But I just don’t make it the movies anymore. Unless the power has gone out at my place,
and I’ve just been out eating pizza and singing karaoke late into the evening
and when my roommate and I get back, we find the power is still out and we’re
too wired to go to sleep, so rather than stand around in the dark lighting
candles just to find our way to the refrigerator, we decide to go see a late
night flick. That’s pretty much what
happened the other night.
And the movie was incredible. Star
Trek has gone down very exciting direction: the actors are incredible, the
plotting was very tight and faster paced than any previous Star Trek films, and J.J. Abrams has brought a more physical Spock
than I’ve ever seen before. This movie
played with some of the best elements and ideas from Wrath of Khan (the best Star
Trek film after all these years) and reinterpreted them in ways that I
expected and yet felt daring at the same time.
I really enjoyed.
But I’m not going to spend the whole time talking
about how and why this movie was great.
Seeing it actually sparked and old conversation that I had some years
ago with friends. The question I was
asked was which is better: Star Wars or
Star Trek? At that time, I said Star Wars.
This was a no-brainer. I first saw Return of the Jedi when I was seven and it changed my world. There are swords made out of colored lights,
giant slugs and monsters, space battles, lightning bolts flying from hands,
little green men disappearing at death, and being able to lift things with your
mind. The only thing I asked for
Christmas one year was the entire trilogy on VHS, and I wore those tapes out in
two months.
Star
Wars
occupied a lot of my playtime and I owned several of the toys and models. By the time I reached high school, I had read
several of the novels and come to love some of the extra characters found in
the books you can’t find in the movies, like Han and Leia’s twins, Jacen and
Jaina, and Mara Jade, the only good match for Luke.
Star
Trek,
on the other hand, didn’t grab me nearly as much. I’d seen all the movies by the time I was 10,
sure, and I liked them pretty well but they didn’t grab me nearly as much. While Star
Wars was an epic tale of good versus evil, love, adventure, and had so much
variety, from the aliens to the spaceships to the planets that they would visit
and so on and so forth. Star Trek did not have nearly the same
variety. The aliens were all humanoid, hardly
any variety in any of the ships, and several of the stories went over my head
often. It wasn’t until I saw them again
in my teens when I actually appreciated what was going on. Star
Wars is told clearly enough that I could grasp it as a kid and not feel
like I was being talked down to. It was
easily the superior series.
And I kept that opinion even through the awfulness
of the prequels. As bad as though movies
could be, they were nothing compared to the few episodes of the TV series that
I saw. The original Star Trek just looked dorky, and the stories told weren’t much
better. And there was The Empire Strikes Back, which is still
one of the best movies ever made.
After a lot of thought and careful consideration,
though, I’m going to have my opinion and give the better series title to Star Trek.
There’s really only one reason for it: Darth
Vader. I have nothing against the
villain. Darth Vader is evil and
terrifying and as perfect a bad guy that you could ever ask for. I have a problem with his redemption and
since the prequel, an issue with Anakin in general.
Vader’s redemption was problematic even before the
prequels came about. This is a monster
who killed people left and right, and it hardly mattered whether it was the
Rebels or his own people. The impression
is left that he’s a conqueror of worlds, and while he never actually governs
anything, he doesn’t mind playing executioner wherever he finds himself. At the last minute, he decides to save his
son and gives up his life for that. Somehow,
at the end of the film, that act changes him entirely and puts him on the same
level as Obi-Wan and Yoda, the two most righteous characters in the whole
story? Hard to swallow, but I managed to
overlook it for a while because everything else was just so darn good.
But the prequels made that worse. The whole premise behind Anakin Skywalker was
that he had been a good man but that that good man died after being seduced by
the dark side. So much of Return of the Jedi is based on Luke’s
belief that there is still that good man hidden in there and he just needs to
be found and brought to the light.
You know what?
I never saw the good Anakin Skywalker.
You see the adult Anakin in love with Padmé, but beyond that, there
isn’t a lot to recommend his character.
He’s whiny, he’s selfish, hot-headed, disobedient, and he murdered an
entire tribe of men, women, and children.
This is before Palpatine ever gets his hands around Anakin. When Anakin gets married (and this is where I
lose all respect for Padmé; he confesses his genocide to her and she still
takes him as her husband? That’s
maddening) he marries her in secret and against the Jedi orders laws and
customs. Palpatine was not a corrupting
influence on Anakin; Anakin was already corrupt. He just happened to be aligned with the good
guys until he was shown another way.
In Revenge of
the Sith, after it’s clear that Anakin kills all the Jedi children, I just
have to laugh whenever any of his family says, “There is still good in
him.” No! There isn’t!
He was never that good to start with and he never showed any true act of
penitence or contrition. His being put
on the same level as the other Jedi masters is a joke.
As silly as Star
Trek could be, they never made such an idiotic move in the core part of their
story. Star Trek is a story about a community united in a great cause, and
they stick together no matter the battle, and that’s the kind of story I like
inspiring me at my point in life.
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