I was out of the loop all day, so I don’t know the extent to which AICN‘s Moriarty is being dismissed outright for boldly going where no online movie writer – including the "Say It, I’ll Print It" maestro of IESB, Robert Sanchez – has yet to go regarding J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek re-whatever. If you missed Moriarty’s spectacular claims, here’s the salient stuff:
"I think Leonard Nimoy is sort of the star of the movie. I think a lot of this movie is about Spock. Nimoy-aged Spock, mind you."
Fascinating. And it gets fascinating-er.
"Picture an incident that throws a group of Romulans back in time. Picture that group of Romulans figuring out where they are in the timeline, then deciding to take advantage of the accident to kill someone’s father, to erase them from the timeline before they exist, thereby changing all of the Trek universe as a result. Who would you erase? Whose erasure would leave the biggest hole in the Trek universe is the question you should be asking.
Who else, of course, but James T. Kirk?
If Spock were in a position to change that incident back, and then in a position to guard that timeline and make sure things happen the way they’re supposed to, it creates…
… well, what does it create? Because evidently the plan is to use this second timeline as a way of rebooting without erasing or ignoring canon. These new voyages of the Enterprise, they’re taking place in whatever timeline starts with this story. Maybe this timeline features dramatic differences. Like… say… if Vulcan were to be blown up. If the Vulcans in the series were suddenly the last of their kind, alone in the universe, it would change who they are and maybe even redefine their strict rejection of emotion in favor of logic."
While I’ve been riding Abrams really fucking hard over the month over the shell game that is Cloverfield, I’ve got to admit that… I really like this. The biggest problem with the Trek movie franchise has been its cowardly reluctance to raise the stakes; all of the Next Generation movies thought small, and when they did dare to kill off a crucial character, they did it either ineptly (Kirk falls off a bridge in Generations) or derivatively (Data pulls a Spock in Nemesis). I know a lot of people like First Contact, but REO Speedwagon’s Hi Infidelity is one of the top selling rock LPs of all time; a lot of people get it wrong from time to time.
But this is good. Erasing Captain Kirk from existence is the kind of ballsy gambit the previous Trek management would’ve never dared. And while the particulars of such an excision might be complicated, it plays well on a basic level: most moviegoers have watched enough Star Trek to know that no Kirk = bad for the universe. But it’s just too good to be true, right?
Actually, it’s very true. This is the premise of Star Trek XI. I have 100% confirmed this. And the additional speculation may not be so speculative (although I’m not sure about old Spock as the protagonist). Just sayin’.
And I’ve also a feeling this is that last you’ll hear about Star Trek XI‘s plot for a very long time, so savor it.