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First Trek Film Footage Unveiled
Ostracus writes "Lost creator JJ Abrams has unveiled footage from his Star Trek prequel at a press event in London.
The clips featured US actor Chris Pine as the young Captain Kirk, Heroes star Zachary Quinto as Mr Spock and Simon Pegg as Enterprise engineer Scotty.
The audience also saw Leonard Nimoy reprise his role as the older Mr Spock in one of four excerpts from the film.
In his introduction, Abrams said he wanted the film to be released in May 2009, to feel 'legitimate and real.'
Speaking at London's Vue West End cinema on Tuesday morning, the film-maker admitted he had 'never really been a huge Star Trek fan.'" Note that the article doesn't actually contain the footage, just brief descriptions of it. The video clip included is just the old trailer that we saw many moons ago. But that won't stop me from lusting.
make a point of saying "was never really a fan of the original show"? Maybe they really never saw it, but arent' they taking the fans for granted then? They don't know how important it is for us "TO NOT SCREW IT UP"?
I understand a reboot of the series is sometimes necessary to make it fit contemporary audiences. But for every BSG, there are a hundred ruined series that chose to do something so out of character of the canon that it appeals to neither fans nor new audiences.
I'm really upset that they decided to make Scotty gay. Why do that? Other than the captain, mccoy and spock, no one else was getting any on the original show.
Why do Star Trek producers keep going backward in time?
We want the Next Next Generation, not a bunch of back story.
If they wanted to start another Trek franchise as a prequel to the originals that they could go 5 or 6 movies with without bumping into the stuff that's already been made, they should have based it on Star Trek: Enterprise.
I know that ST: Enterprise is almost Voyager-like in that a lot of people want to just forget it ever happened, but I thought it had a great deal of potential. Having movies based on it would be great. I thought the series really captured the naivete and hopefulness of a crew exploring far beyond what man was capable of before, and I think it would translate to the big screen very well.
Maybe it's because I've been watching a lot of ST: Enterprise reruns on the SciFi channel lately, but I really think they gave up on that whole concept way too soon. Heck, the original series had one fewer season than ST: Enterprise did, and it got 6 (6.5 if you count Generations) movies!
I liked how the original trailer looked like a Rammstein video, iron workers constructing the ship by hand on a planetbound spacedock.
Strangely enough, our modern warships are essentially built by hand because the volumes aren't large enough to warrant assembly lines with robots. The ships are built in large assemblies that are joined together, huge machines moving the parts but humans inspecting every piece as they go together. But trying to model the construction of a futuristic starship after a modern-day navy vessel is about as silly as modeling space combat tactics after WWII....ok, yeah, they do it but it's still silly! Though I did dearly love the depth-charging scene from the Wing Commander movie, especially the part about the crew having to remain silent so the Kilrathi couldn't hear them, presumably on space sonar. :)
But aside from the issue of how the pieces would be put together on a starship, there's the question of where it would be built. Trek has always had a thing for spacedocks in space. I remember asking my dad questions when we were watching Trek and was amazed when he told me the ship could never land. It blew my mind to think of a ship built in space, always in space, never landing.
Anyway, I wonder just how awful this movie will end up being. Is it considered an even or odd-numbered film?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I don't think it's a parody. Its sleek and modern looking yet instantly recognizable as the original. I like the design.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Except that the official line is that they are NOT rebooting the series. Which is rather two-faced when you think about it. On one hand you're telling the fans that you're not rebooting the series (at a time when fans are probably most receptive to a reboot) then you go and reboot it anyway.
With PR management like that, is it any wonder that fans are upset?
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I talked to my dad about this the other day (He childhood was spent watching TOS, mine watching TNG). I complained about the 'kids' running the new ship, so he pulled out some photos of his friends when he was 30ish. They look way more 'grown up' than most of my 30ish friends. His 30ish friends already had houses, kids, and 10+ years on the same job. Many 30ishers from my generation are still in school part time, have changed jobs quite a few times, and have apartments and roommates. Most arn't married, few have children, and owning a house is the punchline of a joke. More of my generation spent their 20's mooching off mom and dad and bumming around Europe. I feel like making a "get off my lawn joke" now, but my dads point was that being young lasts longer than it once did.
We are the Borg...
"I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy."
Younger fans that don't give a crap about the franchise will love the new iLook, in all probability. But those of us that have been fans all our lives aren't going to like this very much. Most of us are, frankly, sick of the retconning in the cannon. We fought for years to get Rick Berman kicked out of the franchise for precisely this kind of garbage. "Canon? Fuck that! If we can eke out another Nielson's point or two, lets do yet another time travel story and totally screw the franchise history up! It'll be Die Hard on a Starship!"
You'd expect some minor touchups to take advantage of current technology, but this is a complete retooling of the classic series, a reboot. Real longtime fans would probably be happier with Jim Cawley's New Voyages/Phase II. How ironic that an Elvis impersonator has more love and respect for the series than the current movie's creative team does.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Whenever old material has been revived lately, "a new outlook" seems to have always translated to "An edgier, darker _____" which means "Make the cast younger, and ramp up the sexy and the violence."
I'd sooner have them take Riker's new ship out and get back to doing Real Exploring.
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That's true! Scotty liked the ladies, he was just more focused on a long-term commitment.
Abrahms Star Trek I think will be as different from the original series, as was Battlestar Galactica Reboot to its original 1978-79 series. They are taking continuity and throwing it out the window, which means everything we've seen between 1966 and 2001 (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY inclusively) will be shitcanned.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
After his panel at the New York Times' 6th Annual Arts & Leisure Weekend, EW sat down with Mission: Impossible III helmer and Lost creator J.J. Abrams to get an inside look at his new enterprise: a Star Trek movie. While it isn't clear when we can expect to see the film, which will be the 11th in the series, he confirmed a draft of the script is done, and it will be trimmed sometime soon.
So what, exactly, will be the plot? Early reports (like this one in Variety) said that it will focus on the young, post-Starfleet Academy days of James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, but Abrams wouldn't specify. Still, he assured us it's a story that even non-Trekkers can enjoy. ''On the one hand, for people who love Star Trek, the fix that they will get will be really satisfying,'' he says. ''For people who've never seen it or know it vaguely, I think they will enjoy it equally, because the movie does not require you to know anything about Star Trek. I would actually prefer [that] people don't know the series, because I feel like they will come to it with an open mind.''
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Actually, the Enterprise insignia eventually became the Starfleet insignia, and this is well documented in many of the reference books that came out... circa TNG, I believe. You'll notice that by the time of TNG, everybody was wearing the same insignia -- there were no separate emblems for different ships in the fleet. As for the films, the Reliant and Enterprise crews had the same insignia in Star Trek II, so we can extrapolate about the approximate time when this transition happened inside the Trek universe.
I'm interested to see if, since this new film takes place during TOS time period, there are Starfleet personnel walking around with different symbols pinned to their chests. But I suspect they will have done away with that bit of canon from TOS. I guess we'll see when the new movie actually is released.
I thought, "Oh please. How can they screw it up. It's the Enterprise."
Aieee! That thing stinks of Hollywood's idea of cool; non-creative execs trying to cash in on the latest trend rather than allowing the real creative team to follow its natural instincts. That design has subtle alien qualities about it which spook me. And in any other film, that'd be fine. Sure. Whatever. But we already KNOW what the Enterprise looks like. That's why people want to watch it.
Abrams is a first-rate ass. "Lost" is messed up broken garbage which teaches viewers the poorest social imperatives, illustrating reality as a place where you can't trust anybody and communication must always be choked down to the barest minimum channel needed for survival. And "Alias" was just one big apologist's argument for torture. --That they put this J.J. clown in charge of Star Trek is nothing short of evil. Star Trek is supposed to stand for communication and human dignity. Abrams is nothing but a flashy pimp intent on the degradation of the human spirit.
Abrams, I hope you die very, very soon. Seriously. And I'm not saying that in passion. I just think the world would be better off without your presence and influence.
-FL