Giant Freakin Robot

Simon Pegg is largely responsible for one of the best movies of the summer—though by the box office numbers, not nearly enough of you have gone to see The World’s End, which you should rectify immediately. He also managed to ruffle quite a few feathers recently when he issued a big “Fuck You” to Star Trek fans who voted Star Trek Into Darkness as the worst in the franchise. (It was actually beaten significantly by a non-Trek film, Galaxy Quest.) Now Pegg has tried to back peddle from his statement, or at least attempt to explain it away, but, in reality, makes himself look even worse.

Talking to Collider, Pegg had this to say:

Can I just please point out, following a few recent headlines of ‘Simon Pegg says ‘f– you’ to Star Trek fans,’ I was doorstepped by a journalist very early in the morning who told me that Into Darkness had been voted the worst in a poll.

Earlier this week I was bemoaning the practice of offering retail exclusives on home video releases. Specifically, I was referring to the upcoming release of Star Trek Into Darkness, which has different exclusive bonus features or other goodies depending on whether you buy it at Target, Best Buy, Walmart, or Amazon. The Walmart and Amazon sets are “collector’s editions” which include a model of the U.S.S. Vengeance or a 1:1 phaser replica, respectively I don’t mind that sort of thing being used to entice you to a particular retailer, but the Target and Best Buy sets both include exclusive bonus features that you can only get via those retailers. So if you want all the bonus features, you’re going to have to buy multiple copies, which is really, really annoying. But the situation is even worse than that.

The folks at Digital Bits did a bit of research and it turns out that in addition to the exclusive content for Target and Best Buy, there is also some bonus content that is only available as CinemaNow and VUDU downloads. Oh, and were you looking forward to an Into Darkness commentary with director J.J. Abrams? You can totally get that! You’ll just need to purchase it from iTunes as an “extras” download. God help the completist Trek fans out there.

When you reboot anything, it stands to reason that your version is going to be endlessly measured against the original, for good or ill. David Cronenberg remade The Fly and we got a masterpiece of body horror. Len Wiseman remade Total Recall and people asked, “Why?” J.J. Abrams remade Star Trek and people asked…well, actually they didn’t so much ask anything as just scream profanity at the screen. Love Abrams’ Trek or hate it, if it has a strength, it’s that it opens the potential to see the fates of the classic Original Series characters playing out differently. Those changes can apply to major things like the history and introduction of one Khan Noonien Singh, or it can apply to smaller elements, such as how you want to tweak those trademark Klingon foreheads.

Updated with info and art for The Poisoned Chalice

With J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Dust having raked in nearly half a billion dollars worldwide, it’s a frustrating time to be a Trek fan who’s no fan of the rebooted movie timeline. All the outrage in the world won’t hide the dollar signs from Paramount’s eyes, but the nice thing that seems to get overlooked whenever we’re all butting heads about Abrams? The original Star Trek universe didn’t actually go anywhere. It might not be up on the big screen at the moment, but it’s still alive and vibrant and constantly unfolding across other media. Case in point: Star Trek: The Fall, a five-novel crossover event that unites characters from The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

Star Trek: The Fall kicks off today with the release of Revelation and Dust, penned by David R. George III. The five-book arc unfolds over the course of a 60-day period, and apparently you don’t strictly speaking have to read the series in chronological order to follow along. So I’m guessing each book will provide a new viewpoint to commonly unfolding events. That’s handy for anybody who just happens to pick up one of the books mid-way through the crossover, but I imagine most die-hard Trekkies who are interested will want to dive in from the get-go.

By this point, it’s pretty certain that you’ve already decided whether or not you plan to buy Star Trek Into Darkness when it comes out on home video next month. If you liked it, there’s a good chance you’ll want to add it to your collection. If you hated it, you might well be planning to shoplift a copy so you can burn it in a bonfire of mannequins made to look like J.J. Abrams. Hey, we’re not here to judge. But if you do plan on picking up Star Trek Into Darkness for non-inferno purposes, you’ve got some options when it comes to where you make your purchase. For instance, how badly do you need a replica phaser in your life?

Simon Pegg has never been shy about sharing his opinions. As much as he’s a geek icon, he’s also shown a willingness to be blunt and honest, even if that opinion pisses off part of his fanbase. And honestly, I have to respect that. What’s the point in becoming famous in the first place if you then have to filter every comment through five publicists and a legal team before you can answer a simple question? What sort of simple question? Well, just for instance, what Pegg thinks about the Trek fans who recently voted Star Trek Into Darkness the worst movie of the franchise? There’s no way all those publicists would have let him respond with the a hearty “Fuck you!”

While out promoting The World’s End, The Huffington Post told Pegg about the Trek poll, and Into Darkness’ ignominious ranking and asked what he thought? Pegg’s response begins pretty diplomatically, suggesting that Abrams’ version of Trek is suffering blow-back from longtime fans both because the recent movies have brought in people who didn’t care about Trek before, and because — for good or ill — it’s a very different Trek than the traditional breed. It’s not long before the “indie band makes it big” metaphor come out, and as Pegg continues, you can tell he’s got little patience for the naysayers:

Is that part of it? That it ‘used to be for us and now it’s not’?
A little bit. I think it’s like when you tire of an indie band that you love because, suddenly, they get a number one single. You don’t necessarily start disliking their music, but you stop liking them because you’re pissed off that they’re famous, or whatever. Star Trek Into Darkness is the most successful Star Trek movie ever made. It is, in terms of what it took at the box office and how many people went to see it. More people saw that film than any iteration of Star Trek that existed before. That is probably slightly annoying to some Star Trek fans — which I totally understand.