Star Trek II and Vanilla Sky

[YARN]

If you haven't seen Vanilla Sky ( or Obre Los Ojos) and do not wish to be spoiled, read no farther.

If you have not seen TMP ot TWoK, then you shouldn't be on this website anyhow.

Why should you read this? Because this analysis marks a significant shift in the Trek film franchise's approach to telling Trek tales. It helps explain (partially) why most people loved TWoK and were meh on TMP.

It is my contention that the shift in attitude toward Kirk's Captaincy resembles the reality "splice" in Vanilla Sky.

Part of Vanilla Sky is actual history, the other part is a dream of what might have happened after a certain point in the protagonist's life. The main character is basically semi-dead and cryo-sleep, and so part of the trick is convince the dreamer that his dream is reality. Consequently, techno-geeks erase his memory after a certain moment X after which new experiences occur in his private dream world (Matrix for one, if you will).

Before the splice, David Aames, millionaire playboy learns a lesson that the rest of us already knew: reality can really suck. He gets into a car wreck and is horribly disfigured (from playboy to Quasimodo in the time it takes a blue 1970 Buick Skylark to go splat), loses his girl, loses his friend (who gets his girl!), and loses his grip on life. He wants reconstructive surgery, but the doctors tell him the damage is to severe and offer him a prosthetic device for going out in public (i.e., a mask).

After the splice, he gets the girl, his friend returns and accepts that the girl he likes is with his buddy, and he retakes his company. In the dream his doctor does an about face - he is no longer talking about needing to adjust to his new life situation - he has a magical cure for him - he can restore his youthful beauty and give him his past life back.

Let's stop here before we get to the dream glitches the require "Tech support".

Compare this shift to the differences between TMP and TWoK.

TMP
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In TMP, Kirk has lost his girl to a rival. His other best friends are little support. Dr. McCoy does not want to be there at all and Spock simply wants to know what is busting his meditation groove on Vulcan.

We meet everyone again, but nothing is right. Kirk is not (rightly) the Captain. Spock is distant and cold (in an uncool way). Bones is only there to keep Kirk from making things even worse. McCoy tell Kirk that he is basically having a midlife crisis and that he is addicted to command (i.e., it is time to grow up and move on in life).

+ The TMP is realistic in that relationships evolve and that we don't simply see everyone happy to be on the ship.

+ The relational difficulties help motivate the plot.

- No one comes to a Star Trek movie to be bummed out in learning that they didn't hang out after high school either. The Enterprise is so unhappy and unfamiliar and unfun, that even though things are set right at the end, the feeling is still a downer.

TWoK

McCoy does an about face. All of the sudden commanding a ship isn't an addiction, it is something he should do again before he really grows old. Again, a doctor promises the ability for the protagonist to restore youthful dreams and recapture what he once had.

Spock is in command of the Enterprise, but it's happy Spock, and there is no baggage about Spock giving up command as there was with Deckard. We don't feel like Kirk is stealing the Enterprise from someone more deserving. The reset button has been hit and everyone is happy to be serving aboard the Enterprise again (even, curiously McCoy, who really seemed to want out in the last film).

Unlike TMP things start out good and end on a rather sad note, but the film plays as a romantic fantasy and not a cold cerebral mechanism (like v'ger itself).

The lesson is summed up in Uhura turning the phaser on "Captain Adventure" in Star Trek III - "This isn't reality, this is fantasy!"

In the splice (the marked shift in tone and style) from the first and second film, we witnessed a return to fun - the Trek franchise happily announced "This is fantasy!" which is what we want when we go to a movie - an escape from our lives.

Unfortunately, the Trek films chastised by the failure of the original films, never again showed the courage to really do serious sci-fi stories.

Fantasy comes at a price.














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[Mr Silver]

"Fascinating"...

I appreciate the time you've taken to write this out, however I find this to be "Psychosemantic Analysis", by using Vanilla Sky as a template, you could pretty much apply the thematics to any Star Trek movie and indeed, any movie in general, so long as it has a plot that relies on sociological issues and themes

 

[YARN]

"Fascinating"...

I appreciate the time you've taken to write this out, however I find this to be "Psychosemantic Analysis", by using Vanilla Sky as a template, you could pretty much apply the thematics to any Star Trek movie and indeed, any movie in general, so long as it has a plot that relies on sociological issues and themes

First, thanks for reading. That was a long post.

True, Vanilla Sky could be used variously, but I think the "splice" offers a good analogy for considering narrative differences between the two films (and the films that follow).

TMP, if not hard science fiction, is certainly more sober and sociologically honest. TWoK is soft science fiction running along the border of fantasy-adventure (e.g., LOTR, Star Wars). The films are in different sub-genres, if not genres.

Just as David Aames found the reality of disfigurement too much to endure, the Trek franchise found the reality of box office jeopardy too much to risk on another cerebral outing. Hence we go from 2001 in TMP back to Horatio Hornblower in TWoK(where it's safer).

At any rate, the point is not that Vanilla Sky is the perfect "key" to decoding Trek or that it is "uniquely fitting" to Trek, but rather to point out that the films lost a bit of ambition in taking the narrative turn deeper into romantic fantasy. That quantum physics, for example, has provided fertile ground for many comparisons in fields outside of physics does not count against any particular deployment of quantum physics as a place for comparison.

And if Nu-Trek is a sign of things to come, we should expect to be entertained, but not intellectually challenged by Star Trek and that is a loss.

 

[Captrek]

TVH may be a better candidate for the “splice.”

Spock dies. The Enterprise is destroyed. The surviving members of the Big Seven have burned their bridges with Starfleet in a big way. Their lives, as they have known them, are over, and there is no going back.

Then a fun new adventure comes along, they save the world, all is forgiven, and they get a brand new Enterprise to serve on just like they did way back when. “We’ve come home,” Kirk says, and they get back to the kind of adventures we saw in the TV series and our heroes are doing action scenes like they were 30 again.

 

[sonak]

It actually is an interesting analysis, but I think the failure of TMP is really how unlike the rest of Trek is. Spock is a cold jerk, the Big Three are fighting among each other, instead of space adventure, it's a slow, talky, special effects-driven 2001-wanna-be epic.


I think it went off the rails in trying to emulate 2001, since I think that's an empty, overrated movie.