Star Trek

I've always been a fan of Star Trek all the way back to when I was a kid watching TNG. The idea of a reboot really didn't seem to fit well with Trek--there's just a lot of history there, so I was hesitant about the new film even when reviews said it was good.

I came out of the movie theater really surprised about how good, how fun the movie turned out. I saw it twice in the theater (something I just don't do anymore), and I was eagerly awaiting it's release on blue-ray.

So this week I bought the film, and watched it again. And it holds up to everything I remember about it. Though now that I've seen it 3 times, some of it's faults are starting to appear. Most of them story related.

- Why in the hell is Scotty even in this picture? He's blatant comic relief and the only accomplishment he has is given to him by Future Spock. The scene where he's just running through engineering doing nothing but saying 'i'm givin her all she's got' just goes to show how much they just tried to shoehorn this character into the movie. Checkov, who theoretically shouldn't be there at all (in the original series, he was added later), had a much more substantial role.

- Why the whole drill thing? Why not just dump the 'red matter' onto the planet's surface and be done with it? Oh, I'm sorry, you have to give the good guys SOME chance to actually succeed!

- Still talking about the drill thing. But why is it so easy for Spock to blow up the cable holding the drill in the Jellyfish? You mean no one else thought of that until then?

- Karl Urban just owns the role of McCoy in this picture. He doesn't play him exactly the same, but his performance is spectacular in almost every scene he's in.

- Nero as a villain was something of a waste. There needed to be more of his back story. More of an explanation for why he was so pissed off. The little explanation we get of his motivation shows that he could have been a lot more. But this movie sacrifices all for the sake of the Kirk/Spock dynamic, and Nero and his story is no exception. It's a waste.

- That whole ice planet sequence really reminds me of the Phantom Menace in a not-so-pleasant way. And Kirk just randomly finding Future Spock is eye-rolling.

There are some other things that spring to mind, but many of those are nit-picks. I still like the film, it's a lot of fun. And it is one of the better Star Trek films. And considering that it could have ended up being a LOT worse, I'm pretty happy with it.

Borderlands

So, I picked up Borderlands, a game that really wasn't on my radar. But hell, I was bored this weekend and looking for a new game to play. Unfortunately, with Dragon Age coming up (and in fact it is now out), I really don't expect to be playing it for a while. A friend picked it up, though, but so far we haven't been able to set up any co-op game. Seems like that is a common problem from what I've read online.

Still, I do have a few impressions. The game has a rather quirky introduction. Alien world. Vault. Find. Kill Stuff. But the game has a very distinctive style, that while not necessarily pretty is interesting at least. The combination of FPS, RPG, and Diablo makes this game somewhat unique and different from other games I've played. Familiar too, but not so much so that the game is a straight knock off.

I, of course, am playing the Siren. Stealth, Misdirection, Critical Hits/Elemental chick seems more my style of game play than the other characters. The hunter does look cool though, so I'll have to check him out too. Combat is not very twitchy, and there seems to be a lot of space to search and look for items and quests, so I'm sure I'll be playing this game for a while. Especially if we can get multiplayer going.

I did, however, pick up DA last night so I'm probably not going to go much farther into this game right now unless I can get multiplayer going. We'll have to see what happens.