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Matt Damon as Kirk in Star Trek XI?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the jennifer-garner-as-nurse-chapel-please dept.

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?"

23 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Oh, Yes! by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Other casting???

    • Ben Affleck - Bones McCoy
    • Chris Rock - Computer Voice
    • Jason Mewes - Mr. Spock
    • Kevin Smith - Montgomery Scott

    honestly, isn't it time for a real good laugh at this tired old series?

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Oh, Yes! by Fordiman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
    2. Re:Oh, Yes! by Gospodin · · Score: 5, Funny
      Or find a new alien lifeform... and f**k it.

      Doesn't Shatner have this pretty well covered?

      --
      ...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
    3. Re:Oh, Yes! by seminumerical · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Personally I am tired of the ST Universe. I want Science Fiction, emphasis on science. Phasers are just blasters from 40s or 50s pulp fiction, warp speed is a tired imitation of the WW2 Navy movies, where the captain had to think hard about the fuel/delta t trade off where the drag is proportional to velocity cubed. Warp is not Science fiction, it is elves in middle earth fantasy. I am tired of "subspace" communication (someone just heard the word in his linear algebra course before he dropped out and became a screen writer), tired of every planet being "class M", having a gravity of 10 m/s/s and a breathable atmosphere. I am especially tired of low budget aliens. Makeup does not make an alien, any more than assigning them the characteristics of some earth culture makes them alien. We've had Viking/Moslem warrior aliens, Seidenstraße aliens, Greek mythology aliens (and also vomitous magical "Q" aliens that remove the need for any coherent SF) ... Aieee!!! ...

      Remember when science fiction was fun and the characters two dimensional? Remember when they travelled at sub light speeds around the solar system where there was no artificial gravity? Clarke's 2001, A Fall of Moondust, Rendezvous with Rama, Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones" and many more. We have the technology to make a coherent near future SF TV series, using the actual properties of our planets, with Lagrange colonies, pioneer colonies, mining operations on Mercury, slow freighters and liners using economy orbits and fast (expensively anti-matter powered) "Federation" ships busy about the system.

      How many of us learned the basic (incorrect) properties of the planets from those books? Now let's do it again with Mercury's real day, and a non-tropical Venus. Settle the moons and adventure in space.

      It is not for us. It is for that Aspergers 14 year old guy who is awkward with girls but knows the ABCs of Relativity; the one in the generation coming up fast behind us. Let us relive SF through his (yes his) eyes.

      There can still be a 7 of 9 character so that he will have an imaginative, once removed from reality, sex life.

      --
      In wartime... truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. (Churchill)
    4. Re:Oh, Yes! by FlameSnyper · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Meanwhile, aboard the Millenium Falcon... by Billosaur · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obi-Wan Kenobi looks pained.

    Luke: What's wrong?

    Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in The Force, as if millions of voices cried out in terror. I fear something terrible has happened.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
  3. Almost there! by sharkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Getting closer to Star Trek XII: So Very Tired!

    --

    --
    "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  4. Durka-Durka-Stan by roman_mir · · Score: 5, Funny

    Matt Damon.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
  5. Re:The rest of the Cast by celardore · · Score: 5, Funny
    Yakov Smirnoff as Chekov

    In Soviet Star Trek, Enterprise drives you!

  6. Too Old!!! by Randolpho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. How about Shatner as Damon? by ToxikFetus · · Score: 5, Funny
    Can we get Shatner to revisit all of Matt Damon's rolls?


    Will: Do you LIKE... apples?
    Clark: Yeah.
    Will: Well, I GOT... her number how... DO you like... THEM... apples?

  8. Don't trust IMDB by BenClueless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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..

  9. I know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean could Matt Damon possibly live up to William Shatner's dominant acting talent?

  10. I liked DS9. by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except for the final couple of seasons. Then it sucked.

    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" ... but in space. With the foam head of the month "alien".

    They want "episodes", not stories.

    They want light, cute actors, not developed characters.

    1. Re:I liked DS9. by SamSim · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What I think this particular story means is that the Star Trek universe wants to stop moving forward. In time, I mean. The creators of Star Trek have - starting with Enterprise and continuing until now - lost the guts to do anything but cash in on past glories and old history. There's no drive to create NEW history. Old Star Trek is popular still - yeah, because it's old. New Old Star Trek will get nowhere. "Rebooting" the Star Trek universe from Kirk and Spock will get nowhere. They need to go forward. REALLY forward. Five hundred years beyond TNG. Build an absolutely perfect Federation and then hurl seriously gigantic threats at it. Go to the limits of current science fiction and use the cream. Transhumanism and stuff!

      --
      qntm.org
    2. Re:I liked DS9. by glindsey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You just boggled my mind. How can you say you hated the final seasons of DS9, and then immediately below that talk about how the franchise wants episodic television instead of story arcs and developed characters? An ongoing story arc and significant character development was precisely what happened to DS9 toward the end! On the other hand, early DS9 was very similar to TNG: episodic vignettes that can be neatly wrapped up when the hour is through, and everything is the same at the end as it was in the beginning. After seeing the success of Babylon 5, the writers and producers of DS9 started experimenting with the concepts you claim to like, and the result was the very thing you claim to hate.

  11. superficial look and emotionless demeanor? by frankie · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you're looking for a nice solid wood Spock, there is only The One choice: Keanu.

    Affleck has nothing on Little Buddha.

    1. Re:superficial look and emotionless demeanor? by russ1337 · · Score: 5, Funny
      If you're looking for a nice solid wood Spock, there is only The One choice: Keanu.


      I think Keanu lacks the personality and range of emotion required for the Spock role...
    2. Re:superficial look and emotionless demeanor? by servognome · · Score: 5, Funny
      If you're looking for a nice solid wood Spock, there is only The One choice: Keanu.

      Kirk: Spock any readings on the enemy vessel?
      Spock: Whoa!
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  12. This was never confirmed. by Oronar · · Score: 5, Informative

    No roles have been confirmed for Star Trek XI, nor is there any credible information definitely pointing to any actor or actress in any part in the movie. There have been a number of rumors and some well-sourced speculation, however. - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_XI#Cast

    There's also this. http://stxi.blogspot.com/2006/07/taking-red-pen-to -imdb-entry-for-trek.html

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    1 4/\/\ 1337
  13. There's one Problem with that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only producer that would ever do that is dead.

  14. Even Better by uberjoe · · Score: 5, Funny
    Kirk and Spock exploring an alien planet, monster emerges from the bushes.

    Kirk (drawing his phaser): Phasers on Stun!

    Spock: Not necessary Captian. . . I know Kung Fu.

    --

    The days of the digital watch are numbered.

  15. When paradigms collide... by Slur · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obi-Wan: I felt a great disturbance in The Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

    Seven of Nine: That was merely a spurious fluctuation in the tachyon matrix containment field. I have compensated.

    --
    -- thinkyhead software and media