The Last Movie I Saw

Back in the early fifties Perry Miller wrote one of the seminal essays in American Cultural History entitled "Errand into the Wilderness." It was about the Puritan mission to America in the early 17th century, and the disillusion felt by the second and third generation of settlers at their collective failure to deliver the "City Upon a Hill" promised by the first arrivals. Miller's essay describes the body of literature produced by those latter generations, which often took the form of jeremiads; that is, they did not merely lament the failure, but saw it foreshadowing a kind of social and spiritual collapse that was seen as due justice for a community that had drifted away from their covenant with God.

I was put in mind of that essay after going to see the new Star Trek film last night. There were about five or six previews of coming attractions prior to the start of the movie, and all of them seemed to revolve around a common plot/theme. One was for the new Terminator movie, another was a sequel to the recent Transformers movie, and I don't actually recall the names of the others. But they were so much of a type-- futuristic, dystopian nightmares where machines have grown so powerful as to threaten the very existence of human beings. I couldn't help but think that, collectively, this may represent another round of jeremiads, one that speaks not to the failure of religion so much as the failure of science (though, maybe there's a metaphysical or spiritual dimension to them as well-- remember, I just saw the previews). It's not hard to imagine that kind of disillusion emerging from the ashes of what was, for the generation of the 1950s and 1960s, arguably supposed to be the technological paradise of the 21st century (you know, "better living through chemistry," the Jetsons, that kind of stuff). Instead, we're confronted with a trembling economy and vacant shells of the cornerstone industries that once marked our scientific prowess. In some ways the only remaining evidence of our ability to harness technology effectively seems to come in the areas of military hardware and movie special effects (and the two don't seem any more distant from one another than the two sides of the same coin). Does the summer blockbuster season signal a generation of despair and pessimism? One consolation, I suppose, is that the crowds of mostly young people who will likely flock to these movies probably won't make that kind of a connection.

As for the movie I saw: I've never been a big Star Trek fan. I bet I haven't seen more than a half dozen complete episodes of the original series, and I've seen none of the endless subsequent series. I have seen most of the movies, but aside from the one where the original crew ended up in San Francisco saving whales, found them mostly forgettable (and if I've got the plot-line wrong on that one, then I guess it was forgettable too). The new one, Star Trek 2009 (directed by J.J. Abrams) is pretty sleek, with some impressive hardware and occasional laughs to make it an entertaining evening out with friends, but I'm not sure I'll remember much about this one either in a few months. At least, compared to the movie I saw previous to this-- X-Men Origins: Wolverine-- this one had some heart, and at least some foundation of an idea (reason vs. emotion, nature vs. nurture, something along those lines) to motivate the action and provide a basis for character development. So it's worth seeing. Oh, and it also involves the use of science to destroy entire worlds, so in that regard it fits right in with the other sci-fi pictures coming our way over the next few months. I'm expecting to give most of them a pass.