"When a man is tired of Star Trek, he is tired of life." — S. Johnson

Best recommendation ever, from O’C’s comment on Star Trek: Into Darkness, Part 2, The Reboot, Continued, Will it Never End: “It was predictable, hackneyed, and derivative. It wasn't very good. Yet somehow, I enjoyed it, and I suspect you'd enjoy it, too.”

Well, that’s got me rushing out to a theater nearby.

I was going to write up a whole thingie on Hollywood’s creative vacuum, but that’s about as imaginative as, well, Hollywood’s creative vacuum. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s nothing but rehashes except on those occasions when it’s the exact same hash. Fortunately good work still occasionally gets through, and there is some entertainment for grownups. I don’t mind popcorn pictures, but I need them to be good popcorn pictures. The thing is, though, as there are fewer and fewer good films making it to theaters nearby the proverbial chez, I fall more and more out of the habit of going and, more to the point, less and less interested in movies, period. I mean, I can watch them as videos easily enough, and I don’t even do that much anymore. I’ve been catching up on last year’s big films, and there were a handful of good ones and interesting ones, but I’ve gone through that handful pretty quickly, and the interruption to my not watching movies at home is over and I’ll go back to the default. I used to watch two or three movies a week, old and new. It was a habit, even an addiction, and like any user, I enjoyed it in mindless absorption. Not so much anymore. There’s yet another reboot of Superman coming out this Summer. for instance. How many does this make? How many versions of Superman can one person live through before they lose interest not just in Superman movies but movies in general? And let’s face it: most of the looked-forward-to pictures disappoint, the latest Star Trek being a good example. The hype going in was beyond the beyond, with all the Cumberbitches going into the ether at the thought that he might be Khan. (For all I know, he is Khan, but Khan was a villain from the original TV show who livened up the second feature film over 30 years ago. That’s exciting?) The reviews when it was finally released, like O'C's, were less than ethereal. On to the next tentpole.

I’m not trying to put down O’C here. He is a true scholar obviously well aware of the contexts and subtexts of his film interests, and no one who has seen Willow that many times is unaware of his personal ironies. I will probably watch the new Star Trek on video, just out of curiosity, as I am a fan of the franchise in general. It’s just that franchises as a whole have come to have less and less interest to me as time goes by, and certainly not enough interest to motivate me to go to the theater unless they come surrounded by incredibly positive reviews. In fact, the progression of franchise installments is positively enervating. And this saddens me because I used to be in love with movies. All movies. Now, I can just look back at movies as an old love affair with occasionally a flame licking up out of the embers. Tis a pity.