Babylon Trek Wars

Fresh off Thor and X-Men: First Class, Hollywood's next big writing duo is ...

Had marginally better reviews, not to mention the return of Van Dien and his bare ass. So at the risk of missing out on key plot points from the second Starship Troopers installment, I decided to dive right in to Marauder.

Truthfully, the direct-to-DVD flick isn't all bad, even though it never reaches the ridiculous heights of the original incarnation. Here's what it does have going for it.

Take 2: Star Wars vs. Star Trek - The Screening Room

Is epic. It’s a supreme battle of good vs. evil, and a potent reminder that even the best among us can be tempted by the Dark Side. When it was released in 1983, it provided our first glimpse into Darth Vader’s potential for humanity—and even more surprisingly, for redemption. Plus, it has Ewoks!

 

And while both films draw on deep emotional paradigms: the absent father figure, conflict, and the pitfalls of human ego, Return of the Jedi Kirstie Alley) after she and her crew are killed in the Kobayashi Maru simulator — a test designed to evaluate how cadets perform in no-win situations (which a young Captain Kirk famously cheated on). It’s a question that reverberates throughout the rest of the film. Relentlessly pursued by the Ahab-like Khan, Captain Kirk is placed in a series of what seem to be no-win situations. His quick-wittedness allows him to escape from most of them, but in the end, it’s only through Spock’s heroic (and, of course, perfectly logical) sacrifice that the crew make it out alive. In the final heartbreaking scene, Kirk comes to a harsh realization: “I haven’t faced death...not like this. I’ve cheated it, I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity...I know nothing.” This moment could very well be the closest that science-fiction has ever come to Greek tragedy.

 

“When we speak of ‘seriousness’ in fiction ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death — how characters may act in its presence, for example, or how they handle it when it isn’t so immediate,” writes Thomas Pynchon. “I suspect that one of the reasons that fantasy and science fiction appeal so much to younger readers is that, when the space and time have been altered to allow characters to travel easily anywhere through the continuum and thus escape physical dangers and timepiece inevitabilities, mortality is so seldom an issue.” The Wrath of Khan

Though I consider both "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" as all-right franchises, I'm more of a Trekkie than a "Star Wars" person. Sure "Star Wars" has some amazing Sci-Fi fantasy, but in the end, it is "Star Trek" that is the fully definitive Sci-Fi franchise out of the two due to its balance between cerebral content and action throughout the stories.

In some ways, both franchises have been around far too long. I'd really like these monopolizers of science fiction mediocrity to take a rest and let others with better, more creative and intelligent, original conceptions have a go. Isn't it time Star trek and Star Wars were both put out of their misery? They really are products of their times - late '60s and late 70's. We are in the 21st century people. Let's put them behind us and graduate to a more mature science fiction for our time.