another movie night

[cellio]

Last night Gail, her parents, and Dani and I went to see Star Trek: Nemesis. It was a fun movie. It had liberal doses of plot issues and bad science, but you know to expect that. They still managed to tell an interesting story, if you just suspend disbelief. Short takes (and I'm mostly going to ignore the aforementioned plot issues and bad science):

• There were some fun bits in the first wedding. Thank you for sparing us the second one on-screen. I wasn't ready for a naked Ryker -- or Picard, for that matter.
• That looks like a very effective weapon, if you can distract people during the 7-minute power-up sequence. (I think the smaller instance we saw was not nearly that long, though. The best uses of this weapon are not in planet-killing but rather in government chambers and the like.)
• "Nature versus nurture" is so 20th-century...
• How the heck is Janeway an admiral while Picard is not?!
• I am very happy with the fact that we did not get a huge honking reset button with Data's name on it. For once, actual change. Yes, of course they could put things back the way they were with suitable applications of technobabble, but I hope they won't.

Several of the previews were noteworthy, but mostly not in the positive direction. Final Destination 2 implies that there was a Final Destination (1); I didn't see it and have no desire to see either. It doesn't look like we'll get a Minority Report-like examination; it looks like the point is to do blood and gore. Pass. (And the garbage-disposal scene squicks me, plain and simple.) Bruce Almighty (that might not be the correct given name) looks inane, though it did get me wondering what I would do if I were granted such powers for a week. Daredevil looks bad; I have nothing more specific to say. Bulletproof Monk looks like it could be a fun action flick sans plot, but I probably won't pay to see it. I've forgotten the name of the animated children's film with huge merchandising that turns me off so much. And let me just say that I'm glad that Austin Powers movie has been released now, because that means I don't have to see really inane trailers, at least until next time.

The big winner, though, is The Core. I am looking forward to seeing this. I'm sure the science will be, um, "novel", but it looks like they're doing a good-enough job with the story that I don't care. A US weapons program goes wrong; the end of the world is imminent. But wait; we just might be able to stop it, if we just drill into the center of the earth and... do something. I loved some of the humorous bits that showed up in the trailer, and it appears that there will be copious explosions and the like, so the movie will probably appeal to a broad audience.

Comments

[jducoeur]

As I understand it, the unofficial title for T3 was "Terminatrix" because they were using a lot of techniques from "The Matrix" and the T3 cyborg was going to be female.

The evil one, yes. Although, remember, Arnie wasn't playing the evil robot in T2, either.

I was going to say that I didn't think Arnie was actually going to be acting in this one, but a quick on IMDb proved me wrong.

Yes -- he actually gets a lot more screen time in the trailer (and, I would tend to assume, the movie itself) than the female evil bot does.

But wasn't the good cyborg melted down in T2?

Yes -- but so what? He was crushed at the end of T1. One gets the impression that the Resistance just keeps stealing more copies of the basic T800 model.