a few thoughts about the new Star Trek

Although I wasn't particularly excited to see it, I ended up enjoying it pretty well. But that's not why I called you here today. [Please note, in case you (like me) are not too concerned about Star Trek, that Terminator and Back to the Future musings follow as well.]

Two thoughts, really—not "a few":

Scotty uses a Mac in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

First, before the movie started I said to my friend, "It's funny that surely at least somebody at some corporation or at the studio—or both—at some point suggested product placement for this film—like, 'Let's have Kirk use a Nokia cell phone, that would be great!'" I think there had just been a Nokia commercial advertising some tie-in with the movie, and the voiceover guy had said something about "23rd-century apps," so I said, "In the 23rd century, Nokia's going to have all the hottest cell-phone apps." This was intended as satire. Then, in the first 15 minutes or so of the movie, I was horrified and/or amused to find that young Kirk does indeed use Nokia products in the 23rd century—Nokia hasn't even changed its fucking logo! Ludicrous. Unbelievable. Hilarious.

Does this count as product placement?

Second—

[What follows includes a bit of a roundabout "spoiler"; I don't think it should be news, particularly, to anyone who's seen the trailers, but I thought I should warn everyone all the same.]

—well, this may require a brief discussion of the "reboot." I think most of us know what this means by now, but just in case:

A sequel is a concept familiar to us all. When a movie studio sees that a movie was very successful, the businessmen in charge will, as in any business, seek to recreate that success. And because you cannot simply make the movie again (unless the requisite number of decades have passed), you can either (a) rip it off, effectively recreating it but making small changes to the characters and story so that you don't get sued or cross the magic line between shameless-but-still-making-money and so-shameless-it-backfires, or (b) make a sequel, which is effectively the same thing except that instead of changing the characters and story you have to come up with a new (or "new" plot) that takes place a little later—or, in the case of a prequel, earlier.

The genius of the now-enormously-popular "reboot"—e.g., Batman Begins, Casino Royale—is that it's kind of a cross between a remake and a sequel (or prequel). A reboot takes an existing franchise and starts it over again, with different actors, a different feel, and a (slightly) different story. (Superman Returns was a slightly unusual reboot in that it picked up a ways down the story line instead of starting again from the beginning, but in that it was not strictly compatible with the Superman movies that had come before it, it certainly counts. The same was true of the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk.) Apparently they're doing a Robocop reboot. From a business perspective, I guess this basically lets a company have the best of both worlds: simply repeating an earlier success while appearing to refresh that which was old.

Well, the new Star Trek movie is a whole new animal: it's a reboot prequel sequel—and that's only the beginning.

It's a reboot for obvious reasons, a prequel because it's an origin story, and sequel because Leonard Nimoy appears in the film as old Spock, who has traveled back in time from the future (I believe this is in the trailer)—but the reboot element itself is more complicated than usual (and here comes the arguable spoiler):

As is established pretty much in the first two minutes of the movie but is made quite explicit halfway through, the way in which this movie contradicts the "reality" of the earlier movies and shows is actually compatible with those earlier movies and shows. The reason why things are different in this one is that in the very first moment of the film, less than a half hour before the main character is born, history is altered—the history of the main character's family, and the history of the galaxy—by the appearance of a time-traveling bad guy who doesn't have even the slightest concern about Doc Brown's precious space-time continuum. And the future this guy is back from is the Star Trek "reality" of the earlier films.

In other words, part of the plot of this movie is about how things have been made different thanks to time-traveling shenanigans. If the somewhat absurdly named Nero hadn't gone back in time, things would have gone exactly the way they went "before," and we would be watching the original TV show and movies. It's a reboot about a reboot.

Anyway, I thought that was kind of interesting—less from a sci-fi perspective than from a sequel-classification perspective,* although I suppose I have some sort of respect for it from a story-telling angle, as well: not a bad way to deal with a somewhat ridiculous assignment.

Incidentally, the time travel thing brings up a question raised by some sci-fi magazine I remember seeing when I was a kid:

So Marty McFly goes back from 1985 to 1955 and changes the course of history such that, when he returns, his family is different (more confident, richer), Twin Pines is now Lone Pine or something, and Doc Brown wears bulletproof vests after ripping off terrorists. Right? But he remembers the original 1985, is from the original 1985. Even ignoring the problem that he's evidently exactly the Marty that his new family expects to find in their house that morning (why is he the only sibling unchanged by happier parents?), there's this problem: what about the Marty that he watches drive off in the time machine? That's the Marty who was raised by the actualized George and the satisfied Lorraine, the one who never had any reason to think that Biff had wrecked the family car, the one whose mom always liked his girlfriend and fully supported their going off to the lake for some good old-fashioned teenage sex. So what happens when he goes back to 1955, and what 1985 does he return to? Remember: whereas the Marty we know went back to 1955 knowing that his parents fell in love after Lorraine's father hit George with the car, this Marty knows that his parents fell in love after George rescued her from Biff at the Fish Under the Sea dance or whatever it was called; will he push George out of the way of the car?—and if so, will he do what our Marty did to try to get his parents together? Because if not, no way is George going to punch out Biff. And wouldn't that mean that the 1985 that Marty comes back to will be rather a lot like the one our Marty left? Back to the Future Part II is the one that specifically concerns itself with an alternate 1985,† but because no unbroken circle can be formed,‡ even the first movie seems to imply a potentially infinite series of alternate 1985s, or at least a kind of eternal oscillation.§

Marty McFly in one alternate 1985.

* The new Terminator movie appears to be a kind of sequel–reboot hybrid (with even a little taste of prequel, thanks to the time travel element), but I'm guessing it's more in the Superman Returns vein...although there does seem to be evidence that it's going to be doing more or less exactly what Star Trek did.

† Yes, yes, that's where the blog's name comes from. You didn't know that?

‡ I was recently talking to someone about whether there's any kind of paradox in Kyle Reese's having fathered John Connor. I was inclined to say that there's no reason why that implies alternate futures—more to the point, that there's no reason to think it means history has been changed in any way. On the contrary, I was thinking that it's sort of interesting that Skynet is—and always was—responsible, indirectly, for its own defeat by essentially causing John Connor to be conceived (having done the thing that led to Connor's father's being sent back to conceive him). But I don't know, I haven't really thought about it carefully enough.^a

§ By the same token, if old, future Spock still exists and still has all his memories, and yet young, current Spock has already had different experiences from him and no one knows how events will turn out, what happened to old, future Spock's past? Does the original timeline still "exist" "somewhere"? [I've put this in a footnote instead of the main post because, honestly, who gives a shit?]

a I mean, I don't know, let's see: it's 1984, Sarah Connor is working as a waitress, two new figures come into her life (which I don't think it really matters how they got there: their time-traveling there should not in itself alter history, even if it's difficult to imagine their not doing something to change it), one of them not really a person so much as a robot assassin and the other her future babydaddy; her offspring ends up pissing off a homicidal supercomputer who can't get its robot hands on him so instead invents time travel and sends a robot back to kill his mom, which is why the dad goes back in time. While sort of a mind-fuck, I'm not sure there's any reason why it couldn't "always" have been this way. The big question is whether it's the equivalent of somebody's picking himself up by his own hair, causality-wise, but...I don't know, I don't think so...? O.K., so I've resolved nothing.