You know, I wasn't even going to finish
this shit. I was fully intent on never thinking about this piece of
electronic sod again. It was a transient horror, and I could take
solace in the fact that I only rented it, and returned it with
weapons-grade satisfaction. But I can't avoid it, because an innocent
girl handed me a poster advertising it today at Free Comic Book Day.
And that girl told me, not knowing my horribly unsatisfactory experience in renting it, that I could try out the game in the
trailer parked outside the comic book shop. I cannot possibly
replicate the noise I made in print.
So, my roommate jokes constantly that I think every movie is underrated. This is not true. For example, I feel like the "rating" of Twilight is pretty much right on the dot, and even that might be overrated.
Pretty much...hits the nail on the head.
But I think the miscommunication is that when I say "underrated", that doesn't mean "great" or even "good". Indeed, an "underrated" movie may average out to "bad". But it may be more important than people realize, or have very specific redeeming qualities.
And nowhere is that more true than in the movie I've wanted to do in this column for a long time... Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
I swear to God...Paramount hired DARPA to develop the most awkward tagline
Ohhh, William Shatner. He tweeted this interview in which he explains that Star Trek was superior to Star Wars, listing, among other advantages, that Star Wars was "derivative" of Star Trek:
Now, I will say this: Star Wars is derivative of almost everything else (including, in the prequels, itself), but one thing it is NOT derivative of is Star Trek. I think people like to fight about these two because they're simply the two biggest kids on the sci-fi block. But it's like fighting about Ghostbusters vs. Back to the Future. Sure, they're arguably the two biggest sci-fi comedies of the 80's. But they cater to different sensibilities...different senses of humor, and exhibit different themes and styles of storytelling.
Similarly, I've always felt that Star Trek and Star Wars are just built differently, for different people, and that fighting about which one is "better" is just silly. Star Trek might have come first, but Star Wars is no less valid for coming later, and Star Trek is no less influential, despite being sometimes overshadowed by Star Wars' influence on the movie industry.
For me, the thing that allows me to separate the two and my love (or passive-aggressive longing for earlier iterations) for them is that they're really not in the same genre at all. Star Trek is science fiction, and Star Wars is science fantasy.
