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.

Comments

Why do so many Trek personel

[joeflies]

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.

construction of the enterprise

[jollyreaper]

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?

Re:Continuity "problems"

[AKAImBatman]

They're not following canon at all, they're re-booting the series.

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?

Here we go again

[DesScorp]

"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.

Re:'Never really been a huge Star Trek fan.'

[bitrex]

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."

Re:They've run into a problem of power

[compro01]

I'd sooner have them take Riker's new ship out and get back to doing Real Exploring.

J.J Abrams cares very little for canon

[RudeIota]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20007719,00.html

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.''