We decided to stay on the J.J. Abrams train for another episode to cover his 2011 Spielberg homage, Super 8. Surprisingly, it’s not a derailed disaster like the train the film—but does it live up to the source material?
ALSO IN THIS EPISODE: We talk about Deep Space Ninein the first of our promised installments on the popular TNG spin-off.
I’d avoided Super 8 for three reasons. 1) J. 2) J. and 3) Abrams.
Which may or may not be fair. I was also under the impression general consensus was the film completely fall apart by the second act. But I thought Super 8 was actually pretty fantastic. I mean, given that there is less than a single original idea in the whole film.
It far surpasses homage to being a direct mash-up of producer Spielberg’s E.T., The Goonies and Close Encountersand Abrams’ own Cloverfield. If you wanted to be generous, you could use another French word, bricolage, to describe the creative process here. Basically the exact same approach that hampered Star Trek Into Darkness(not so much an homage to Wrath of Khan but a wholesale pillaging and re-purposing).
In Super 8 though, the approach works really well. Perhaps more so than any other film or TV endeavor Abrams has managed to tell a solid story with three-dimensional characters who act in a psychologically believable way, with a minimum of WTF plot points and continuity flaws (Why, oh why, did the truck carrying the white cubes come back into town?).
Perhaps Spielberg (not credited as a writer, though basically he should have been since he wrote pretty much all the source material) helped him out a lot more than was let on. I can’t remember what the criticisms leveled at the film were exactly, but I can’t help feel they must have been fueled by a post-LostAbrams backlash. I can fully appreciate that, like I said, this is why I avoided it myself (Mandi avoided it because she thought it’d be all hand-held shaky-cam like in Cloverfield). A part of me even wanted to downright hate the film with a white-hot intensity.
But the negativity makes no sense if you watch the film objectively. Without the baggage Abrams’ name (and Spielberg’s for that matter) carries, the film is a solid coming-of-age-boy-and-his-alien-friends-sticking-together-flick (The most convoluted movie sub-genre ever?).
I’m willing to surrender to the inevitable complete lack of originality in thefilms of the upcoming decade (and beyond) if they’re made this well.
This week the nerds hurdle into darkness (see what we did there?) and as a result Kathie snarks on Captain Kirk while Mandi has a Zack attack and Jakob is dumbfounded neither of them had seen Wrath of Khanbefore.
A few interesting Into Darknessreads and links regarding the more sexist aspects of the film:
FELICIA DAY, asks “Where are the women? The strong women? The women we’d like to see in 200 years?”
DAMON LINDELHOFsays, Alice Eve underwear scene was ‘gratuitous’
SLASHFILM says, “The whole thing is over within a minute, and ends with Carol still in her bra and panties. Her lingerie isn’t even all that sexy. But — and memorize these next two words, because they’re basically my entire thesis statement — context matters.”
THE DAILY DOT says, “Are we expected to believe that a mysterious plague has wiped out 75% of the women in the galaxy?”
Also, Benedict Cumberbatch looks even more like an OTTERwith water streaming down his face.
It’s quite easy to understand why a lot of people don’t like Star Trek. Even at its best it’s kind of cheesy. There’s spaceships, robots, green-painted women and a noticeable lack of contractions in speech. But part of the reason so many people dislike it is simply the law of averages—absolutely everyone has seen it.
Everyone, that is, except Victoria (aka Bella Fox).
Well, her and a few other people. But she’s the only one we know who’s actively into a plethora of really nerdy things and yet hadn’t sought it out. Impressively, she managed to avoid it during its near 24/7 syndication reign in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A near impossible feat regardless of whether you wanted to watch the show or not.
So, feeling her nerd cred was suffering, she asked us to help her (and Måthìaş who had seen a little Star Trek 15 years ago) boldly go where so many people have gone before…
Episodes watched: “The Pegasus” and “Homeward” from season 7 of The Next Generation.
If your wish is to lead a happy, fulfilled existence, then a Taoist master might instruct you to live without expectation. It’s certainly an endeavor worth attempting so long as you don’t expect to feel happy or fulfilled. But at the very least you won’t be quite so baffled by how a great percentage of the population seems to believe The Godfather is the best movie ever made.
Perhaps it’s not truly the worst film ever made, but by the time Mandi and I got around to watching Coppola‘s gangland classic, there wasn’t even the glimmer of a chance it could live up to the hype. Our preconceptions indelibly coloured our viewing experience.
The Godfather didn’t just have to live up to the hyperbolic praise of its fans, it had to live up to our own deeply personal and unique judgements of what an “unsurpassed masterpiece” is (or just what a good mobster movie might be). Inevitably, it didn’t score well on either of our subconscious checklists. Because of the hype, it’s a film I find I’m personally incapable of judging on its own merits. I can’t be objective. The hype, in this case, is insurmountable.
Similarly, I suspect that if I’d somehow never heard ofThe Dark Knightand rented it on a whim one night, I’d have probably thought it was pretty good. A bit hokey and maybe Heath Ledger‘s performance is a little too absurdly over-the-top… but hey, it’s a goddamn Batman movie. That’s all completely to be expected. I’d probably have enjoyed it instead of being deeply irritated by the mediocrity of the “best film ever.”
I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say we’ve all had a viewing or reading experience ruined by hype a few times in our lives. Plenty of terrific (or at least perfectly decent) films, books and television shows just don’t have a chance living up to our expectations—including, not un-ironically,Great Expectations.
Luckily, no one over-hypes Nerd Hurdles.
THE NERDS KNOW: For those of you hoping we’d talk about Star Trek more, we spend most of the episode responding toChris Lockhart‘s email regarding our Voyager episode. Send in your feedback and questions to nerds@nerdhurdles.com.
Our eight-month voyage has come to an end. So what did we think of the oft-maligned Star Trek series,Voyager? Perhaps not what you’d expect. Or perhaps exactly what you’d expect if you’ve been reading our Voyager Voyages blog posts.
Bloopers!
Coffee!
Now!
Sorry fanboys, no Kathie this week. Though she doesn’t actually have syphilis, she did contract The Phage.
This week’s The Nerds Know question is from Richard in New Zealand. Send questions to nerds@nerdhurdles.com
Star Trek Voyager, Season 5, kind of a mixed bag. Or perhaps the months-long, non-stop diet of replicator rations is finally beginning to take its toll on me. Here follows the good, the bad, and the often middle of the road…
Episode 95: Night
Voyager loses power traversing a dark region of space containing theta radiation.
This starts off as probably the best Voyager does Alien episode they’ve come up with so far. Then it gets weird and shifts into a heavy-handed allegory about pollution and ecology.
We also meet a new race of baddies called the Malon who are kind of Red Dwarf versions of something out of David Lynch’s version of Dune. They seem somehow out of place though being little more realistic in their motives than the usual Klingon-rehash warrior villains.
And finally, the new holodeck running gag for this season is Tom Paris’ Flash Gordon / Lost In Space style serial, Captain Proton . Campy and fun (I guess) but I always find it annoying when shows create old shows that never existed. It just feels like something Calvin (as in “and Hobbes”) would have come up with. Maybe it’s supposed to be an original creation by Tom Paris. That would explain why it’s so ridiculous. And Calvin-like. Read the rest of this entry »
Due to a variety of reasons, I’m way late with our March round-up of unusual search terms. In unrelated news, the world didn’t end.
fashion for 80′s nerds men: A good tip for nailing nerd fashion is to dress like someone in their 80′s.
are birkinstocks for nerds: Only if the nerds are lesbians.
what do mathematicians wear: Birkenstocks.
nerd scum: A colloquial term for the residue build up found on track-pads and mice. It commonly consists of skin cells, sebaceous fluid and Dorito’s seasoning.
the hurdle sex toy: Our plans for the “Wangina”—a combination penis and vagina sex toy—was abandoned. Mostly because we couldn’t figure out what that would look like.
Season 3 of Star Trek: Voyager, begins by going back to the Basics…
Episode 43: Basics, Part 2
The crew must learn to survive on the inhospitable planet as the Doctor, Crewman Suder and Paris attempt to regain control of the ship.
Let me rewrite the synopsis for this one: The crew encounters some really cheesy neanderthals in jumpsuits and a terribly rendered CGI space slug, ruining what could have been a really great Die Hard-esque episode with Suder crawling around in Jefferiess tubes to regain control of the ship.
Besides being a bit ridiculous and poorly written, the entire storyline on the planet is pointless since you flat-out know they’re going to be rescued. This is Star Trek: Voyager not Star Trek: 10,000 BC so obviously they’re getting back on the ship by the end.
In honour of Valentine’s Day—traditionally the worst day of the year for a nerd—here’s a graphic breakdown of the things nerds love and how much they loves ‘em. Click to see it full size.
Since Ro Karen of the Starbase 66 podcast has been micro-blogging her foray into one of our favourite fandoms (the Buffyverse) on G+, we thought we’d do the same for one of her’s, Star Trek: Voyager. We update these mini reviews on our G+ about once a week—whenever we finish off a disc.
Episode 1-2: Caretaker On a mission to the Badlands, the USS Voyager, along with a Maquis ship, is stranded in the Delta Quadrant, more than 70,000 light-years from home by an incredibly powerful being known as “Caretaker.”
I’d never seen this episode so I’d never really understood what the Maquis were doing on board. Things make a little more sense now and the Chakotay/Janeway dynamic is kind of interesting at this point. Though you can tell he’s too much of a “nice guy” to ever really plot a mutiny—so what’s the point of his character then? If this had been made post-BSG, there’d have been more a Machiavellian power struggle between the two.
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