Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Shatner and Nimoy in new Star Trek III?

Zachary Spock Quinto confirmed recently that the third new Star Trek movie will be released in time for the 50th Anniversary of the franchise in 2016 and thusly will go before cameras within six months. That's great!

What I don't think is great however is that Robert Orci who "has the conn" for Star Trek III [2016] is more of a Trekkie than J.J. Abrams and is apparently planning on having both Spock prime [Leonard Nimoy] and Kirk prime [William Shatner] in the new universe! That's right, William Shatner could once appear canonically in Star Trek III [2016].

Now I'm sure that to some people this is great news, but I'm on the other side of that fence entirely. As much as I love the Shat, I think he's done all he can/needs to do with Kirk including a somewhat flat death scene in Star Trek: Generations, that despite not being the "best" way to say goodbye to the character, it has been accepted for 20 years now [Fuck, is it 20 years!!!???] as Kirk's endgame.

I didn't mind Spock prime's appearance in Star Trek '09, it was a successful passing of the baton, but Star Trek Into Darkness' Spock prime cameo served a pointlessness and a cheapening of the contribution of Nimoy's famous character to the franchise. While I adored Into Darkness, many saw it as just a poor rehash of the original Star Trek II and in turn rejected it's majesty without truly opening their minds to it's genius.

The character development we saw in Into Darkness could only have happened if we didn't have Spock prime there once again being all mystical and armed with future knowledge. His cameo threatened that but in the end it wasn't major enough to do character perception damage. I fear if both Shatner and Nimoy's characters are injected into the third new Star Trek movie it will considerably stunt that same character growth which was on schedule to be even more than evidenced between Star Trek ['09] and Into Darkness.

Also I loved the original Kirk and Spock et al when they were in their prime and maybe a little after, but Shatner is much to bloated now and poor Nimoy looks like he's about to drop dead any minute now (and how many fucking times is he going to declare retirement anyway?). We've got new actors now and a new timeline for them to work in. This is Trek for a new generation. Not ours. It's a timeline that doesn't need more goddamn time travel and alternative universes. They'll risk alienating any new fans they've picked up by delving into this misplaced nostalgia.

Having Nimoy and Shatner around will be like having your parents present while you're getting to 3rd base. No, put the new crew into space Robert and let them do what their counterparts originally did a generation ago without interference from future / alternate selves and give us something more original than a rehash of a classic or the Star Trek franchise will be exiled and lie dormant for another few years.

Source: Bruce Russel via Nerdist