Went to Trek premiere in London last night. It turns out the publicity manager for it is the old Serenity publicity manager, so, of course, I yelled her and cashed in my Serenity chips. Hopped onto the red (well, blue Star Trek in this case) carpet and spent 20 minutes messing about with people, then went to see film.
It's really awesome. Really hardcore Trekkies may have issues I suppose, I don't know: I'm not one. But it's a real reboot which reminded me more than a little of Serenity. Zach's really good in it as Spock. The biggest asset it has is the script.
That JJ Abrams guy is the guest editor of the current issue of
Wired,
so there's some Trek stuff in there. Including this short comic (When Worlds Collide: Spock Confronts the Ultimate Challenge) which is a kind of prequel to the movie. (It ends: "To be continued... in Star Trek!") So I dunno - does that make it spoilery? I say 'no', but....
eta: Kevin (who's seen the movie) says its a bit spoilery.
So with Wall-E in Matilda's movie rotation it's been playing regularly at Chez Zmayhem.
When I first saw the movie the subtext I most noticed was the satire of rampant consumerism represented by Buy 'N Large. But with the repeated viewings I'm seeing that life on the spaceship is really more a satire of a socialist paradise gone awry. They're not buying anything on the spaceship. They're still consumers, but it's not capitalism.
In other words, it's another variation on the Rand-Lite undercurrents you get from Brad Bird's movies (specifically The Incredibles and Ratatouille). On the spaceship all needs are met and everybody is taken care of by a paternalistic figure (Auto/Otto). And it's disastrous. It's another critique asserting that pushing for equality can be a force for a dampening equalization.
The Captain's reassertion of will is really a comic Fountainhead moment, but I think Pixar is slipping Randian libertarian principles into our children's brainpans.
New from Pixar: Li'l Atlas Shrugged
tommy, it's a bit spoilery for the movie.
David, while that may be true about the spaceship, the devastastion on Earth in WALL-E is supposed to be the result of overcommercialization, more like national socialism in its simplest form (i.e. the government is entirely subsidized by monopolistic interests) than any sort of Marxist ideology. The Buy N Large facility you can see on Earth seems to be patterned on the enormous Costco in Idiocracy. And would that make WALL-E John Galt in your analogy? 'Cause that's going to lead to problems if Pixar adopts Ayn Rand's "rape is hottt" approach to sexuality.
'Cause that's going to lead to problems if Pixar adopts Ayn Rand's "rape is hottt" approach to sexuality.
The robot sex seems to be limited to holding hands.
