New Star Trek Flick: William Shatner: Nobody Offered Me A Part

September 19th, 2008

I’m not too enthused about the new Star Trek movie, coming out May of next year, with a whole new cast of young ‘uns portraying the original Trek crew - that idea alone annoys this original Trek fan to no end.

But another issue is the film including Leonard Nimoy - reprising his role as Spock - and not William “The Shat” Shatner as the iconic Captain Kirk. Director J.J. Abrams had this to say regarding the oversight:

“It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn’t quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn’t want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the Trek canon and consistency of storytelling… Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that.”

Here’s a recent video Shatner himself recorded with his response to Abrams’ reasons:

For some reason I’m more inclined to believe Bill’s side of the story.

The other personal annoyance is one person whom I’ve heard speak positively of the new flick - Kevin Smith. While that lends some geek cred, also knowing that Smith recently praised an early cut of The Watchmen, let’s not forget he praised Star Wars Episode III a while back - which while good, wasn’t nearly as good as he claimed. I think he’s a bit high on the hyperbole.

But back to Star Trek: Despite Smith praising it, this Trekkie is still extremely skeptical. Disrespecting “The Shat” is a big part of it. Here’s hoping they can still stick him in there, somehow, maybe using that molecule-levitating technology mentioned in the video.

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