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Matt Damon as Kirk in Star Trek XI?
GiggidyGiggidy writes "Our friends at IMDB.com are reporting that Matt Damon has been cast to play a young James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek Movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Is this the end of the Star Trek series we fans know and love, or the beginning of something bigger and better for the series?"
I really don't care that it was Matt Damon. He's proven that he can at least do some acting but here's the thing. Enterprise failed because it was too Hollywood. Was it season 3 when they were in the void? What a horrible season because you could tell marketing had a big checklist for all the various "demographics" it was meant to appeal to. The last season finally figure out that a good storyline and real character development is what drives a show. They had already been canceled though and didn't even know it. What a tease! Back to the main point... if matt damon was chosen because he's a famous celebrity this movie is already doomed.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Matt Damon can look young, yes, but he's 35 -- as old as Shatner was when he started playing Kirk originally! If Damon is supposed to be younger Kirk in his Academy days... I dunno, it just doesn't work for me.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I mean seriosly, this was not the direction that the next movie even needed to go, what part of abysmall failure did they not pick up from the enterprise series, unlike star wars, Star Trek doesn't make money when going backwardcs, what ever happened to the idea of oh I don't know a ship that not only made sence, but something with emotion, how about a story about an akira class starship with an unkown crew in the dominon war? how about a series about the aftermath of the enterprise/romulan encoutner, something to shed some light on the worst cliff hanger ever, something to pick up what has so clearly been left off. Star trek doesn't need to go backwards, they need to do what they have always been good at, movies for action, and series for science and ethics they keep to that motto and they will get somewhere, they also need to stop playing with the timeline that is established as cannon, and just add on to it rather than confuse it
;)
just my thoughts
Did someone say cake?
IMDB is rarely ever accurate until after a movie is released. They'll put anything up! Some Spider-Man 3 fan even submitted his own synopsis and had it posted to prove this. Aunt May was listed as Carnage for a while too..
If you were your age now, and introduced to the original series as an adult with no prior Star Trekkiness, you, like me, would be under the impression that it sucked bad.
Lousy acting, lame plots, almost no finish. Sorry, but it simply doesn't live up to today's standards.
I thought DS9 was the gem in the group, but almost no one agrees there; oddly, some geeks just can't handle a coherent plot.
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Except for the final couple of seasons. Then it sucked.
... but in space. With the foam head of the month "alien".
And TOS was damn good when it was released. It doesn't look that as cutting edge now, because the edge has moved on.
The problem is that the Star Trek franchise has not kept up with the edge. Now they're afraid of the edge. They don't want to make a show that small core will love for years and years and years. They want a show that almost everyone will sort of like and probably watch every week. They want "Friends"
They want "episodes", not stories.
They want light, cute actors, not developed characters.
I think the horrified look of the alien in the Sci-Fi logo next to the story sums this up pretty well. Not that Matt Damon probably couldn't play a good Kirk, just that they're actually making a prequel movie like this to begin with. They really need to wait 5-10 years, and then start a new TV series in the 24th or 25th century. Just tack 50 years onto the end of the Voyager series, and go with that. Heck, go back to the Delta Quadrant with a new super-duper engine. In fact, send two ships (two crews for double the story possibilites) and have them go re-explore that region of space together. I think there were enough interesting possibilities there that could refreshen the franchise. But the important thing is to wait for 5-10 years.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
DS9 was a "gem" because of competition. Babylon 5 was airing during the same period as DS9, thus Star Trek started to look a bit lame (compared to what it was before... ?). So they stepped it up a notch. And when B5 ended its run, they stopped competing and went back to... well, Voyager.
The only producer that would ever do that is dead.
Andromeda was originally intended to be about the last Federation starship after the collapse of the Federation. Roddenberry's ideas were turned around a bit because the current keepers of Star Trek didn't want to "destroy" the universe and damage their cash cow.
:)
If you watch the show, especially the episodes when they were still using one of the writers from Bab 5, you can even see how some of the "Andromeda" aliens mapped to the Star Trek species they were based on.
In short, Roddenberry WANTED to trash the Federation and run the universe from a point of collapse and chaos. What happened was that his notes got used to start a new show, the "Federation" got renamed the "Confederacy" and it was treated to a decent special effects budget and not much else.
If you watch it as a post Federation show, and mentally map some of the alien species to their Trek counterparts, the show actually becomes watchable.
After all, Shatner taught all of us to look beyond the acting.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Yeah. It was called Firefly, then Serenity.
It got cancelled, and the movie did really poorly at the box office.
As geeks, we should'a been out there supporting Joss and his "new sc-fi series, with new characters and new stories and it is not based on a universe that lasted for 40 years".
I personally feel bad that I only saw the movie twice at the theatre.
We bitch about nothing good on, but then don't support it when it shows up.