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"Star Trek 3" To Be Helmed By "Fast & Furious" Franchise Director Justin Lin
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.
First Abrams' complete disregard for the history and the message of every previous Star Trek in favor of everything superficial and minor that has ever been in the series, and now they bring in this guy, of all people? They should just have Vin Diesel play Kirk and put the series out of its misery.
I actually wouldn't have minded the 2 newest Star Trek movies as mediocre sci-fi films, *if* they weren't labelled "Star Trek". The lens flare bullshit and the incompetent/inconsistent portrayal of Spock are things I could get past, but not as a Star Trek movie.
I somehow managed to keep enjoying both types of movies. Some are pure entertainment ("don't think, just watch", fast-and-furious style) and others are "lessons learned" (12 angry men style).
I have a friend who's mid-20s and he hadn't seen any of the classical movies, so one evening we watched "The Party" (1968) and "Soylent Green" (1973). He was mesmerized. Laughed his ass off watching the first and literally cried while watching the second.
Young people CAN enjoy older movies thoroughly, provided they're willing to try them out. Sadly, the movie-churning industry lost touch with this way of doing business.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
There's a lot of decrying of him turning Star Trek into Fast and Furious In Space, but people here either have forgotten (or more likely haven't bothered to find out) that Justin Lin did other things before taking over the Fast and the Furious franchise. Both Better Luck Tomorrow and Finishing the Game are two very good (indie) movies, the former being something of a drama and the latter a dry comedy.
That he made his name doing muscle car racing films to pander to the masses is in no way indicative of his creative ability and vision. Of course, he could still screw it up, but it probably won't be in the ways that people here are assuming.
On the plus side, I can't wait to see Sung Kang's cameo or bit role. That guy always has a presence in Justin Lin's movies. Hell, if this takes off, there might be significantly more minority characters in prominent roles in the Star Trek universe. Now there would be somewhere no one has gone before...
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I'd like to see a story set in the Star Trek universe that isn't about Kirk/Spock and not about the Enterprise or space battles or StarFleet.
Rather, some other interesting story that takes place in that universe with it's set of rules - replicators, holodecks, no monetary system, intellectual pursuits, what have you.
What is illegal in that universe? What would a criminal do? Are there bad guys? What would a "good guy" do to deal with a "bad guy?" What kind of DRAMA is there? What do people DO who aren't in Starfleet? Hmmm? What's that LIKE?
Certainly Roddenberry's universe isn't so mind numbingly BORING that there couldn't be a non StarFleet story to see the other side of the society. Right? Please?
I think the closest I have ever seen was Ben Sisko's dad on Earth where he had his restaurant and the Founders were invading by impersonating Starfleet officials and there was martial law or something. There are other nuggets here and there on DS9, Jake Sisko being a writer, Quark's Bar, etc. The interaction between Odo and Quark were always fun but that is still just an inch away from Starfleet and it wasn't Earth. What do Humans on Earth do in the ST universe?
Anyone know of anyone ever looking at that?
I know "Cracked" once did a bit where they postulated that the ST universe would actually be horrible to live in. Well, is it?
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
My opinion is that "First Contact" is the best Star Trek movie we have seen so far.
And I think that if we are going to see an interesting Star Trek movie - throw in Quentin Tarantino.
But to get a Star Trek movie more aligned with TOS where the social norms of the time were challenged I think that Steve McQueen should be the choice.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
There's an entire episode of ST: Enterprise devoted to depicting the life of freighter crews on early warp ships. If I recall correctly, they're only capable of warp 1 or 2, and this is first-generation warp, so it's much slower than the "Warp 2" you might hear Picard give the order for in TNG, or even the "Warp 5" that the NX-01 Enterprise is capable of. These crews spent a lot of time in deep space doing absolutely nothing except reproducing like bunnies.
The neat thing about the freighter crews as they were depicted in the shows, was that the crews were often families that would live and reproduce on the ship, spending their entire lives in space on a fairly small and poorly-armed vessel. They would occasionally take on new blood from outside their family unit (this helps combat the immediate idea of gene pool degeneration), but the majority of the crew would be biological relatives.
These crews were much less idealistic than Starfleet personnel, and were very much loyal to their families above and beyond any set of ideals. No doubt they'd encounter all kinds of sticky situations in space with pirates, Klingons, and even Starfleet, and have to defend their family, defend their ship, make ends meet, and survive.
A show like that would necessarily have to involve a lot less space combat (and fewer explosions therefore), because even a small warship like a frigate or a destroyer can *easily* overwhelm and destroy a freighter in the Star Trek universe (all time periods), as well as outrun them and probably have better-trained military crew for boarding parties as well. The freighter crew would have to get by on wit, cunning, deception, and probably a whole hell of a lot of sacrifice. Not much you can do with a small pulse cannon against a military vessel, when nobody in your family is trained in the kind of specialization that, say, Data would have, when he'd save the day every other episode with technobabble trick after technobabble trick.
What I said above is NOT in any way a knock against TNG, just saying that you're asking for a very, VERY different side of Trek, but I think it's doable, and there's a lot of established lore in this area that could easily be drawn from to create a series.
However, I don't think it would stick. The majority of the hardcore Trek crowd wants to see a crew on a Federation flagship, or at least a Federation-operated space station. The non-Trekkies would get bored by the lack of explosions. So it's unlikely that such a thing would make an appearance on TV or in the movies.