Quick take: Star Trek trailer

Well, as pleasant a surprise as Cloverfield was, it also marked the first time I've seen a trailer upstage the DVD it came on. This trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie brilliantly subverts our associations with science fiction, and certainly with the Star Trek franchise. Instead of the future, it harkens back to the past. Instead of aspiration, it evokes work. Most ingeniously, it conjures not some far-removed galactic era but the historical Space Age and even the Industrial Age. (I know this movie is about the beginning of the Enterprise, but was it supposed to take off in the 20th Century?)

Obviously, space-travel movies take place in the dark. But this is subtlely different. If I'm not mistaken, it's not just space, or darkness, it's night. A very dark night, in fact. Maybe like our own time? Searching for goals and reasons? This is fascinating stuff.