Why Star Trek 2009 is/is not The Shins (to me!)

In so many beautifully angsty ways, going to an after-midnight IMAX showing of Star Trek was a lot like seeing The Shins in concert for the first time. For me, that is (obviously). You probably have to have some sort of weird brain processing, um, processes to make that sort of connection. Or possibly just write a lot of similarly angsty poetry.

That doesn’t really matter, though. The important thing to pick up on here is that I was feeling very trepidatious about a rebooted, retconned, re-al damage to the original timeline imposed retelling of the adventure of the original Star Trek crew. Arguably the most legendary, and certainly my favorite. Kirk and Spock and McCoy and Uhura and Chekov and Sulu and Scotty, and a bunch of red-shirts. No longer as we remember them; the ubiquitous MySpace advertisements admonished us constantly to forget everything that came before. This is new. This is unknown.

This is completely without the Shatner.

Inclusion of Leonard Nimoy aside, this a shot into the cultural ether, probably the best and last hope the Star Trek franchise had to be relevant at all. Let’s face it, from at least Voyager on, ‘Star Trek’ conjured up the image of a cracked and broken brand chugging on past its expiration date. Even the best episodes were no longer fresh or exciting, thanks to endless weekend repeats. When every new episodes feels exactly like one you’ve already seen, or more pointedly you’d rather watch an episode you’ve already seen a hundred times than a brand new episode, it’s time to go.

Enter the talented Mr. Abrams, who had a vision for Star Trek. A vision that would go back to the iconic beginnings, since pretty much EVERYONE knows Kirk and Spock more than possibly any other Trek character. A vision that, somewhat sadly, was admittedly a lot more ‘Star Wars’ than ‘Star Trek.’

And yet, it worked! (review forthcoming)

As did The Shins. They played the Hollywood Palladium, with Delta Spirit opening for them. I had heard that they are kind of whack live, and I can definitely understand that: the Palladium is a fun venue but also one that with some balloons and streamers could host a high school prom comfortably, and Delta Spirit and The Shins are both extremely mellow live. The girl who got me the tickets for my birthday was like “Halfway through the show I felt like I was just at home, listening to albums on my couch.”

And yet, we both had a great time.

Now that I think about it, I saw Star Trek with the same girl sitting next to me (she let me have the armrest, while I fought my other friend for the other armrest the entire movie), so maybe that helped fuel my whole ‘This Shins experience is just like my Star Trek one!’ fever dream. Or maybe I just had largely unreasonable expectations that I had to overcome in order to fully enjoy the experiences of the past few days. Is there a moral here? I really don’t know . . .

I do know that it’s better to be concerned about things that are ‘awesome,’ such as the new Star Trek or The Shins, than things which are probably not going to be ‘awesome’ at all, such as the new Angels and Demons film or whatever albums come out of the latest American Idol contestants. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve learned nothing from my life. And other times, like when Chris Pine steps onto the bridge at the end of the film in full uniform (er, spoiler!), I just kick back in my seat and think “Now that, at least in the context of whatever films we get with this particular cast, is Captain Kirk. Whoa!”

Life is funny like that.