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J.J. Abrams to direct Star Trek XI

posted April 21 2006, 1:27 am by Eldhrin

According to Variety, J.J. Abrams (director of Mission: Impossible 3) is at the helm of the next Star Trek movie. The movie is to be another prequel, this time dealing with the first mission of James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock. Damen Lindelof and Bryan Burk, producers of Lost, will also be working on the project.

I find it hard to believe they could do any worse than Berman and Braga... is this the new life for Star Trek that the article claims, or just an attempt to cash in on the prequel success of the Star Wars movies?

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Comments

This is a joke, right?

posted by Antti Helin on April 21 2006, 2:04 am

J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof? WTF??

I guess it *could* work, but the premise sounds horrible. You can't do a young Kirk and young Spock story without pissing off a lot of fans. And you can't find decent actors because you're stuck to the "young" appearances of Shatner and Nimoy. OTOH, this is Star Trek...

It sounds like a trainwreck to me. I hope it's just the product of the imagination of an "insider source".

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Re: This is a joke, right?

posted by Eldhrin on April 21 2006, 2:20 am

J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof? WTF??

I guess it *could* work, but the premise sounds horrible. You can't do a young Kirk and young Spock story without pissing off a lot of fans. And you can't find decent actors because you're stuck to the "young" appearances of Shatner and Nimoy. OTOH, this is Star Trek...

It sounds like a trainwreck to me. I hope it's just the product of the imagination of an "insider source".

Well blame Variety if it's false... I'd really rather they went back to the 24th century, there's so much to play with there! Why did they never make a film based around Deep Space Nine?

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Re: This is a joke, right?

posted by octa on April 21 2006, 6:07 am

Well blame Variety if it's false... I'd really rather they went back to the 24th century, there's so much to play with there! Why did they never make a film based around Deep Space Nine?

DS9 isn't known to be episodic. The continuing storyline was the main pull and unfortunately a lot of Trek fans didn't get into it much. It would seem odd to me if they did a movie in the DS9 verse with no Dominion or Pa Raith(sp?) and if they brought those storylines back somehow, it would seem silly :P

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Re: This is a joke, right?

posted by Dudah on April 22 2006, 7:03 pm

I think it depends on how it's written and marketed. Warren Ellis described it as potentially an "Ultimate Star Trek", as in the Ultimate Marvel comics. Take a good set of characters and retell/reinterpret some good old stories with updated special effects and current storytelling sensibilities.

They did it successfully with Batman Begins, and it looks like the new Superman will be ok too without Chris Reeves. Not to mention Battlestar Galactica.

Kirk and Spock have always been very actor/personality-based characters, so it might not work, but you never know. If you somehow make it clear this is Star Trek in an alternate universe/timeline, and change a few key things around you could "reboot" Star Trek, which seems badly needed to me.

Let's face it, B&B have destroyed Star Trek. They completely ruined its history and backstory with Enterprise. They ruined its future with the end of Voyager. TNG and DS9 are over and not coming back. The only somewhat interesting thing left in current continuity is the time traveling future, and who wants more time travel stories? Really?

How great would it be to have a new potential Star Trek continuity that didn't suck?

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MOTW

posted by octa on April 21 2006, 6:19 am

I may be skewered for saying this but I've always wanted to see some made for tv movies or miniseries done in the Trek Universe. It would give them an excuse to expand beyond the Enterprises, avoid convoluted plots like the time wars, and bring some fresh new actors to the scene.

I didn't see Nemesis in theatres and I probably won't see this next one either. It took every ounce of willpower not to walk out of the theatre when the joystick came out of the ground in Insurrection. They need to win me back after that debacle.

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So many conflicts, so little time...

posted by theangrymob on April 21 2006, 6:48 am

Abrams: Good.
Prequels: Bad.

Which will win out? Did they not learn their lesson with Enterprise? Prequels aren't any fun.

This says nothing about the sheer age differences in the crew. They aren't meant to be together until they serve on the Enterprise.

Mark my words, this can only end in tears. Our tears.

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Re: So many conflicts, so little time...

posted by rickyjames on April 21 2006, 2:07 pm

Mark my words, this can only end in tears. Our tears.

Amen. The last college drama JJ did was, shudder, Felicity. I wathced that, and Alias, and Lost, and gave up on every single one of them in mid-series. JJ knows how to start with a brilliant premise, only to drive it into the ground because he can't figure out what to do with it. God help us, Star Trek has already been there, done that with Enterprise...

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bad idea

posted by is on April 21 2006, 7:29 am

I like Abrams, and he could hardly to worse then Braga and Brannon... BUT the storyline idea is just stupid. I'd equate this to "dumb and dumber-er" with actors that didn't resemble the original two. You can't just take a couple of similar guys and throw them into the Spock and Kirk roles and expect people to forget what they look like.

Now, if they go back further (like Enterprise) and show us people we don't know, it does have the potential at least to be ok. If they do a young Kirk and Spock, it's doomed out of the gate.

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Re: bad idea

posted by hans on April 24 2006, 6:13 pm

You can't just take a couple of similar guys and throw them into the Spock and Kirk roles and expect people to forget what they look like.

It's not just look, or we'd get over it. We've gotten used to several Superman actors without too much difficulty. That's because Superman is a comic book character. With Kirk and Spock, there is no comic book character. These are characters who have been defined by the actors that played them over decades. What's more, these actors have fairly unique styles. If anyone but Shatner speaks halting Kirk dialog it sounds like parody, but if Shatner speaks it, it's Kirk. We've seen lots of good Vulcans, but the first Vulcan was Spock and to have yet another imitation Vulcan playing Spock might feel like a Vulcan, but not like Spock.

We might be surprised. I was surprised that I took to Welling as Clark so quickly. But I've been underwhelmed so many times by Paramount that my money is on "Starfleet Babies". I have not watched any of Abrams stuff, but I thought the MI3 trailer looked at least as bad as MI2, which was abysmal.

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What Trek XI Should Really Be

posted by shayward on April 21 2006, 7:50 am

Idiots! Star Trek XI is surrounded by idiots! Just keep on alienating your hard-core audience. That's the spirit. Idiots.

If they wanted a cash-cow that the fans MIGHT live with they should bring back Manny Coto and the Reaves-Stevens duo to create a Romulan War trilogy with some of the Enterprise cast.

Bring back Shran and Sovol. Actually write a half-decent script for T'Pol (contrary to my original opinion, Blalock isn't a half-bad actor - as can be seen on Stargate SG-1).

There was a script floating around somewhere that fit in between Enterprise and TOS. Maybe that's a good place start. Shran's daughter that was saved in that horrible final episode of Enterprise could be a Lieutenant on one of the ships.

What about the 25th Century? That could be fun!

Do something - anything - other than this whole "Younger Kirk and Spock" crap... no offense intended to the New Voyages.

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April Fools?

posted by joe__gee on April 21 2006, 8:21 am

Wait, 21st != 1st ... :(

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The horse is dead. It hasn't twitched in over half a decade. Stop hitting it. It's falling apart.

It's an ex horse.

-Joe

reply to this

Re: April Fools?

posted by Dark Nexus on April 22 2006, 2:59 pm

Wait, 21st != 1st ... :(

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The horse is dead. It hasn't twitched in over half a decade. Stop hitting it. It's falling apart.

It's an ex horse.

-Joe

I believe the horse is now a fine paste.

reply to this

Re: April Fools?

posted by James_Tiberius_Kirk on April 29 2006, 7:16 pm

Well I tell you what, after the TRIPE that has been spoon fed to us for the last 15 years with the label Star Trek arbitrarily slapped on it, I'm glad to see someone finally recognizes what Star Trek is.
ANY Trek project with the names Kirk or Spock included, no matter how BAD the film may be, is immediately INFINATELY better than the PC, stuffy, colorless, Bore Trek that has filled the airwaves these many years.
Bring on some REAL Trek again. Not that 24th century crap, but STAR TREK, the 23rd century.
No one gives a rats ass about Janeway, or Sisko, or Archer, or really even Picard.
An entire Generation of people associates Star Trek with Captain Kirk and Spock.
The entire original series characters have obtained cult status and are in the popular lexicon of culture itself.
My grandmother can tell you who Scotty is, or Bones, or Kirk.
But Geordi?? Or Tasha?? Or Ro Laren? Come on.
I say it's about time Trek gets back to where it once belonged. FINALLY.

reply to this

Get over it, fanboys!!!

posted by jonnyb57 on August 17 2006, 11:56 am

There is nowhere to go with Star Trek's current universe. The whole thing is so bound up in it's own mythology that any new idea get's massacred by a bunch of people (who, incidentally, really need to get laid) insisting on microanalysing any new idea to make sure that it fits in with the continuity of a franchise that's been going for over 40 years!!!! "Oh, no, that could never happen - in DS9 season 3, episode 7, 2 minutes and 35 seconds in, it can clearly be seen to the right of Jake Sisko's left buttock that Starfleet crockery is beige and not magnolia...." There's no room for creativity, no room for the ideas that made the show what it was. It's just become a vehicle for it's own mythology. Nothing more. And the only people who are interested are the fanboys. The only hope that the franchise has is to reboot and reimagine, BSG style. New look, new actors, new ideas. It doesn't matter if some of the fans won't accept it (I for one will and I don't think that I'm so unusual). The whole point is that the current fans aren't enough to keep it going and it needs new fans. The new fans won't care if Kirk doesn't even look like Shatner. Hell, they probably won't care if "he" becomes an African-American female (look at Starbuck - loads of furore from the BSG Original Series fanboys but she's one of the best loved characters amongst fans of the RDM reimagining). It's the new ideas that count, not some preconceptions that certain fans may stick to. You may have to lose a million fans to gain another ten million. The alternative is to put the whole franchise to sleep and I think that that would be a shame if there's some new stories and new creativity left in the tank.

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