Red Matter is The Key

[Brutal Strudel]

To understanding the movie's philosophy, that is. The red matter of the movie looks llike like nothing so much as red gumballs (particularly in that one delightfully surreal sequence where the screen is filled with out-of-focus globules of the stuff), signalling us that this movie is a bubblegum entertainment, nothing more.

Those of us trekkies who were fans of TOS as a somewhat cerebral and self-serious presentation of solid pulp SF in a serious dramatic format (easy to forget, in this post-NuBSG world, just how groundbreaking that was) were right to dread this movie and many of us, with good reason, will despise it. In many ways, it is a betrayal of what we looked to Star Trek to be. But mainstream media science fiction has grown a great deal since 1966 and, in a world that has given us 2001, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, eXistenZ, Children of Men and even Robo-Cop (shrewd and devastating satire, there), do we really need Star Trek to be brainy? Yes, this new movie is a travesty in the truest sense of the word but it is an infectiously enjoyable travesty, with a heart that fills the space where its brain should be and a delightfully sophomoric sense of whimsy. (Plus, the old canard about Kirk romancing green women has finally been made real.)

In short, and in spite of it being everything I feared it would be, I liked--no, loved--this movie. seems I still have taste for the red matter after all.

 

[Jeri]

I'm kind of interested in how they are able to safely contain and handle it.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Uh-huh. That and the whole parallel universe/alternate timeline being impacted by Nero's actions.

I'd like to look at this movie as Ultimate Star Trek, just like the various Ultimate Marvel comic book series titles. Different and yet refreshing.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'm kind of interested in how they are able to safely contain and handle it.

Probably some variation of the way they contain anti-matter.

 

[Eddie Roth]

I don't want to start an argument, but I find it ridiculous how some people become so operatic about their vision of Star Trek that they cry out "betrayal!" all the time. This film betrays nothing. No. Thing.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Hmm, I don't get it either.

 

[Jeri]

I'm kind of interested in how they are able to safely contain and handle it.

Probably some variation of the way they contain anti-matter.

That was my thought, too; except they seem to use some viscous liquid.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I don't want to start an argument, but I find it ridiculous how some people become so operatic about their vision of Star Trek that they cry out "betrayal!" all the time. This film betrays nothing. No. Thing.

Well, it betrays some fannish pretensions about Trek - but you're right, nothing about Trek itself.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'm kind of interested in how they are able to safely contain and handle it.

Probably some variation of the way they contain anti-matter.

That was my thought, too; except they seem to use some viscous liquid.

It's the mystery of the lava lamp!

Maybe "red matter" is made of whatever let the Kelvins jack up the structural integrity and engines of the Enterprise so that it could do warp 300 (for one episode) in "By Any Other Name."

Or maybe it's what that big Wall Around The Galaxy was made out of in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

Maybe it's the same as "protomatter," the stuff that magically made not only a planet but a star for it to orbit out of some nebular gas in about ten minutes in TWOK/TSFS.

You know, one of those brainy TOS things.

 

[Jeri]

^ ^ Nobody really knows what's in those, you know.

 

[urbandk]

I'm an esper.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

^ ^ Nobody really knows what's in those, you know.

Exactamundo!

It does look like a lava lamp, doesn't it? The color and specularity, as well as its apparent viscosity, are pretty close.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I'm an esper.

Yeah, Red Matter confers the kind of esper powers than enable you to conjure growing, living plants out of thin air by wishing it.

Unfortunately, Red Matter does not include a spell-checker or search engine - hence "James. R. Kirk."

Robau eats neutronium and craps Red Matter.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Comics have been doing this for for years--look at all the radically different Batmen we've had over the years, ranging from the wholly innocuous to the relentlessly grim. Likewise James Bond--at least in the movies. But, because the seriousness with which Trek handled itself right out of the gate, it has been locked into a ever-more constricting and ever-less interesting canon. It became a mass-market future history but without the kind of powerhouse SF writers you would need to keep such a thing interesting.

The thing is, for all the cerebration I mention in my first post, Trek was, from the start, set in a universe only a few steps removed from Flash Gordon serials--that was part of its sublime appeal, how it could present such beliavable, "grown-up" characters and situations in a setting that was so patently absurd, even by the standards of the literary SF of its time. This movie disposes of the grown-ups early on and gives the ship (now looking more like a child's toy than ever before, inside and out, complete with the Willy Wonka pipe-works and an alien Oompa-Loompa) to the over-grown children, most appropriate for a film pitched at the children of the third (or is it fourth?) consecutive generation plagued by Peter Pan syndrome.

Speaking of over-grown children, the next movie should be a madcap romp in which McCoy and Uhura, much to the consternation of Kirk and Spock, try to fix up Winona Kirk and Sarek. We'll call it Star Trek 2: Parent Trap Boogaloo.

 

[Jeri]

^ ^ Nobody really knows what's in those, you know.

Exactamundo!

It does look like a lava lamp, doesn't it? The color and specularity, as well as its apparent viscosity, are pretty close.

I think we're going to find out it's liquid transparent aluminum.

 

[urbandk]

I'm an esper.

Yeah, Red Matter confers the kind of esper powers than enable you to conjure growing, living plants out of thin air by wishing it.

Unfortunately, Red Matter does not include a spell-checker or search engine - hence "James. R. Kirk."

Robau eats neutronium and craps Red Matter.

Spell checkers are for men, not gods.

 

[miraclefan]

I thought red-matter was CGI?

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I don't want to start an argument, but I find it ridiculous how some people become so operatic about their vision of Star Trek that they cry out "betrayal!" all the time. This film betrays nothing. No. Thing.

Well, it betrays some fannish pretensions about Trek - but you're right, nothing about Trek itself.

I don't think so--the whole reason GR sought out the SF and science professionals as advisers and contributors was so that Trek would not be precisely the type of thing this film (and, in all honesty, a great many of its sub-par episodes) turned out to be. Sometimes, maybe, it went overboard (as in TMP, my favorite of the movies but still flawed) but it was serious in the attempt to play things as staight as possible.

Don't like the word "betrayal"? Okay. But it is a radical tonal shift and departure, almost as if The Sopranos were to be remade as a Bugsy Malone-style musical.

EDIT: I find it funny how thoroughly the point of this thread has been missed. I'm not attacking the plausibility of red matter--yes, Dennis, I get it, Trek has had numerous lapses in that area in the past; I've posted on them at length myself. I once started a thread called "Hard Trek" where I invited people to try to imagine what Trek would be like if it actually tried to be Hard SF. The consensus was it would not be a lot of fun.

 

[P Tom]

The red matter resembles the Rambaldi sphere device from Abrams' other show "Alias", no wonder it's so dangerous.

 

[Tentacle]

just be glade its not a smoke monster with gear sounding movements.