Set Your Phasers To Fun

I’m much more of a Star Wars geek than I am a Star Trek geek. I love Star Trek but I never suspended all my disbelief the way I did for Star Wars. The new Star Trek movie is opening tonight, and it’s the first one I’ve been excited about since… well ever. Star Trek, in all its incarnations, was a television show, and it never translated to the big screen well for me. The director of the new Star Trek, J.J. Abrams, seems to feel the same way. He’s famous for big budget Hollywood summer blockbusters – Armageddon is the most famous – and having beautiful women in tight clothes beat people up on television – Alias and Lost. He’s “rebooted” the Star Trek series and upset some “purists” along the way. Instead of a morality play, this is supposed to sell popcorn, and he couldn’t find a spot for William Shatner. I’m happy about the first; I’m sad about the second, but not angry. Abrams has told the “purists” in interviews not to see the movie; it will only make them angry. I don’t know if upsetting these people is a good idea. A bunch of them have a tenuous grasp on reality as it is. The early reviews for the film are very good, so I hope some psychotic trekkie doesn’t stab Abrams with a Klingon dagger before he can finish the sequel. I’m hoping that he can do something special with the franchise the way Ron Moore did with Battlestar Galactica. The less talky more shooty approach is a better way to tell Kirk’s story anyway. I do hope they bring back some of the camp that made the original series great, but they may have had to let it go so the whole thing wouldn’t wind up cheesy. I understand that the guy playing Kirk avoided everything Shatner while filming, which couldn’t have been easy. I see more Priceline commercials than I do Geico commercials. I may have to go see this one alone, though. MJ has never been a big Star Trek fan, and she’s even less of an action movie fan.

Ricardo Montalban Died Today

Ricardo Montalban died today at 88. The Mexican actor made a splash in the late ‘40’s in Hollywood musicals and had a long running stint as Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island – even after it got weird. He is best known for pimping the Chrysler LeBaron with its rich Corinthian leather during the ‘80’s and as Khan Noonien Singh the genetically enhanced super-villain who cost Spock his life, but more importantly went macho-a-macho with James T. Kirk. He was so absolutely, totally, completely, an unmitigated badass that, although he only showed up on one episode of Star Trek, they made a movie about him fifteen years later. Consider the subtitles for the Star Trek movies: Generations, The Voyage Home, Sulu’s story: We’re Queer and We’re Here. But when Señor Montalban signed on they came up with The Wrath of Khan as a subtitle for the second Star Trek movie because his machismo dictated it. The Wrath of Khan was a great movie not just because Kirk had finally met his equal in deep space pimpery but also because Montalban took bigger bites out of the scenery than Shatner. I know all the other performers spent most of their time checking their bank balances to make sure the checks had cleared. Money was the only thing that kept them on the set. If you haven’t seen the movie, this is the Cliff’s Notes version

Montalban: KOOOOUUUUUURRRRRRKKKK!!! (that’s Kirk with a Mexican accent)

Shatner: KAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNN!!! (that’s Kahn with a Canadian accent)

Although, near the end, Leonard Nimoy has quite the scene chewing soliloquy, only to be upstaged a minute later by Shatner’s fake trembling lip. Don’t bring Kool-Aid to a gin party. But the greatest part of the movie, and the reason Ricardo Montalban is in Cooperstown, was Kahn’s chest. Bill Murray once asked, “Quien es mas macho, Fernando Lamas o Ricardo Montalban?” Only God knows for sure, but I think I have a pretty good idea.