a new JIM KIRK?

[maryh]

One of the most interesting analyses I ever read of Kirk looked at the many contradictions contained within the character. Personally, I think it's why he has become such an enduring icon. Sure, pop culture has had a good deal of fun with Jimmy boy, but he still speaks to many.

He contained so many contradictions because so many different people were writing for the show and novels, with each of them looking to create something interesting and noteworthy in their script or novel, and that the character became an inconsistent, contradictory, and superhuman. I always felt the womanizing was simply because the writers always just threw in a girl to get ratings and spark interest. Same with the fighting. These overused plot devices became too incorporated into the character and were so very unrealistic.

Also the "greatest captain of all-time" is a big turn off for me. I dislike hero worship and always think "NOBODY is THAT great -- gimme a break". This pattern followed for the spin-off series too. I was so sick of hearing how great Jean-Luc was or Janeway. Guess I prefer more human, flawed characters. I fear this is going to be a big Kirk the Hero worship festival and I will feel like barfing. Lots of people seem to love Godlike/bad-ass Kirk worshiping that it will be the path Trek takes and I will just bow out gracefully.

 

[ireactions]

I wasn't tremendously supportive of recasting Kirk. Kirk is strongly identified with Shatner. However, a new actor playing Kirk has effectively made the character immortal; like Bond, every generation will now have its own Captain Kirk.

I would have loved to see a new "Trek" movie with Shatner and Nimoy. However, that film would have been for "Star Trek" fans as opposed to a general moviegoing audience that might enjoy a "Trek" movie. I feel that the Berman/Braga approach of later years, making bland fan-oriented product (and lousy product at that) was what transformed "Star Trek" from a series that could appeal to everybody to an insular, sci-fi fan curiosity. The willingness to recast iconic characters like Kirk, Spock and McCoy and make a new movie around them is a way to refresh the characters.

Also, most of what we've seen of Kirk was in the domain of a starship; we've never really known him outside or before that environment, and it shouldn't be implausible that the starship captain was just one side of his character.

- Ibrahim Ng

 

[georgy]

This isn't the invincible Captain from the show, this is the Kirk from humble beginnings which is really much more believable...

 

[Too Much Fun]

I guess this won't matter in the movie if it's entertaining and thoughtful enough, but it's something that bugs me when I perceive it based on promotion of the film so far - wasn't Kirk supposed to be a nerd as a young man? I was watching an interview with Ronald D. Moore talking about how Kirk was like the opposite of Picard because as a young man Picard was reckless and arrogant, which is why he got stabbed in the heart. On the other hand, Kirk was more of a 'bookworm' and became more of a rebel in his later years.

I guess the show didn't cover that much, so his apparent characterization in the movie isn't a huge change, but it does contradict a few things. First, the bit in "Shore Leave" where he imagines this guy who went to the academy with him beating him up (implying he's the type who was bullied as a young man) and second, the fact that in "A Piece of the Action", he's never driven a car before, but loves just driving around slowly.

According to the trailer, he likes to fight and is a daredevil in a sports car. I guess this is just fanboy nitpicking that won't much matter in the grand scheme of things, but I also feel the writers should have shown a little more attention to detail when coming up with a backstory for this character, so they won't contradict the few things we already know about him.

 

[Samuel T. Cogley]

Because it all comes down to this; who would win in a fight between Kirk and Han Solo!!!!

Yes, it all comes down to this, and nothing else.

The average non-geek movie-goer is obviously wrestling with this equation, and only if they come to the correct conclusion, will they go to see Star Trek XI.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

...On the other hand, Kirk was more of a 'bookworm' and became more of a rebel in his later years...

Well, we know from Gary Mitchell that Lieutenant Kirk was very serious and very studious during the time he (Kirk) was an instructor at the Academy -- and one could argue he may have been an easy target for bullies as an underclassman (maybe), but we don't know what he was like before the Academy.

 

[SalvorHardin]

Arghh...not this "stack of books" thing again

And in a 3 months old thread

 

[Too Much Fun]

I didn't mean to repeat anything, sorry if I did. I am new around here.

 

[SalvorHardin]

I didn't mean to repeat anything, sorry if I did. I am new around here.

No problem my friend. I'm just a bit tired and acting like an ass

Don't mind me and post away

Welcome by the way

 

[RobertScorpio]

This will be an unpopular view but I see TOS Kirk as a man of integrity and honor as are ALL the characters, and this was their driving force.

IMO Kirk was more of a Man of LaManche who believed in what he was doing and was willing to die for what he believed in. He was a pretty by the book guy who would flex only if the rules conflicted with his honor or his beliefs. As I think of Trek's most popular episodes, Kirk is not the renegade, womanizing, bad ass as he has become. I was never a big Kirk fan but I did like and respect the his idealism and integrity. Seems nobody has focussed on this defining aspect of Kirk - perhaps as a knee-jerk reaction to the boring Jean-Luc, but Kirk was a serious guy dedicated to duty, the Federation, and humanity. I enjoy Kirk's passion, feisty nature and bravery, but without the integrity I'll be disappointed.

This inspiration is what may be lacking for me in this movie. I hope I'm wrong, for I have no desire to watch a bad ass Kirk worship piece. I hope they didn't screw up Spock either - another man of integrity.

Sorry to disagree..but a 'bad ass loner' Kirk is the best way to attract the female crowd. Kirk was a womanizer, my proof? All the women on that show who he was connected to who would all count to the day the last time he was with them...the guy was a rule breaker in the Academy, we already know this from Khan..infact, he's an admitted cheater....

The last thing we need is a boring lifeless captain with no heroic inclinations. TNG gave us that, now its time to go back the other way...And since NEMESIS was a Picard driven mess, that character and that character alone is why..IMO..

Rob

 

[Kpnuts]

I don't get bent out of shape when I see two productions of Hamlet with different actors and sets but the same characters and storyline.

Best post ever.

 

[Plumster]

They are the same: Kirk, McCoy, Enterprise, etc. Or are we to believe that Starfleet is uncanon because it conflicts with the previously established UESPA? Or dilithium crystals?

They're obviously not the same.

Their ship looks different.

There are "hostess stands" on either side of Kirk's chair. (What stations are they? The TOS ship had no such stations.)

The hand phasers look somewhat like six shooters with little tube shaped barrels.

The badges and rank stripes appear to be silver, not gold.

Kirk apparently meets Pike long before Pike's promotion to Fleet Captain, which took place just as Kirk was being given command of the Enterprise, and Sulu is a helmsman long before he should be.

Gary Mitchell's nowhere in sight, and yet he was apparently Kirk's original first officer.

The uniforms are all wrong for the WNMHGB era.

No.

This is a parallel universe, and if you disagree again, we'll arrange for you to be sent to the Kryptonian Phantom Zone.

Oh...

Sorry...

Wrong fictional universe...

Zebra.

 

[Lashmore]

Well I'm all for recast and redesign.

otherwise we'd be stuck with geriatrics in space all over again.

The new look ship isn't a problem at all for me. My thoughts are much like Shatner's on the new design:

It's got the two engine things, its got the round saucer head and the body...the shape is there, its the enterprise.

And an enterprise that is no more odd looking than the original anyway...come on you just got desensitised to it but the 1960's design has the same flaws the current does. Impractical shape and look for a starship. The new look is just a modern day wax and polish of an old mistake...but a much better look than using the original to get in a fresh audience.

And as long as I believe I saw Kirk and Spock on film, even if a few backstage facts of their past are ignroed or re-written, even better.

Star Trek
-Episode titles mostly quoted from Shakespeare

Hamlet Production
-Title written by Shakespeare.

Star Trek
-Quotes Shakespeare a lot.

Hamlet Production
-Quotes Shakespeare a lot.

Trek isn't plain Shakespeare...*thinks about all the sexual innuendo throughout the TOS series*

If it's Shakespeare, it's Shakespeare with a STRAP-ON!

 

[FabiusMaximus]

Kirk:

To be a badass, or not to be a badass, that is the question;
Whether tis nobler in the fan's mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of being called a stack of books with legs,
or to take arms against Nero, Corvettes and Micky Mouse hands
And by opposing, why are you bothering me, man?

 

[pookha]

This will be an unpopular view but I see TOS Kirk as a man of integrity and honor as are ALL the characters, and this was their driving force.

IMO Kirk was more of a Man of LaManche who believed in what he was doing and was willing to die for what he believed in. He was a pretty by the book guy who would flex only if the rules conflicted with his honor or his beliefs. As I think of Trek's most popular episodes, Kirk is not the renegade, womanizing, bad ass as he has become. I was never a big Kirk fan but I did like and respect the his idealism and integrity. Seems nobody has focussed on this defining aspect of Kirk - perhaps as a knee-jerk reaction to the boring Jean-Luc, but Kirk was a serious guy dedicated to duty, the Federation, and humanity. I enjoy Kirk's passion, feisty nature and bravery, but without the integrity I'll be disappointed.

This inspiration is what may be lacking for me in this movie. I hope I'm wrong, for I have no desire to watch a bad ass Kirk worship piece. I hope they didn't screw up Spock either - another man of integrity.

but underlying all that we see glimpeses of kirk being a smart ass.
often to figures of authority.

that at one time kirk was what we see early in the film transformed by the people that become his mentors and what he experiences into the person we see in the series i can readily believe.

rewatch errand of mercy, tribbles,galileo 7,taste of armageddon.

and yeah i think there being so many different batmans, superman, bond, holmes has paved the way for there being different actors eventually playing a role.

 

[SheliakBob]

Man, I am never going to get over being baffled by all the pro-recasting fans. Seriously. It's like waking up on some strange Bizarro Earth where nothing makes sense.
I remember the World That Was...not so very long ago.
If Hollywood Heathens had even THOUGHT about recasting the Original Crew, angry mobs armed with torches and pitchforks would have already descended upon the studios. J.J. would've been strung up from a nearby lampost--and NOT in "effigy", the new cast members would have long since fled to obscure corners of the Third World, in fear for their lives, and the world would have been safe from childhood memory buggering abominations.
Where did we go wrong?
What happened to the great monolith of Trek fandom?

Hamlet? Bond? Sherlock freakin' Holmes?
Are you insane?
All of those are from literary sources that pre-existed any film or tv incarnation. Recasting them is just re-interpreting fiction that exists outside of any visual canon.
The original cast created the original crew. They have always been those characters and always will be, for me and maybe a few other sad atavistic survivors.
Every generation having its own Kirk and crew?
Madness!

Sigh.
All amusements aside, those of you who are in favor of recasting, I just don't understand you. It's like you're speaking a totally alien language. I see the words, but they don't make any sense to me.
I don't know where you came from or how you managed to take over the world that I live in, but your very existence fills me with fear and dismay.
Oh, I don't hate you or anything silly like that. I don't even begrudge you your new film. Enjoy! I just don't see why you have such venom for those who do not share your enthusiasm.
I can't stop the Abomination, so you win. You've already won. Try to be gracious about it for God's sake!
It's your brave new world.

I suppose there's nothing left to do but go back into the darkness at the back of the cave, with my Neanderthal brothers, and wonder aloud what all this buzz about "projectile weapons" is about.
sigh.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

^
^^ They are just TV/movie characters. Why make a big fuss about re-casting?

 

[scotthm]

Well, if the look isn't important, then why change it?

Why not keep it the way we've always known it to be?

You'll never get an adequate answer to this one.

---------------

 

[Broccoli]

Kirk:

To be a badass, or not to be a badass, that is the question;
Whether tis nobler in the fan's mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of being called a stack of books with legs,
or to take arms against Nero, Corvettes and Micky Mouse hands
And by opposing, why are you bothering me, man?

Win.

 

[uniderth]

What happened to the great monolith of Trek fandom?

B&B

Every generation having its own Kirk and crew?
Madness!

Agree.

But honestly, I'm fine with a recast as long as the actors look like the originals, Same height, same build, same face, same voice. Or we could do it another way to make it easier. Find actors that look the same and then find someone who has teh same voice and just redub the lines. If thats too much find actors with the same build. But CGI faces on them then use the people that have a same voices to do the lines.