A Bromance for the Ages

Star Trek was awesome. It was fun, action-y, didn't take itself too seriously, was well cast, and was just generally enjoyable to watch. I have a little more than that to say so I'm going to break my thoughts down into three points:

1) I've only ever watched bits and pieces of the original series and the only previous movie I've seen is The Wrath of Khan, which is to say that before this my knowledge of the relationship between Kirk and Spock* didn't go much beyond general pop culture references. If this movie is at all a reasonable interpretation of how that relationship has been portrayed over the last 43 years, then I can now say that I understand what people are talking about. I thought Chris Pine and Zach Quinto played off each other really well and by the end of the movie I was disappointed that they hadn't had more scenes together. So yeah, I get it. It's a bromance. And it's a good one.

2) As soon as the movie ended my first thought was "I wish this was a TV show." And I was only half joking. The movie did a really good job of presenting the characters as easily likeable and I felt like I wanted to get to know them better and to watch them interact with each other some more, regardless of the circumstance. Guess I'll be watching TOS sometime in the near future. But part of it really was a desire to see more of these actors playing these characters. I really did think the casting was great. Particularly Karl Urban. I never would have thought that a New Zealander who at times during his career has definitely resembled a cross between Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell could so easily walk the fine line between serious and ridiculous that is Bones.

And this final point I don't mean as criticism, simply as amusing observation...

3) It was the plot of Star Wars. A bored and reckless kid lives someplace unreasonably dusty. Random comments about his dead father are enough to convince him to go do something better with his life. He finds a mission somewhat related to his father's death (it's amazing that those of us with living fathers can manage to accomplish anything these days). An old guy in a cave tells him he has a destiny. He starts hanging out with a guy who's overly logical and likes to state the odds of things. He meets another guy (with a sidekick who doesn't speak) who knows how to MacGyver stuff into flying faster. There's a smart girl. He and his new friends blow up a giant thing in space that destroys planets. Star Wars. Didn't make it any less entertaining.

All of that being said, I want to see it again.

* I originally wrote "Kirk/Spock relationship", but then I couldn't manage to not think about slash fic, which, while it has its place and is very understandable in this case, was not where I was intending to go with the paragraph so I reworded.