J.J. Abrams To Direct New 'Star Trek' Film

Tycoon Guy writes "TrekToday reports that Paramount has asked 'Lost' creator J.J. Abrams to direct a new 'Star Trek' film. The movie will be set at Starfleet Academy and will feature younger versions of James T. Kirk and Spock, chronicling their first meeting at the Academy and their first outer space mission. The movie is set for a 2008 release and will apparently be one of Paramount's biggest projects for the year."

Kirk and Spock, the steamy years....

Milk it.... Miiiiilk it.... Miiiiiiiiiiiilk it....

Yeesh, talk about taking a good idea and turning it into a dogmatic commercial eggroll. Egads.

What's next? "Is that a phaser, or are you just happy to see me"? I'll pass.

I've got the title

Trek and Trekker: When Kirk met Spock.

Re:I've got the title

How about:

1. Dude, Where's my Starship?
2. JT and Spock go to White Castle IV in the Delta Quadrant
3. Starfleet Police Academy MMDCCCXIII
4. Extraterrestrial House
5. Phillips Insists You Watch This Long Commercial From Our Sponsors Without Skipping To The Part Where You Get To See The Title Of This Movie Don't Touch That Remote It Won't Work Anyway Stay Seated Do Not Go Get A Soda Or Unit Will Pause Playback Until Your Uniq Embedded RFID-Chip and Infrared Signatures Are Detected By Sensors Trek - The DCMA Mandatory Voyage

Re:Kirk and Spock, the steamy years....

... or is my ST timeline completely off?

Who knows, they fucked with it so much.

Re:Kirk and Spock, the steamy years....

Because Enterprise sucks?

OK, that's _my_ opinion.

I grew up during the original TOS reruns and I loved it. The shows really sucked, most of them. What was cool was what it represented and the surounding environment. Phasers, transporters, warp speed, travel to other planets, aliens in cool makeup (at the time), hotties in William Ware Theiss outfits, Kirk was ruler of the universe and Mr. Spock was cool. Kirk was so cool that we forgave the Catspaw, Spocks Brain, Spectre of the Gun, Platos Stepchildren (hell- most of the 3rd season), the Abraham Lincoln episode, and the evil twin episode which really wasn't that bad of all the evil twin episodes that exist on television.

We got the movies and we thought that that's it. No more tv episodes then TNG happened.
OK, different, cool, different, not as cool as TOS because no Vulcan. The straight guy Data was alright, Number One (bozo) was annoying but Picard rocked. We forgave Whoopi Goldberg and the tar creature episode because we had the holodeck and some real baddies, the Borg and Q.
TNG wasn't as engaging to me but I wasn't a kid anymore.

Then we got DS9. WTF?!? Same universe, different point of view.
Very well written and a surprise all around. The tribble episode was neat and we got the Ferengi.

Voyager, no one really cared about it, at least people who liked the older series. Only die hards seemed to like it as they would like anything with "Star Trek" slapped on it. Mostly all female, doctor didn't exist in real space and they brought back a vulcan, as a black guy. Nothing wrong with that but it just seemed like they wanted a 'black' alien that wasn't a klingon.

Then we get Enterprise. OK, I'll bite. Pre TOS so they can't really screw up now or else the space time continuum will get messed up and the fans of Voyager will turn rabid and scream that Enterprise ruined Star Trek.
Don't really get anything new because anything new already existed. This time we get a female Vulcan that follows the Voyager steps of hotties in spandex. Hotties look better in William Ware Theiss outfits, not spandex.

Most of the crew is likable except I don't get the doctor character. Why make him an alien when aliens are new?
Enterprise sucks because it isn't bold and doesn't break new ground. All it is is Voyager with different people with limitations of what they can't or can do. It's like all of the tech in Enterprise "doesn't work well or isn't tested yet".
Voyager was TNG with different characters but without the drive.
TNG was TOS with different characters but it continued the "where no man has gone before" dream. Voyager just placed them farther out.

It seems like they're trying to return to the roots which made TOS good which was Kirk but William Shatner is responsible for us liking Kirk, not the writers.

I say let it rest for another 5 years at least and if they're going to do a series, do another starship becaue Enterprise will always be about Kirk, no matter who is in the captains chair.

Most of the movies suck, they even had an evil twin movie.
How is it that in TOS, we can see on the view screen people on a planet surface in detail but in Generations there are annoying reportes with huge cameras mounted on their eyes?

Give it a rest. Fire Berman and Braga and remove them at least 1000 miles from any star trek property, they're only in it for a paycheck.

Sooooo....

So it's Harry Potter in space then?

Desperation

I was going to post a joke about Star Trek: The Beginning of the End, but then I realized that happened a long time ago. Paramount has gone beyond running Star Trek into the ground, at this point they're trying to get blood from a stone. Then again, with Spock's intellect, perhaps we can finally figure out all of the secrets on that darned island.

Re:Desperation

I preferred DS9. The sterile atmosphere of the Enterprise with it's limited cast and crew and the expendable ensigns doesn't work as well for me. Also, the richer possibilities introduced with say the Defiant were fun, and the station used as a defensive outpost... That said, I think both Captain Picard and Commander Sisko wereoutstanding actors.

Re:Desperation

DS9 was defintely the most well-written, sophisticated series of the bunch. It's not surprising, considering it was the baby of Ronald Moore (who would go on to create what I consider the best damn scifi series ever, the new Battlestar Galactica).

-Eric

Re:Desperation

It was just a Babylon 5 rip off...read the history!

ttyl
          Farrell

I like this idea

I like the idea of reviving the original characters in some way. That was what was really lacking from the later iterations of Star Trek, was the strength of characters. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were the perfect balance of differing personalities, one of the best sets of characters ever in TV or film.

Re:I like this idea

but this is going to go bad fast.

next year we will have "startrek kids" and then Startrek babies"

Spock,Kirk and Kaahn ride their hover-tricycles around the neighborhood going where "no 4 year old has gone before"

It will be "rugrats" set in the Star Trek universe.

I can hear sci-fi fans puking all across the country at that thought.

Not enough time has passed

Not enough time has passed since the last movie. They need a bigger break because they will still have the same people who have been dragging down the movies for a while. Unless the screenplay is truly orginal and very creatively written this is not going to be that good. The problem with the last couple of movies is that rather than create a fantastic movie around a fantastic story being told they are creating a movie to create a movie and using the template of Star Trek to do it. If you think of the very successful movies in the franchise they are the ones in which the writing of the story was original and out of the box.

Starfleet Academy?

In my mind this could go one of two ways.

1. The Star Trek equivalent of Animal House. Crazy co-eds, the antics of Star Fleet Academy's most crazy frat house

2. Cadets save the world.

I know which one is more likely, and it pains me to say it, I don't want to watch movie #2, but #1 would be awesome. ;)

Seriously, who actually thinks a movie based in Starfleet academy is a good idea? Obviously the unimaginative producers think its an "angle" of Starfleet that hasn't been covered, and an excuse to "sex up" the franchise by having a bunch of 20-somethings in the roles.

I especially cringe at the thought of "young Kirk" and "young Spock". Face it, Muppet Babies was terrible, Star Trek babies will be too.

Re:Starfleet Academy?

1. The Star Trek equivalent of Animal House. Crazy co-eds, the antics of Star Fleet Academy's most crazy frat house

Sounds more like a series of videos. Star Fleet Academy Girls Gone Wild.

I'd rather have...

Personally, I'd rather see post-TOS but pre-TNG Star Trek, maroon uniforms and all. Kirk and Spock could be older (which works out for the actors who are older themselves now) and the movie could be set closer to the most popular (in terms of movie revenue) stint in Star Trek history. I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from Trek prequels thanks to First Contact and Enterprise.

Re:I'd rather have...

I wouldn't rank it 3rd. It was a decent movie but I thought the early earth characters and setting was by far the weakest part of the movie. As much as I dislike the Borg, I thought the Enterprise vs. Borg situation really saved the movie. Just for kicks, here's my rankings:

1. Wrath of Kahn
2. Voyage Home
3. Undiscovered Country
4. Generations
5. Search for Spock
6. First Contact
7. Motion Picture
8. Nemesis
9. Final Frontier
10. Insurrection

Re:I'd rather have...

"not adjusted for inflation:"

Here'a a list adjusted for inflation (in 2005 dollars):

1. Wrath of Kahn $158M
2. Voyage Home $186M
3. Undiscovered Country $104M
4. Generations $95M
5. Search for Spock $140M
6. First Contact $111M
7. Motion Picture $232M
8. Nemesis $45M
9. Final Frontier $81M
10. Insurrection $81M

Old Crew: $133M per movie (not counting TMP since that's kind of unfair)
New Crew: Not a single movie that hit's the old crew's average though First Contact only missed the average by $22M. FC did commendably beat out the Undiscovered Country.

Now that's not even adjusting for ticket prices that have outpaced inflation so the older movies will probably have even more of an edge is you adjust for that too. I just used an inflation calculator.

Sounds like a winner.

Really, I don't think they could do any better than J.J. Abrams for a movie like this. The guy writes really smart, compelling stuff (Regarding Henry is one of my all-time favorites) and he's an impressive director, at least from the TV stuff I've seen him do. I'm actually kind of hoping this will spawn a new series. Anyone else get the feeling that maybe they're testing the waters? I wouldn't mind seeing a series created by J.J. Abrams. He's done well in the past, particularly with Lost and Alias.

Yousa sayin wesa gonna die?

Past experience would suggest that we should be wary of franchise prequels where principal characters have sidekicks with funny ears.

The big scene:

Kirk, while waterskiing, jumps over a shark pen.

Bones! Tell ME about the NEW _Star_ _Trek__ movie!

Bones: The horse... Its DEAD Jim!

Spock: I concur with the doctor. There is a 97% probability that this movie will suck.

Scotty: If ah tol' ya one I tol' ya a shoushand times, I'm not a miracle worker. Jus' let 'er rest in peace!

ugh

I don't have a problem with a new trek movie... I have a problem with Berman not being fired, and is it so hard to bring back Nicholas Meyer?

Die in a Fire Rick Berman

If it takes a village to raise a child then it only takes one village idiot (Berman) to screw that child up. Those rat bastards who took Roddenberry's ideas and totally screwed them up can all die in a fire. They can take their own ideas about how to do characters and stories to make them 'edgier' 'darker' or whatever and write their own characters and their own stories and quit raping the memory of Star Trek. That's assuming they have any talent of their own which I doubt other than to be able to fasten themselves like leeches onto somebody else's ideas and somebody else's science fiction/fantasy universe. Pompous idiots without an ounce of creativity sucking at the teat of dead authors and dead creators and who try to bask in the reflected light of their betters. So unless Gene Roddenberry rises from the dead and decides to do something with Star Trek (which does not include changing what's already in the can - do you hear me George (die in a fire) Lucas?) then leave it alone. This means you Rick Berman/Paramount. The market will of course decide as it has with most remakes and recycled ideas and put them in the garbage disposal as they should. Personally you idea recycling bastards can take your Starsky and Hutch remake, your Dukes of Hazzard remake, your Star Trek 'remake',your upcoming Dallas remake and any movie starring or featuring Owen Wilson/Johnny Jackass whatever his last name is and shove them up the bodily orifice they came from. I won't buy one movie ticket, one dvd, I won't even watch a preview on Apple or even bittorrent a copy of your festering efforts. And so metaphorically speaking of course, may you all die in fires. (saw that term used on Fark (Duke sucks)and thought it was funny) Okay, rant over, I feel better now. - Please nobody actually die in a fire.

As a former Trekkie, PLEASE JUST LET IT DIE!!

For God's sake, let it rest for a while. Generate some fresh ideas. In this age of real war, and more gritty realistic fare like Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, Star Trek has become hokey and stale. Let it rest until its time comes around again.

-Eric

Re:As a former Trekkie, PLEASE JUST LET IT DIE!!

For God's sake, let it rest for a while. Generate some fresh ideas. In this age of real war, and more gritty realistic fare like Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, Star Trek has become hokey and stale. Let it rest until its time comes around again.

Battlestar Galactica. An excellent point of comparison. Graphics aren't fantastic, but they're good. What SFX shots are shown seem to appear to have some realism. Writing is interesting, although certain episodes stick out as forced. Certain SciFi appeal -- which limits the audience. While it's setting records fro the SciFi channel, it's not being bought out by bigger networks.

Firefly. My personal favorite of recent fare. The SFX are a notch below Battlestar Galactica, but the writing makes up for it. There are some inconsistencies which as of yet stand to be reasoned away (like why Zoe really respects Mal). Certain SciFi appeal, although the movie performed like "a below average genre picture" [boxofficemojo.com] if I recall correctly. The show couldn't sustain the audience to pay the production costs.

You've chosen to compare a hypothetical Star Trek prequel to modern underperforming SciFi. Nemesis, arguably the worst Star Trek movie, required back story and had trouble standing on its own. The appeal to the mass market was zilch, and the appeal to those who watched ST:TNG when it was first run was mediocre, because it seemed to imply that we'd never stopped watching reruns on TNT/Spike. I believe that movies can be an escape from realism. I think that's partially why Star Wars did so well in the face of terrible acting, groundbreaking but horrible SFX and wooden writing -- it was during the cold war. There was an epic story.

How about a Star Trek that stands on its own? A few references here and there for the fans, but largely something that doesn't require a huge back story? Don't make me need to know why it's significant Riker and Troi are marrying (and don't make me remove myself from the story for a reality check, "What happend to Troi and Warf?"). There's no problem with a Kahn tossed in -- a minor character from a single episode to act as a nod to the fanatics -- as long as the movie briefly summarizes in all the right places the gist of the conflict.

Re:As a former Trekkie, PLEASE JUST LET IT DIE!!

...more...realistic fare like Battlestar Galactica...

You used "realistic" and "Battlestar Galactica" in the same sentence... and weren't being ironic?

Okay, Firefly I can almost see; interplanetary rather than interstellar, and in the recent movie version (Serenity) they actually had a silent space encounter, but BG is only as realistic as the next space opera.

As for the movie, go Animal House version! Owen Wilson as Kirk, Vince Vaughn as Spock, Ben Stiller as Bones, Amanda Bynes as Nurse Chapell, and throw in Craig T. Nelson as Dean Wormer and Jim Carrey as Kahn (because a consistent timeline hasn't seemed to matter since Enterprise), and you've got a movie that might make back its production cost after a few years of DVD downloading--I mean, sales.

Re:As a former Trekkie, PLEASE JUST LET IT DIE!!

Well that is easy to resolve, make use of the star trek universe without the fedration and star fleet i.e. the rise of the borg, from the first out of control nano probes to the final enslavement of their parental race plus a bunch of other aliens along the way, very dark indeed.

Sounds fine to me

Hm, I'm one of those who grew up with the TOS reruns on german TV and watched every singele episode of Next Generation Deep Space Nine, and one of those to whom Star Trek is dead since ... I don't know 4th or 5th episode of Voyager? But this still sounds like a really nice idea to me. Just make sure that noone who particpated in the last movie and/or Enterprise is involved.

Old Star Trek Tech vs. New Gagdetry

So what I want to know is, are the controls and panels going to look like they are made from Lego sets?
Or will it be super sophisticated and electronically dazzling, or will it look like it does in the TV series era, cheap sets with cardboard controls and hand-painted view screens?

Fascinating.

what about a DS9 movie?

I loved Deep Spance 9 because unlike TOS and TNG where it was a space ship flying around causing trouble, with DS9 the trouble came to the station. It was neat to have something different, and I really liked that.

Re:what about a DS9 movie?

It will be hard to bring Sisko back, but there is not really a need for that. His role diminished as the series went on. I'd say let Avery Brooks direct, he did some good episodes.

Seriously? You think so?

Jake: (turns a corner in a hallway sees his father standing in front of him) "Dad! What? How?"
Sisco: "The profits, Jake...my path with them has brought me back here to you because..." (and thus the movie/adventure begins)

...or maybe I'm just bored at work

Star Trek meets Revenge of the Nerds

Leaked preliminary script:

Cadet Kirk: Cadet Scott, how long until you tap into the visual sensors in the women's shower?
Cadet Scott: It'll be at least an hour. I can nay change the laws of physics.
Cadet Kirk: That hot freshman, Janice Rand is due in the showers in 5 minutes.
Cadet Scott: Janice Rand!!! I'll have it done with 2 seconds to spare or I'm not a half-sloshed stereotype.
Cadet Kirk: Good man! Do it and you can have any job you want when I'm captain of the fleet flagship.
Cadet Spock: Normally I would point out that the risks do not justify these actions... but that Janice Rand would bring on Ponn Farr in an Andorian. Perhaps you should try cross circuiting to B, Cadet Scott.
Cadet McCoy: Can you tie in my medical tricorder so I have a record for future... umm, anatomy study?
Cadet Scott: Do it yourself, pervert.
Cadet McCoy: I'm a medical student not a pornographer!!!
Cadet Scott: All right, all right.

Re:Yeoman?

"I thought Rand was enlisted--she wouldn't be at the academy"

NEEEEERRRRRRRDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!

You know ....

The Star Trek Universe has become so damned muddled over the last years, I'm not even sure it would be canonical for Kirk and Spock to have been at the academy together. (Then again, I've never been clear if some of the stuff in Enterprise was strictly canonical either.)

Spock had served with Christopher Pike before Kirk, and I don't recall much in the way of explaination of how they met each other. Given the relative life-spans of Vulcans and Humans, I had assumed Spock had served in Star Fleet for quite a while.

Add this in with it being a prequel of a bunch of well known characters, I have fears this will turn into a Star-Trek Troopers meets Wesley Crusher Episode. They'll either have some fantastic adventure thrown in the middle, or it won't have any action and it'll be about Kirk reprogramming the Kobiashi Maru (or, well get an alternate explaination for it as opposed to it being a planned exam).

But the actors will either have to completely re-interpret the characters, and piss people off -- or they'll act as charicatures, and really piss people off.

Nothing good can come of this; and I'm not sure I'd watch this. It scares me. :-P

Re:You know ....

Wow, I was too embarrassed to bring up the Pike thing first, but now that you've spilt the beans:

My first reaction was to ask Abrams whether he knew who Christopher Pike was. My second reaction was that the Trek franchise thinks that the hardcore fans have either died off already or won't make a big stink (because they've become so disillusioned about the whole franchise) about the fact that Tiberius and Spock could in no way have overlapped at the Academy.

What a crock this movie will be--built on a premise inconsistent with the origins. But since when did that stop anyone...

What was it Dax said?

Forgive me for trying to quote from memory, but... in the DS9 Tribbles episode... Sisko: No, in the day, command wore gold (uniforms), engineers wore red... Dax: And women wore less. I'd pay the price of admission if Paramount *doesn't* screw with the uniforms!

*tap* "Is this thing on?"

"You, there. Get off the corpse. We've warned you about this already."

Nemesis killed it for good

I think people are still turned off because of Nemesis. It did have some quality stuff regarding Data and humanity in there, but they did some things that made it suck hard:

• The "enemy" was totally new and hastily introduced.
• The "enemy" was a frikkin clone of Picard.
• The "enemy" has a superweapon aimed at Earth.
• They killed Data.

The first three add up to a ridiculously bad story, and the last is more or less a betrayal. I mean, think about it: they cap off a rotten story not worthy of a mediocre television episode by killing Data. This is a problem in a lot of ways. For one, there is a lot of "future history" that says Data lives a long, long time -- longer than any of the other characters by far. Completely ignoring previous canon, to Star Trek fans, feels like...well, a betrayal. That's why they hated Enterprise and its freewheeling attitude toward canon. If you're going to do Star Trek, you really have to stick to the existing facts.

The other problem with killing Data is that, because he was supposed to be the longest-lived of all the main TNG characters, his death feels like all their stories are done. Put another way, as long as they aren't shown meeting their ends, they continue to be alive in the fans' minds. Having them die makes fans' interest in the entire thing drop off. It makes it hard to work up interest in any Star Trek.

Brokeback Star Fleet Academy

It's my understanding it's going to be based on Star Trek The Lost Gay Episode [frogstar.com].

Jim Abrahams and David Zucker?

When I first glanced at the article I thought it said "Abrahams", as in Jim Abrahams and David Zucker of "Airplane!" fame. I think they should be the ones doing this movie and rename it "Starship!".

I'd trade it all for Serenity II / Firefly seasons

Please. Pretty please? Characters that have somewhere to go - rather than simply fulfilling our expectations of personalities long since drained of any originality. We know exactly how TOS characters will act, and we know that 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 minutes into this film there'll be an excruciatingly obvious bone mercilessly tossed to us in the form of a promordial "Dammit Jim", "Highly illogical", "Must... not... give... in... to...", or "She kenna' take much more, Cap'n!" that'll just tickle those clever writers. Every character in Serenity did something previously unseen but that moved their character forward and thus the story too.

I was thinking bout this...

Just the other day. kinda like the "Young Indiana Jones" tv series, except maybe it'll be good. I know it sounds like they're beating a dead horse...

but as long as Berman isn't involved i'm intrigued.

At least Paramount hasn't given up Star Trek for dead yet.

Re:Ok, on one condition.

Most likely, Shatner and Nimoy will star. With lots of makeup and computer editing, they can pass for 20-year-olds. I'm almost sure of it.