For all the vilification that accumulated over the years in hatred for both Michael Jackson and Captain Eo, I have to admit, the two have always had a very special place in my heart. For one, I am and was an 80s kid. I ran home to see the premiere of Michael’s Thriller. And when I heard he was making another such film, I ran my butt out to Disneyland (our home park from Colorado) and waited a decent sweltering 3 hours for it’s opening, along with Star Tours.
So, on a recent trip to EPCOT, when the heat got too much and much aligned film (everyone seems to love to hate that blasted little ditty from the 80s, maybe it reminds too many of their boulderized childhoods), we arrived late and ended up towards the back of the house. Now, I had known for some time that the theater here at Walt Disney World was on an actuator, and, like Star Trek, the entire huge house could move back and forth, up and down.
I just never realized it. I like to be me and the screen.
However, sitting to the back? I saw it. I saw the heads in the house bob with the beat of the music, and they were not just jamming. Loud sounds? Thump went the floor. Explosions made the seats shimmy. Suddenly, that movie I had see a few gazillion times was interesting, even on a minor level, again.
Growing up in Colorado, I eventually outgrew the sights and sounds that made the state a tourist destination. Eventually, everyone who came to visit seemed to want to visit the same five things and, well, it killed my sense of adventure for my homestate. Which is too bad, if you’re an outdoorsy-hippie-tree-hugger, it truly is the place to be.
It’s all that green.
But when I moved to Florida, I figured out-I don’t know everything here. I did not grow up here, so, basically, everything had a novelty to it. It’s wonderful. Crappy t-shirt stores suddenly take on a renewed vigor. My circles expand and expand and even old digs like Disney World still provides a newness I was not getting from hugging all those pine trees and digging out splinters.
This week’s quest led me to an item I stumbled upon, something called, “D-Box.” Now, one has only to visit my blog to see my undying love for movies, heck, even my brief mention for my love for the craptacular Captain Eo in the preceding paragraphs should show you, I dig cinema. When I heard about this concept, I was interested, at the very least.
How it works is that an adopting theater removes a row or two of seats, and places several of the chairs with these D-Box chaises. Now, you have to remember, I’m sure there’s an expense here, so they do add to the ticket price. And they’re retrofitted, too, so they’ll have to fit in a previously built theater. I notice there were two rows about the ninth row in, where we would normally position the speakers to aim at. A bit of a perk. The seats would have to be reserved seating as well, so that patrons who did not pay extra would not hop into the empty or available spaces. In fact, it looked like once a seat was reserved, it activated, making sure the theater was getting its money’s worth.
It was, well, interesting.
First off, that big theater with Captain Eo? Clunky. Large, grandiose movements. With each single seat having it’s own axis, I noticed these seats with D-Box were detailed in their motions and smooth. I did not feel jarred, per se, but since your feet are on steady ground, you are slightly more aware of the angles you are tilting. There’s a dial for you to select your intensity, but I did not toy with it, noticing that the ‘normal’ setting was strong enough.
Yes, you can even turn off.
Why would you want to, however? You paid extra.
I don’t recommend holding food that’s too full. Just in case. And put them away from your feet, also, just in case. They turn it on during the trailers, and even then, I was briefly impressed. The movement was perfectly coordinated with the movie and, as the length of the film progressed, I noticed I tended to forget the special seats we were in.
I also noticed that it keeps you from falling asleep. Such seats would probably not work for Casablanca or something deeply boring like that nine hour snooze-fest of the English Patient. But for an actioner? Perfect. Something with running and jumping. We also thought it might be good with a decent horror flick, something where the seats jolt you at those specific moments. It’ll make you fear the chair more than the movie.
But let’s be real here. Movies in the theater are going down in the ticket sales department. People aren’t willing to risk the extra prices for something they don’t know, so reboots and sequels abound all over the map. Like 3-D prints of common movies, it looks like here’s Hollywood finding another way to wrestle another few dollars out of our collective pockets.
It’s fun, it’s neat, but I don’t know if it is something I would go out of my way to experience again, which is saying something. The only location is a half-empty mall off the edge of downtown Orlando, far from the various parks, so I wonder what the theater was thinking-it was not trying to pull tourist dollars.
I realized, as the movie went on, as I said before, I like to be me and the screen. I like the immersive-ness of that connection. And, on some attractions, that’s what makes it terrific. Look at Star Tours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. By having you in a StarSpeeder 3000, no matter where you sit and, basically, watch the movie, you still feel part of a larger whole. Harry Potter’s Forbidden Journey shows films and has a dark ride component, and, again, the guest is totally immersed. Here? I was still in a theater. And with the rows of these special seats so far back, all I had to do was turn my head. I luckily saw the film, Star Trek: Beyond, in 3-D, so that helped some, but, again, the smells of popcorn wafted in and took me back to the realities that I was still in a theater.
There were points, too, when the motion was subtle and I forgot about being in such a specially designed seat, but these moments were too far and few between to really catch my attention and more of an effect of the quality of the picture than the reality of the seats we were in.
How was the Movie?
I supposed you’ve enough of my babbling here to make it this far, and you shall be rewarded. With everything going on while watching this flick, you’d think I’d not have an opinion.
First off, you do not need to see this movie in 3-D. I am not one for it myself, I will only go if it is the only time I can go. The fact is, movies these days are not made to be in 3-D and are usually digitally created after the film’s production. The only time I think it truly enhances movie going is with a bland title like Avatar, which holds no true originality, but does work better as a theme-park-kinda existence on an Imax screen; or, better, in the already 3-D animations that are coming out of Laika studios. I’m thinking Coraline, ParaNorman, or the upcoming Kubo and the Two Strings. The artists are making 3-D models, and I, for one, want to see it.
But Star Trek? Nah.
I’ve been slightly critical about the recent reboots of Star Trek. The television show, especially The Next Generation, really plied on the science. It was true science fiction, stuff that would make Neil Degrasse Tyson proud. However, the reboot, in order to pay for the superb special effects, needed to apply to a large audience. So the science, which tends to be cold (and, if you watched the television show, only in the engineering rooms), is toned down and the interplay is played up. But J.J. Abhrams does something well-he makes delicious ensemble pieces. Pick your character and, in two hours, they will have some screen time. In the previous incarnations of Star Trek, Spock and Kirk, all the way. Now? Every character has their due and it works like a small soap opera. That keeps the settings changing and the plot zipping forward.
And, as a follow author, it is a bitch to write in long form, I can only imagine having to tackle it in a two hour screenplay.
That is where we are with this picture, too. Here, we have a new baddie with a grudge coming after the famed United Federation of Planets and our heroes and their ship are caught in the fray. Do I need to elaborate? You will see it again. Is it good? Yes, and, I found slightly better than it’s predecessors. This time, J.J. has let Justin Lin take the helm and he seems very bothered by the plot of it all, so he keeps the talking bits curt and the point, and I did not mind. The problem? The plot is intricate, with ties to this moment and that moment. If you are not paying attention, the tale can ride away from you. I suppose I could elaborate, but it defies description.
Let’s see if I can do it some justice without releasing spoilers: Bad guy wants a weapon with known success and the Enterprise has it. Destroys the ship and scatters the crew. Each member of the crew follows their own trajectory in the plot until their combined knowledge wins the day.
Yeah, no details because with eight major characters, the reading would make your head explode. Should you go see it? If you like this kind of movie, sure. Even if you are not into Star Trek, it has enough running and jumping that it can be seen as summer fare.
On a sidenote, and I do not believe I’m giving any spoilers here, Idris Elba is playing the villain. I always hated the stereotype of English men always being the bad guys, but, well, here’s Idris having to take that rein again. Not only that, for some reason, they put a mask on that beautiful face of his. Why does Hollywood have this image that he can’t just...you know…be? I really think Hollywood, like so much of Washington, has little concept of the audiences they are playing to. Why is this?
So, yes, this movie is entertaining, but not enough that if you elect to just Netflix it when it becomes available. For me? Just seeing the brief moment of Sulu with his husband was awesome, truly, in terms of visibility, but, like with hiding Idris from our prying eyes, why were they even worried about it. Why not just have John Cho’s version outright be gay? Why just push it aside to a footnote? The argument could be made that such things are really not tantamount to the perils of the tale, IE: by that point in the future, it is enough commonplace that to make an issue out of it in the storyline, THAT would seem out of place, moreso. There was a point, in Star Trek, The Next Generation, where dear Counselor Troi, when the ship encounters a race of hermaphrodites that abhor gender identity simple states about the Federation, “they aren’t as accepting as our cultures have progressed.” So, by not identifying it, they have, in a way, shown that it really isn’t, in the end, that big of a deal.
Maybe it isn’t.
But go if you’re interested. I liked it. And I’m not even a Trekkie. I found it progressed quickly and I’d probably like it regardless of the moving seats or not.
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