Matt Damon as Kirk in Star Trek XI? 594
GiggidyGiggidy writes "Our friends at IMDB.com are reporting that Matt Damon has been cast to play a young James T. Kirk in the new Star Trek Movie directed by J.J. Abrams. Is this the end of the Star Trek series we fans know and love, or the beginning of something bigger and better for the series?"
Now, get Sinise. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now they need to sign Gary Sinise as McCoy. Hopefully, they can keep Affleck out. He has the superficial look and the emotionless demeanor necessary for Spock, but brings nothing else.
New Voyages (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At first. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Baywatch meets Wrestling in Space" -- jms (Score:2, Interesting)
(And to appease the topic furies, I find it very difficult to see Matt Damon as Kirk, but then again, The Bourne Identity wasn't half bad, so I'm willing to give him a chance, as long as Berman The Barbarian isn't involved in any way.)
Re:I liked DS9. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, the first season sucked. Guess what, the unforgiving nature of "die-hard" fans screwed the rest of us out of what became one of the best SF series of recent years. If ever a show deserved a second chance, it was that one.
Re:I liked DS9. (Score:3, Interesting)
An ongoing story arc and significant character development was precisely what happened to DS9 toward the end!
Their 'ongoing story arc' was actually "lets write some different aliens into the war so we can drag it on.. while we're at it, let's make them really powerful yet totally unknown!" Which, to me, screams 'plot device'.
And the 'significant character development' was just the writers getting more and more obvious about the (previously) subtle character archetypes: Cisco as the religious Savior figure, Du'Kat (sp) as the religious Evil figure.. I would call it character un-development.
I prefer the early seasons, when there was friction between characters. The slow sanding away of that tension was the good character development. As it goes on, we see more stereotypical roles from the cast.
I mean, seriously, Kira had more venom for the Federation in the first season than she had for the Dominion after they took over DS9.
Re:Oh, Yes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not make a series where a crew get to go out of the galaxy. In the Star Trek Universe our galaxy was seeded with life that would generally turn out humanoid. That saves on special effects, but now that is not a problem.
Here is my idea: Star Trek: Magellan - named for the great traveller. Set decades after Voyager; a colony fleet is sent to the Large Magellanic Cloud - a satellite galaxy of our own. Take a vast and fast carrier ship (The Magellan), running on autopilot for, say 50 years. The crew wake up, ready to explore and terraform and colonise. The crew is interesting. Holograms now have sentient rights, and there are borg members (like the Klingons in TNG, they are no longer enemies). Communication with our galaxy is slow and difficult. They meet real aliens, not just humanoids with different foreheads.....
Re:Oh, Yes! (Score:1, Interesting)
Personally I wish they'd do a series on the seedier side of life in th Star Trek universe. Perhaps with the grandson of Harry Mudd.
The action should change the personalities. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with Star Trek is that the action is the means for the characters to "win". Yeah, that sounds really basic and stupid, but think about it for a moment.
Some naive, young cadet leave Star Fleet Acadamy for his/her first space ship assignment. That character SHOULD have a completely different outlook and personality than the captain of that ship.
Now, after 30 years of space battles, friends being eaten by alien energy beings, etc..., that cadet, now in charge of his own ship, might have an outlook and personality very close to the original captain's
In most of the Star Trek episodes, the characters already know the "right" thing to do. The action just implements that and reinforces that their decisions are "right" and that the opposition is "evil" or "mis-guided" or whatever.
Meanwhile, in real life, people have to make tough choices and the consequences of those choices change our outlook and affect the choices we make after that.
I want Ben Affleck (Score:4, Interesting)
Kirk - Ben Affleck
Spock - Tom Cruise
McCoy - Matthew McConaughey
Scotty - Hugh Jackman
Uhura - Halle Berry
Yeoman Rand - Tricia Helfer
Nurse Chapel - Pamela Anderson
Checkov - Wil Wheaton
Sulu - Daniel Dae Kim
Better Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh, Yes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember when science fiction was fun and the characters two dimensional? Remember when they travelled at sub light speeds around the solar system where there was no artificial gravity? Clarke's 2001, A Fall of Moondust, Rendezvous with Rama, Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones" and many more. We have the technology to make a coherent near future SF TV series, using the actual properties of our planets, with Lagrange colonies, pioneer colonies, mining operations on Mercury, slow freighters and liners using economy orbits and fast (expensively anti-matter powered) "Federation" ships busy about the system.
How many of us learned the basic (incorrect) properties of the planets from those books? Now let's do it again with Mercury's real day, and a non-tropical Venus. Settle the moons and adventure in space.
It is not for us. It is for that Aspergers 14 year old guy who is awkward with girls but knows the ABCs of Relativity; the one in the generation coming up fast behind us. Let us relive SF through his (yes his) eyes.
There can still be a 7 of 9 character so that he will have an imaginative, once removed from reality, sex life.
Re:Oh, Yes! (Score:2, Interesting)
SciFi isn't all sharks with lasers attached to their heads.
Furthermore, good SF almost exclusively is not television
Yes. I've started reading old John Brunner novels again. And Fredrick Pohl and other good stuff.
Bring Star Trek back to its roots. (Score:3, Interesting)
Star Trek is about exploration of space...exploring new interstellar mysteries, new star configurations, new planets, new formations.
Star Trek is about science...its advantages and disadvantages, and what limits there exists in science, and if machines can be made to reach human status.
Star Trek is about society...how relations between humans evolve, what new structures can society have, how science affects the structure of society.
Star Trek is about ecology...do we destroy a planet because there are the bad guys (and take a whole new ecosystem down) or we find other ways to solve the problem?
Star Trek has lost all the above after DS9! It all became an mindless adventure in space in Voyager/Enterprise...and thus the audience lost interest.
A Star Trek show does not need to be dumbfounded or appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to be successful. A Star Trek show needs to be intelligent and thought-provoking.
The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine series where exactly that. Through clever story telling, the following subjects were negotiated:
-god and religion (in the episode where Picard was thought to be a god).
-language and the process of thinking (Darmok; one of the best episodes of TNG)
-if machines have rights (the episode where Lt Cmdr Data was on trial)
-if machines can interact with people (when Data was in a relationship)
-terrorism (many episodes, including TNG where the terrorists could appear out of thin air)
-political systems (many episodes, especially in DS9, from imperialistic Cardassia to semi-socialist Bajor)
-economic systems (the double episode in DS9 where Sisko goes back in time and gets sheltered in a homeless area)
-spying (the role of Darak in DS9)
-new races (many of episodes)
-new interstellar phenomena (for example a Dyson sphere)
-relationships (father-son in Picard-Crusher, Sisko and son, O'Brien and wife etc)
-war and its consequences (too many episodes to list)
-archeology (when Picard chased ancient artifacts)
All the above topics, and many more, were presented, some times naively, but most of the time in a very clever way, within a clever story. And Then Star Trek was successful.
What did we get with Enteprise, for example? and endless stream of save-the-world adventures, with none of the essence presented in TNG and DS9. And a silly story about an alien race hellbent to destroy Earth (the Xindi), no matter what...at least the Borg wanted to assimilate us, and that was interesting.
So, here is a message to Star Trek producers: if all you want is a cash cow, don't bother and let it die. If you want to share a message (along with profit, I don't deny that), then bring in interesting people to write the show and let them deploy their ideas.
And don't be politically correct, for Christ's shake! remember that the first interracial on screen kiss was between Kirk and Uhura!
A bigger problem is J.J. Abrams (Score:3, Interesting)
That's right! The producer of such wonders as the CIA recruitment video, "Alias" Where the guy playing the psychopathic creep father of the main character just 'happens' to look [geocities.com] like Bush [geocities.com] when made up and lighted just so, (and always at those emotionally intense points where the insertion of subliminal ideas works best!) Ah, Alias! The CIA boasted merrily of the sudden huge spike in the number of resumes received from young people wanting to look pretty and act like psychopaths for the American government after Abrams' dippy spy show started airing.
And "Lost", Abrams' other wonder-show where, like "Alias" the story idea is kinda neat and fun to watch, (like eating high MSG corn chips), but where the writers' collective grasp of and insight into the human condition is weak and shallow at best and where the emotional hooks are so incredibly obvious and formulaic, I could found myself actively complaining to the television set.
So, Homeland Security sellout and purveyor of shallow Walmart characters. . , do we want this man contributing to Star Trek?
I know my answer.
-FL