EHHNNNNNNNNNNNUGH

Plus: The latest podcast, in which I dismember Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

I am admittedly a canonist from way back. Unlike many other, undiscerning fanboys, I believe, in the world of serial characters, an established canon should be considered a benefit, something that adds layers of history and complexity to an ongoing story. If you screw with canon, you’re just being lazy or egotistic.

I would have preferred if this movie were a complete reboot — new look, new history (based very loosely on the old framework), and completely new takes on old characters. Like the new Battlestar Galactica, which is so new and reimagined I have zero emotional connection to any of the characters. (Nor will I have them when the overly convoluted show choaks and dies of its own preciousness soon.) What the new Star Trek movie seems to be is a prequel, a prequel that totally screws with canon (just for starters — Kirk driving; anachronistic Romulans; Kirk meeting Pike).

Altogether, I understand why they would want to do keep to part of the TOS world, and even include the godlike Leonard Nimoy. They do not want to disenfranchise the old, old fans of the franchise. A financial decision, clearly. Much more so than a wise one, creative-wise.

In my deep fan’s heart, I honestly would have preferred if they’d waited till Shatner and Nimoy had kicked the bucket. (Which I hope does not happen for many, many years.)  Cue “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes. The film feels sacrilegious somehow. It’s as if you had a family reunion, and two younger people showed up as your grandparents, wearing the same old cardigans  and still yelling at each other about who farted worse in the car ride over. See, I think a lot of what old fans love about Star Trek is not the space stuff, the utopian future crap, or even the green-skinned aliens, etc., but rather the charisma of the actors from the original, the humor of their interaction, and their embodiment (using now-unpopular acting styles) of archetypal roles.

And, honestly, perhaps this reaction of mine is because my fanboy’s heart has been broken too many times. I now go into any new genre movie very cautiously, very jadedly. In this way, I am not so terribly disappointed. I can go into Indiana Jones 4 and leave saying, “Oh, at least it was nice to see him in the old costume again.”

* By which I do not mean this charming piece of juvenilia.

Ahh, enough of that. I guess I’ll go Mr. Fixit from here: Where is Rick Jones when you need him? No doubt spacing out in the Negative Zone. Or maybe he’s signed exclusively to the ill-fated Captain America movie or the ill-fated Avengers movie. I say “ill-fated” because I don’t want them to get made — I believe some stories work best in a certain medium, and it’s a damned shame when they get told outside of that medium. Don’t think of me as a purist. Sure, many stories work better in the medium in which they were created. For example, Underdog — better as an animated cartoon than as a comic book or a live-action movie (for which Jason Lee should finally be euthanized — put out of his misery already). But other stories work better in a new medium — Moses, for example, much better in a movie played by Charlton Heston than in that awkwardly written, contradictory text in which he first appeared. In any case, why complain? Corporations are as corporations do. If they think there’s a profit in it, they’ll strip-mine it, the hell with integrity, nostalgia, or quality. But you knew that already.

Speaking of mixed media, and back to the new Hulk movie, The Incredible Hulk, is a reboot of sorts of the unwatchable 2003 motion picture Hulk (which, by the way, suffered from the great bane of superhero movies — plot reductivism, e.g., villain involved in hero’s origin; bleh). That movie did not make enough movie, so the creators of the new Hulk decided to go back to the unwatchable ’70s TV series starring Bill Bixby. And they threw in some meager easter eggs for the fans — since Marvel is getting all Dr. Doomy on Hollywood now, I guess they can. Best thing in the movie: How much William Hurt in a toupe looks exactly like General “Thunderbolt” Ross. Who knew? Of course, he’s pretty 2D, but Ross always was.

In any case, if Rick Jones were around, maybe he could have fleshed the Holk’s character out a bit, so he wouldn’t seem like such a King Kong retread in this movie. The Hulk is a lot like King Kong, but he’s more like Frankenstein’s monster. And a smidge more of that pathos could have helped this movie. Oh, and those excised 70 minutes would probably help. A lot. Wait for the DVD.