My friend Erik Peterson points out a problem with the recent Star Trek movie that I had not considered:
I liked the movie way more than you did, even though it wasn't perfect. Maybe I'll get around to posting what it got right at some point.
The one thing they're going to have to get better at, though, for my tastes, is aliens. Here's my nerdy rant: The two monster aliens on the snow planet were just wrong. I know most moviegoers don't think about stuff like this, but would millions of years of evolution on an ice moon really produce a bright red monster with thin limbs that look like'd be worthless for retaining heat? A mouth that opened so wide, that heat could escape from? A ton of saliva that its body would have to constantaly be keeping warm to keep its teeth from freezing shut? Wouldn't fur have been a favorable mutation? Okay, maybe we could explain the saliva thing by saying its so viscous it's like anti-freeze, but that alien looked completely out of place on that planet. It looked like what it was--like somebody told some designer, "Make a cool looking alien to chase Kirk," instead of asking the question that forms the joy of real SF: "What's the most interesting type of creature that this enviornment would naturally evolve?"
Comments policy