guys.

So anyhow. Star Trek Into Darkness. Better than the last one. Good enough to want to see the next one. Still hasn't convinced me this reboot was necessary, though. Kick off the training wheels, take off the parking brake, and make the next one the best one.

Boldly go, Star Trek. I'm looking forward to welcoming you back into the family next time.