Dad, Nathan, and I went to see Star Trek at the Spacedome IMAX theater tonight. We’d all been looking forward to it for a while, but I’m not an opening weekend kind of guy, so we waited a few weeks while the crowds thinned. Mission accomplished: there were perhaps two dozen other attendees.
Unfortunately, at about an hour in, Nathan started getting a little skittish. After another 15 minutes, he told me he “couldn’t take it anymore” and was grabbing my arm with some urgency. We got up to pee and assess, and as soon as we stepped into the light, I knew he was done. He was a little puddly-eyed, and speaking in rushed hushes.
Well, that’s an easy call. I was really enjoying the movie and wanted to see the rest of it, but I certainly wasn’t going to terrify my little boy to do it. We stepped back in for a sec, said bye to Dad, and came home.
Nathan’s actually got another poor IMAX experience under his belt. When he was 4, I took him to see a documentary about fighter pilots, and it was just too much. He wasn’t scared so much as disoriented and uncomfortable, and we left partway through that one too. I considered that experience only minorly when evaluating how tonight would go, chalking it up to age.
(And really, I think he’d have been okay with Star Trek tonight on a standard screen, but the bad guys were just too big and loud. He was fine about ten minutes after we left. I’m betting he wants back in when the Blu-ray arrives in a few months.)
Anyway, I looked up the run time when we got home so I’d know when to call Dad, and he called me just about two minutes before I was going to pick up the phone. He started talking about next Tuesday night, because he wanted to see it on a standard screen too. (I concur; I’m really not so sure about movies in an IMAX that aren’t specifically designed for it.) I said “uh, do you have another one in you right now?”
So I went back out and met Dad at the Monaco at 9:30, and that’s how I saw 159% of Star Trek for $19.25 tonight.
Given my aforementioned intentional lack of timeliness in seeing new releases, I won’t bother with a full review. They’re out there, and I’ve no profundity to add. I will say that I think it was made with enough care to accomplish its “meta-goal,” namely to serve as an effective base for reestablishing the currency of Star Trek. Hold this cast together and keep high production standards, and we can look forward to a decade or two of engaging sequels.
The film is not without flaw, but it’s very good. This enthusiastic-but-nowhere-near-Trekker fan thought the balance between nodding to the old and embracing the new was mostly effective, and the casting is spot-on. This is a solid reboot of what is, in my view, far and away the singlemost difficult franchise with which to attempt such. Its failure would have surprised nearly no one; its success bodes well for science fiction movie fans.
You might also like:
- Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story
(No spoilers.) The boys and I are just back from my now well-established favorite way to see a movi… - Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi
(No spoilers.) Lea, the boys, and I are just back from a Saturday morning matinee of Star Wars: The … - Star Wars: It will never be 1977 again
Yesterday, my phone, while on full random on my music collection, brought up the 1977 disco version … - More like “to and fro,” isn’t it?
Behold a plastic item manufactured in Communist China for less than a dime and intended for the amus… - Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
(No spoilers.) I remember a lot of hand-wringing when Disney paid George Lucas $4,000,000,000 in cas…
I figured you’d like it, and I’m glad my inference about you turned about to be correct.
I’m so glad to know that I’m not the only one who can’t watch movies in IMAX. It makes me very ill. Sorry that Nathan had a bad experience. Hubby & I would like to see it, so maybe we’ll do a date night. I’m glad that you were able to see the rest of it. 🙂
Well, I’m am a trekkie and I truly enjoyed the movie. I agree the casting was dead on, especially Spock and McCoy. I was a little dismayed that Vulcan was destroyed, but hey — it’s sci-fi. They can rectify that in a later movie with a little slingshot around the sun, right?