Actually Shatner didn't create Kirk Shatner just acted how Shatner always acts and that how Kirk is thought about. Roddenberry created Kirk after the execs at NBC said they didn't like Pike so Roddenberry changed him into more of a womanizing cowboy shoot first ask later always get the girl type guy.
Shatner is on record as stating that as the series wore on he was playing Kirk as an idealized version of himself. TWOK is a perfect example of how Kirk was unlike this idealized-Shatner, but mostly due to Nick Meyer's wearing Shatner out take after take. In fact, the earliest episodes of TOS showed that Shatner was capable at a subtle performance. Kirk is really nuanced in those episodes. The larger-than-life Kirk came later.
In fact, Kirk's reputation as a space cowboy and womanizer is greatly exaggerated. It is a caricature of the character.
Kirk is quite thoughtful and introspective. He is fond of high-brow literature and philosophy ("the long-haired stuff") and often quotes from his favorite pieces ("All I ask is a tall ship and a star..."). He has more than a passing interest in history. He is familiar with all aspects of starship operations and is handy with a wrench (space wrench, of course). Kirk is a generalist in a variety of subjects, which makes him a good starship captain and tactician. Kirk knows enough to get where Spock, a specialist, is going in his thinking. Kirk often comes to the conclusion before Spock can finish. Kirk seems one step ahead in many of the episodes, which also shows his brilliance at critical thinking.
In the early episodes, Kirk is nearly indistinguishable from Pike. Both are Hornblower-like in their damnation of themselves and their command choices, especially if it lead to someone's death.
"Bones, I look at them and they're waiting for me to make the next move," Kirk tells McCoy in
The Corbomite Maneuver. "But what if I wrong."
Kirk is fallible, intelligent, ambitious, charming, self-centered, insecure and all together human especially in that first season. When the suits insisted that Kirk get the girl more and as the years went on, Kirk became more and more like that idealized version of Shatner.
I'm hoping that the Kirk from the first-season with all his nuances is what we get in this movie and from what Chris Pine has said about the character, it seems we do.
On a side-note, James Cawley started out performing his Kirk with this larger-than-life, idealized-Shatner persona. I'm glad that in the course of the most recent episodes, he has made his performance subtler and
his own. His Kirk is different from Shatner's as Pine's will be. And I enjoy having more than one take on my favorite starship captain.
