"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.

Comments

Nonstop action? Whattabore.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Shift!

[meta-monkey]

So, what you're saying is there's going to be lots of close-up cuts of Sulu stomping on the Enterprise's clutch and forcefully downshifting.

But hey, less lens flare amiright?

Re:Shift!

[sconeu]

Star Trek 3: Romulan Drift

sounds like relevent expertise

[Trepidity]

His skills in filming exciting race scenes will allow this incarnation of Star Trek to really do justice to the pod-racing scenes.

Action movies are boring.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Action movies are boring.

[allquixotic]

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.

Re:Action movies are boring.

[ravenscar]

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.

Re:Action movies are boring.

[flappinbooger]

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?

Re:Action movies are boring.

[allquixotic]

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.

Waste of Time

[Java Commando]

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.

Re:Waste of Time

[cmdahler]

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.

Artistic license

[Okian Warrior]

I like what J.J Abrams and Zack Snyder (who directed "Man of Steel") have done to the franchises. They start with the established plotlines and take the stories in new directions. It's an artistic license that gives us fresh, new interpretations of the characters such as superman killing someone (General Zod) or Spock having an emotional outburst (over Kirk's death).

I anxiously await the Michael Bay version of "Hamlet" or the Justin Lin version of "Macbeth". This site has a good overview of directors taking artistic license, including an unannounced (but upcoming) superman movie.

For reference, here's Kevin Smith talking about how movies get made.

Re:more NOS and less lense flare

[NotDrWho]

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!

Re:more NOS and less lense flare

[Spy Handler]

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.

Lin is not just Fast and Furious

[steelfood]

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...

Re:more NOS and less lense flare

[Anonymous Coward]

This one is going to be 100mph, non-stop B A D A S S !!!

Wow! 100mph!! They'll get to Alpha Centauri in.... just under 30 million years! ...woohoo!!!

Re:more NOS and less lense flare

[Matheus]

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!

Re:more NOS and less lense flare

[the_skywise]

Laddie, don't you think you should rephrase that?

Re:more NOS and less lense flare

[OolimPhon]

Even more blessed is the mind who can spell correctly.