You're probably right that it's still an idealized future. I think that theme is handled almost instinctively with most sci-fi. Star Trek has been just as much about displaying an ideal future based on present-day perspectives as it is about expanding the present-day perspective to make room for the idealized future…

The ongoing Star Trek franchise is a brilliant example of the times influencing each series differently. Look at what was going on culturally when the original series was airing. Suffrage movements, the cold war, nuclear threats, the space race, the aftermath of WW2 . Star Trek represented an idealized view of…

The length of it didn't really bother me at all, but one thing I didn't care for as much, and this is due to the source material, was the episodic nature of everything. Every 40 minutes or so you could tell a chapter ended and a new one began. It made the narrative feel fractured, especially since, between Gandalf,…

Isn't the antagonist for this movie the Silver Samurai? So I imagine it's just a nod to that.

Hadn't heard that, thanks. I only heard about the autism thing through a friend, I never actually looked into it or took it as fact. I find that with a lot of these conspiracy theories all it takes is a vague believeability to sell it. The human condition is fascinating.

Well, it was a long time ago, maybe even the galaxies far far away hadn't had a suffrage movement yet.

The general thought behind not getting your kid vaccinated is related to some concern that the stuff they use to make vaccines leads to an increase in autism cases. So.. for a person who believes in that sort of thing, they'd consider that a greater risk than potentially getting sick.

It's satire, friend.

I'm really not at all excited about the Avatar sequels, but it would be interesting if they filmed all of the Pandora stuff in 48 and all the human/spaceship/off planet stuff in 24. It would give that 'hyper-real' quality to Pandora and make the human stuff feel more grounded to what people expect to see on film.

That's kind of what I started thinking. I'll bet the crew meets him under one name and there's some M Night Shyamalan twist to reveal he's someone the Trekies would know.

You sound like a kid who can't wait til Christmas to find out what you got. You just see the box wrapped up all nice and neat and you get mad that your parents wont at least tell you if it's a toy or clothes. I remember back when the only real information you could get about upcoming movies was found in the trailer.…

"The point is that Wikipedia is an easily accessible information source and if you know beforehand that something is true it is a great link to share."

Yeah, Khan is definitely the most iconic and recognizable bad guy in the original series. Besides the tribbles.. I always liked the Eugenics War back story with Khan, gave the show some history. And with him being an enhanced and superior human, it kind of adds some of that comic book villain flair to it, especially…

What problem did you have with the origin story? Besides Kirk getting marooned on the exact planet Scotty was on and the transparently plot driven Kirk/Spock/Uhura triangle, I thought it worked all right. For some it was random like Chekov and Sulu, for some it was natural alignment like Kirk and Bones being friends…

That's a fair point, but comic book heros have more of a mythology associated with them. Reusing and re imaging villains comes down to it being unrealistic to create a new villain every month.

dumb kids are a result of poor parenting and insufficient education. Which has little to do with their taste in movies.

I like when science fiction is based on actual science, or at least believable science. Like how a spaceship would actually behave in space or how long it would really take to get to other solar systems/galaxies. Whether or not this fancy future tech is even possible. Some things you can say, 'well we just haven't…

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That's not really the same, though. It's nice to have a playlist going on random, and then one song comes up and it reminds you of another song, so you just want to queue it up to play next, then go back to random again. You couldn't do that with itunes before, which is why I always stuck with winamp even after i got…

I find it impossible to take Tom Cruise seriously anymore. Every performance he gives reminds me of either his Oprah meltdown or the Scientology video. The dudes gotta be acting like 24/7 or something. Just playing Tom Cruise.