The latest Star Trek installment has been taken in an entirely new direction by unapologetic action director JJ Abrams. Abrams has made it clear that he’s never been a real Star Trek fan, and is less concerned about getting the technical details of the film correct than exploring the emotional, some say also inaccurate, lives of the characters.

The next Star Trek movie is a prequel set before after the last television series Enterprise and before the 60s television show. (This last sentence is an update, thanks Chamalla and everyone who pointed this out.) It features younger actors and a lot more action and sex. Fans are worried that Abrams is running roughshod over the tried and true franchise in his quest to put out a palatable action movie with mass appeal:

Mild spoilers toward the end of this quote

“My goal was to make a movie about the emotional lives of these characters,” Abrams explained, according to the Associated Press. “We’ve seen a million ships fly by the camera, but nobody is going to care about the ship if they don’t care about the people inside.”

Not so fast, Abrams. Since 1966, Earth has been simply bombarded by the emotional lives of the seminal Enterprise crew, first on television and then in six, count ‘em six, feature films. And that’s just the central narratives: Kirk, Spock and the rest of the gang have been peripherally explored in everything from the clunky ’70s animated series to pretty much every Trek iteration after that.

And then there is the lamentable “nobody” — a term Hollywood should really stop using. It’s simply not true that nobody cares about the ship if they don’t care about the crew: I know a series of gearheads who care more for the ship than they do for who’s inside.

Throw in a few revelations gleaned from a series of Star Trek screenings in Rome and elsewhere in Europe, and it’s time to move to yellow alert.

For one, Zachary Quinto’s Spock is described by AP as appearing “edgy and hostile” in the preview scenes, two words one would rarely associate with a Vulcan, much less one that has spent the last several decades as a model of cool, calm intelligence.

Less but still moderately confusing is the description of Chris Pine’s James T. Kirk, who spends the early scenes of the film as a biker who can’t stop getting into fights in 23rd-century Iowa. Not a problem, except that Kirk was a nut for horses more than he was for horsepower in earlier iterations of the Trek franchise. Trekkies might want to check my math here, but I believe he was riding one alongside Jean-Luc Picard when he met his doom in the film Star Trek: Generations.

A new Trek is needed to resuscitate interest in the canon — I understand that. And the changes make sense coming from a director who has banished Lost into what seems like an insurmountable disorientation, and who claimed in Rome that Star Trek “was never my thing.”

So will it work? Maybe. According to AP, the preview screenings featured several exciting action sequences and even a return of Leonard Nimoy as Spock from the future. But couple these revelations with Entertainment Weekly’s recent cover shots of Quinto and Pine looking like they just walked off the set of The Hills, and there’s reason to be nervous.

[From Blog.Wired.com]

It looks fun enough, but it definitely doesn’t look like any Star Trek I’ve known, and I’ve watched enough episodes and seen enough sequels thanks to my brother and the various geeks I’ve dated. It won’t matter if the film is technically accurate if it cleans up at the box office. Honoring a 40 year old classic is less important than making bank. You just wish they could have picked a director who actually cared enough to honor the foundation of the series while trying to update it. It’s like Abrams ripped the historic mansion off the lot and built a bunch of condos in their place. We’ll have to wait and see, though, and it does look entertaining and updated for a new generation of fans.

Star Trek is due out in May of next year.

Photos thanks to TrekMovie.com

I’m not sure if William Shatner is actually crazy, or it is a persona he’s created to play upon his on screen roles, but this particular rant on YouTube adds fuel to the ‘time for some psychological help’ fire.

William, who wasn’t invited to fellow Trekkie George Takei’s wedding and was left out of a role in the latest film (due to his character’s death) decides to rant on George Takei, telling an interviewer that he doesn’t understand why George had to tell the media all about not inviting him to his wedding, and that he wasn’t fun to work with due to ego issues.

“There’s such a sickness there, it’s so painfully obvious that there’s a psychosis there, I don’t know what his original thing about me was, I have no idea, I didn’t read his book that was printed many years ago…

“I didn’t know him very well on the series, he’d come in for a day or two, as evidenced by the role he played…

“He was obviously hiding his sexuality…

“There must be something else inside George that is festering, and it makes him so unhappy that he takes it out on me, in effect a total stranger.

“Why would he go out of his way to denigrate me?

“It’s sad, I feel nothing but pity for him.”

[Transcribed from interview with William Shatner, shown above]

Will, he’s basically said nothing about you, and called the feud ‘media hype’. As you point out yourself, you barely knew each other, so why would he invite you to his wedding?

As to George’s comments on William Shatner’s on-set Star Trek antics, those comments have been echoed by other co-stars, so I’m beginning to think that he might have been something of an ass.

The new Star Trek film, directed by J.J Abrams of Armageddon fame, is coming out in May 2009 and is a prequel to the earlier films. My resident Trekkie says that odd numbered films ‘suck’ and even ones are good, but this film is the eleventh Star Trek film so we could be in to break the ‘curse’. I’m not sure what is going to end the curse within my own house, however.

J.J. Abrams says the new film promotes unity.

“I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now,” he says. “In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as ‘The Dark Knight’ is raking in gazillions of dollars, ‘Star Trek’ stands in stark contrast. It was important to me that optimism be cool again.”

Associated Press

Abrams also says ‘my favorite thing is turning on YouTube and seeing William Shatner talk to me,’ commenting on Will’s YouTube rants.

Check out some pictures of the young Spock and company. The new Star Trek movie directed by JJ Abrams is due for release in the US in May of next year.

William Shatner and his wife Elizabeth are shown below at the “5th Annual Runway For Life Benefitting St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital” on 10/11/08. Credit: Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

William Shatner wants us to know he’s not all ego. He’s just finished writing his autobiography, and was recently offended at being left out of the latest Star Trek movie, despite his character being dead. He knows that when he dies, it isn’t going to mean much.

“I’m not going to be remembered any more than anyone else. Maybe on the day there will be a little more fuss than, say, some guy in Poughkeepsie (New York). Fame and remembrance are so fleeting. None of us is remembered.

“Some of the great names I grew up with, five years after they were dead, no one remembered them.

“No matter what age you are, you are liable to die. But the older you get, the odds go up that it’s going to be very soon. It’s not going to be very long. But I’m having such a good time with the world that I live in, I don’t want to go anywhere.”

Contact Music

I actually think that William’s death will be quite a big deal. My husband is a Star Trek fan (wisely not revealed to me until after we married), and he was introduced to it by his father, and now they watch it together with my kids. Star Trek seems to be one of those shows that is going to survive across generations and genders. Who doesn’t like a bit of intergalactic travel and watching Captain Kirk mate with non-humans?

In case you think that William’s legacy is limited to Star Trek and Boston Legal, don’t forget his music career – my personal favorite being his rendition of Blur’s Pulp’s ‘Common People’, complete with lyric sheet in front of him, karaoke style. By the end of this rendition he’s positively purple in the face.

William Shatner and his wife, Elizabeth Anderson Martin, are shown at the Annual Alzheimer’s Benefit ‘A Night At Sardi’s’ on 3/5/08 thanks to WENN.

William Shatner isn’t happy that he isn’t going to be featured in the next Star Trek Movie, even going so far as to question whether the movie could be a success without him.

“It wasn’t really hurt as much as it was a case of, ‘How can you not put one of the founding figures into a movie which is resurrection? I was there at the birth and I wanted to be there at the rebirth. I would love to have been, but I don’t think I can take it personally it’s when they’re telling the story, and they couldn’t include the character, well that’s too bad and doesn’t make good business sense. I’ve become even more popular than I was playing Captain Kirk. Am good Box Office and I get publicity like this, we’re talking about the movie, which is publicity for the movie. I could have done a good job for them but they’re going in a different direction and it will be a wonderful film.”

TrakWeb

It turns out there’s a reason that William wasn’t included in the film, when even Leonard Nemoy will be featured as an older Spock. Movie co-writer Roberto Orci says the reappearance of Captain Kirk is unlikely.

“There are two things,” Orci said in an interview in November. “One, from our point of view, we are still hoping to find a way. Secondly, one of the difficulties that was brought up and discussed with Shatner when we all met him and pitched him ideas is that Trek fans are sticklers for their canon. [And,] unfortunately, Shatner’s Capt. Kirk was killed in Star Trek VII [1994's Generations].”

SCI FI Wire

Actually, I can’t believe that this philistine is allowed to write this movie. Doesn’t he know that while Captain Kirk was killed in 1994’s Star Trek Generations movie, he was found alive and sucked 150 years into the future? If you can make that storyline is believable, surely you can manage to bring Kirk back again.

My suggestion - as someone who has never, ever watched any Star Trek - is that a Captain Kirk lookalike should be found in the future again, this time practising law with a Boston firm. He leaps into his filing cabinet and comes out dressed as Captain Kirk, and turns out to be his illegitimate child fathered during the mysterious time that he was missing in action. Then, William Shatner still gets to be in the movie, put in a plug for his television role, and the integrity of the Star Trek franchise is maintained. Sort of.

Note by Celebitchy: I have watched some Star Trek in my day thanks to my brother Mike. Captain Kirk was kind of a blow hard but he was also pretty hot I have to admit. He’s an old guy now, but he could make an appearance as some kind of descendant of Kirk if it takes place 150 years into the future. Vulcans can do this thing where they implant their essence into someone else, and a quick glance at Wikipedia reminds me that Spock died in The Wrath of Khan but was able to cheat death by implanting his soul into McCoy, after which his body was revived and his essence removed from McCoy and implanted back into to. If Captain Kirk is dead and it’s 150 years in the future it’s not likely he’s going to make an appearance in the new film. Vulcans have a life expectancy of 250 years so it’s possible that Spock is still around.