i totally saw star trek last week

Last week I had the fantastic treat not only to see Moon followed up by a Q&A session with the director, but also to attend an advanced screening of Star Trek. I’m horribly spoiled, I know. I’d be remiss not to give a shout out to Vita.mn’s Christian Phillipe Quilichi, who hosted the event in full Jean-Luc Picard garb. (Though I thought Jahna and I were very festive in our space-age metallic leggings.)

The film itself was an ideal summer popcorn movie. The original Star Trek mythology was maintained and expanded upon, and the movie didn’t waste time with unnecessary exposition. The action picked up right away and the story moved forward at a pretty impressive clip.

J.J. Abrams continued his fascination with giant red balls of evil (see: Alias), and went a little over the top with the lens flares, which are clearly his new favorite visual technique. After the film, I asked the folks around me (almost all photographers) what they thought of the camerawork, and their collective response was, “Oh my god LENS FLARES! AWESOME!” Nerds.

One major beef: What is up with Uhura’s uniform? I know that they wanted to maintain the feel of the original series, but that didn’t keep them from updating the sets and the special effects. Yet still, Uhura is in her microscopic mini while twirling around in her spinny chair. Girl is one leg-uncrossing away from a Basic Instinct-level faux pas. Good lord, give the woman some culottes. (To be fair and less self-righteous, her uniform was way cute. And everyone else’s ridiculous jumpsuits were a little hard to pull off. The best part of watching the movie seated next to a fashion stylist was going back and forth with comments like: “Maybe if they tried belting it.” “What if you wore it with a jacket that had a really strong shoulder?”)

Oh yeah, and Simon Pegg was totally awesome.