"Star Trek 3" To Be Helmed By "Fast & Furious" Franchise Director Justin Lin

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"Star Trek 3" To Be Helmed By "Fast & Furious" Franchise Director Justin Lin

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @06:07AM from the just-this-guy-you-know dept.

Dave Knott writes Although J.J. Abrams directed the first two films in the popular revamped Star Trek series, his new job masterminding the Star Wars sequels had left Star Trek 3 as one of the most prestigious unfilled directing assignments in Hollywood. No longer. It is now known that Justin Lin will direct the third Star Trek film. Lin is best known for revitalizing the long-running Fast & Furious series, helming the third through sixth films in that franchise. Several top-flight directors were under consideration for Star Trek 3, but Lin was the only one actually offered the job, following the postponement of the Bourne Legacy sequel that he had previously been set to direct.

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Nonstop action? Whattabore. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-23 06:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Roddenberry would not permit the filming of a Star Trek movie that was nonstop action.
The ideas were more important to Gene.
What a betrayal.
Action movies are boring. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-23 06:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

Modern action movies are incredibly boring.
There's nothing interesting about seeing normal human characters defy death ten or twelve times per minute.
There's nothing interesting about seeing them engage in combat or driving or some other activity at a level that even those with years and years of training and experience couldn't manage.
When a character has practically no limitations, there is no risk. When there is no risk, there's nothing interesting happening. The result? Bored viewers, even if the on-screen activity is rapid and frantic.
1. Re:Action movies are boring. by jeffmflanagan · 2014-12-23 06:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Modern action movies are incredibly boring.
  There's nothing interesting about seeing normal human characters defy death ten or twelve times per minute.
  There's nothing interesting about seeing them engage in combat or driving or some other activity at a level that even those with years and years of training and experience couldn't manage.
  When a character has practically no limitations, there is no risk. When there is no risk, there's nothing interesting happening. The result? Bored viewers, even if the on-screen activity is rapid and frantic.
  I agree completely AC, but most people seem to not share our view of these mindless action movies.
2. Re:Action movies are boring. by allquixotic · 2014-12-23 06:42 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Indeed. Aside from that, "intellectual" threats to the characters (figuring something out with science and creativity; outsmarting an opponent; devising a diplomatic solution to a problem) create far more tension and build-up to the crescendo. The threat of massive loss of life could be the end result of whatever dreadful thing they're up against, but if their solution is to shoot the hell out of it, it's boring, because you KNOW there's no way the movie could proceed except for them to win. Sure, somebody you're attached to might tragically die, but even that trope is pretty old by now, even within the Star Trek film canon (Spock and Data).
  What I've been wanting -- and not receiving -- from modern incarnations of 'Trek are basically the scenes that directors like Justin Lin and JJ Abrams would cut, if they even allowed the scenes to be filmed.
  Like the drawn-out philosophical conversations between Wesley and Picard in TNG.
  Like the near-total audio silence between lines of dialogue during Spock's death scene in the Wrath of Khan.
  Like the many times that a character would *tell* a story through words rather than the viewer being *shown* the story through whizzy graphics.
  Like when the activities of the Federation personnel vaguely represent the moral code and rules of engagement that they apparently seek to uphold.
  It's not going to get better. The cognitive dissonance behind producing movies these days is stunning. If you don't meet quotas for number of CG-rendered frames and explosions per minute, they won't let you run it in theaters.
3. Re:Action movies are boring. by ravenscar · 2014-12-23 06:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Exactly. I'll add in: perhaps a "bad guy" that isn't so bad or a situation with no right answer. Often, neither side is completely wrong in a conflict. It all depends on the point of view one takes or the way one ranks morals (say, freedom over equality for example). One of the things I appreciated most about the Star Trek series was the willingness to present and explore morally ambiguous topics. Things such as:
  1. Should they get involved?
  2. Trading one life for another (or others).
  3. Are some values more important than others?
  I liked getting to the end of the show and wondering if the characters really made the right decision.
  It seems that's all gone now. The last times I really noticed similar themes were the BSG reboot and The Wire.
Waste of Time by Java+Commando · 2014-12-23 06:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

Great. That's all this once proud franchise needs is yet more pointless explosions and simpleton dialogue. Star Trek has been dumbed down so much, by their own admission, that I pretty much don't even bother watching the reboots. All the impressive CGI in the universe won't conceal the fact that these movies are brainless, patronizing wastes of time.
Gene Roddenberry would be appalled by what's become of his creation. And everyone who grasps what Star Trek originally was intended to be knows it.
1. Re:Waste of Time by cmdahler · 2014-12-23 07:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It was a broad view of what humanity could accomplish once their petty differences of race were resolved and the race was looking forward through exploration. The series episodes nearly always involved a serious moral dilemma that the crew would solve through a combination of pragmatism and idealism. The action and comedy of the episodes were merely wrappers around the real message Roddenberry wanted to convey: that if we humans would only just stop fighting each other over trivial nonsense, we could make tremendous progress in exploring the universe around us, revel in the wonder of finding new things we couldn't possibly imagine at the moment, and discover that there are a lot bigger and more interesting things out there that worrying about whose skin happened to be a slightly different color.
  The JJ Abrams movies especially simply ignored this basic concept and just went with the action aspect with a little extremely surface glossy history thrown in to make it look just a tiny little bit less like a completely 2 dimensional sci-fi flick of no substance worthy of consideration. As simple standalone sci-fi adventure movies with no tradition or history behind them, they were fairly decent - glossy, amusing, decent action, a reasonable stab at making a futuristic movie look "real" (except for that totally moronic throttle on Sulu's panel), fairly well-done and reasonably well-acted - in short, worth killing two hours of your time for - but they had virtually nothing to do with the original concept of Roddenberry's series beyond the names of the characters.
Re:What a nightmare by halivar · 2014-12-23 06:33 · Score: 1, Insightful

the message of every previous Star Trek in favor of everything superficial and minor that has ever been in the series
I'm sensing that your Star Trek experience begins with ST:TNG Season 1 and ends with ST:DS9 Season 6, and includes none of the movies.
It's camp. It's always been camp. It will always be camp.
Re:What a nightmare by gstoddart · 2014-12-23 06:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

Dude, you're far too wedded to the canon you've built up as something immutable.
As a long time Trek geek ... I like the fact that they basically burned the canon and made it so they can do anything they want to.
Because now they can focus on making (hopefully good) movies without every nerd in the world going apeshit and whining that something isn't consistent with the original series or some bit of fanboi Trek porn they read.

--
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:more NOS and less lense flare by NotDrWho · 2014-12-23 07:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why? Because this is going to be the MOST ACTION PACKED STAR TREK MOVIE EVER!! Fuck all that talking bullshit. This one is going to be 100mph, non-stop B A D A S S !!! More fights, more explosions, more fucking ASS KICKING than anyone has ever seen! Scene one: mad-ass crazy action. Last scene: mad-ass crazy action. Every scene in-between: mad-ass crazy action!
Set your phasers to FUCKING AWESOME, because this movie is doing some MEGACRAZY SHIT!

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Re:more NOS and less lense flare by Spy+Handler · 2014-12-23 07:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

No one will think of Wrath of Khan or First Contact when they hear the word "shit". These two were the best Trek movies period. They are classics in any sci-fi library and (IMHO) rank among the best sci-fi movies ever.
Into Darkness on the other hand, is shit. JJ Abrams is shit. Therefore, whoever's replacing him has a low bar to overcome.
Re:more NOS and less lense flare by Anonymous Coward · 2014-12-23 08:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

If this wasn't the most MISTER TORGUE-like comment ever on slashdot, than I don't know what.
Re:more NOS and less lense flare by Matheus · 2014-12-23 08:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Honestly considering it alone without the history I don't mind Into Darkness. I like the new cast (minus old Spock... his "insertion" was of the worst forced kind) and I like JJ's style lens flares and all.
I was completely pissed off when it was clear they were bringing Khan back.
Wrath Of Khan is one of the best movies ever made, period. For Abrams / whomever chose the script tried to piggy back on that it was a clear statement that they couldn't move forward on their own and had to try to steal from / recreate a cinematic masterpiece. Rebooting the series does NOT mean you have to steal from it. Write your own damn stories please!