Leonard Nimoy has been in the new Star Trek movies, but why no William Shatner?
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“Star Trek Beyond” producer J.J. Abrams and members of the cast helped launch San Diego Comic Con on Wednesday night with a tribute to Anton Yelchin, who played Pavel Chekov in the series and was killed in a freak auto accident last month in front of his home. “The crew of the Enterprise felt like an extension of our family”.
Star Trek Beyond opens in theaters Friday.
But shortly before the film began, producer JJ Abrams, who directed the first two Star Trek movies, led tributes to Yelchin – after he was killed in a freak auto accident last month.
While Abrams, who directed the first reboot film and 2013’s Into Darkness, knows what’s going to happen, James Kirk actor Chris Pine apparently doesn’t.
Obviously it’s Star Trek, almost anything is possible.
But after a insane encounter with extraterrestrials, James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is seriously considering a career change. J.J. Abrams, who relaunched the series in 2009 with a new cast and directed the 2013 sequel, had his hands full with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, and would cede directing responsibilities to Justin Lin – the man who turned the lagging “Fast & Furious” series into an global phenomenon. The ship is attacked by a violent army led by the commanding Krall (Idris Elba). “It’s been 50 years there have been so many great films and episodes”.
The crew has barely arrived, however, when the Enterprise is needed for what sounds like a fairly routine mission, rescuing a stranded crew that has been shipwrecked somewhere deep inside an uncharted nebula. Based upon “Star Trek” created by Gene Roddenberry, the screenplay is written by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung.
If the last film in this series proved anything, it’s that there’s only place for one tall, white, unemotional character in a Star Trek film-and that person has pointy ears. The casual details, two or three seconds at a time, include Sulu meeting up with his boyfriend and their daughter, Spock enjoying an atypically hearty laugh at one point and Kirk’s accumulating air of world-weariness, which tones down the character’s hot-headed qualities.
Accordingly, the performances, and the interactions between these much-loved characters, are the undisputed highlight here, particularly Pine’s Kirk (with a knowing dash of Shatner), Quinto’s Spock and Urban’s McCoy (who gets much more to do this time round).
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In front of the camera, things mostly looked the same. “That was important to me and really satisfying”.
