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Some Confirmed Details On The Casting For ST film

Cary L. Brown said:
UWC Defiance said:There are no "evident flaws" in the document as presented.
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Having Kirk potentially younger than officers who are ranked SIGNIFICALLY lower than he is is DEFINITELY a flaw...
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No, that's not a flaw in the casting sheet.

That's a description of the age range of actors they're looking to see for the parts, not the relative ages of the characters.

If anything that's been said about the movie's story thus far is true, it's likely that the guy playing Kirk may play him at several ages.

Show me something that's on the casting sheet that doesn't belong on that kind of a document, or something significant that's missing, or anything suspicious about the formatting, etc.

There's nothing "wrong" with the sheet except that it doesn't match everyone's expectations about the characters. Frankly, the fact that the one-or-two word thumbnails of the minor characters don't match any pre-digested image of them is a point in its favor.

We get it... you believe this. But why is that, Dennis? What convinces you that this is legit... I mean, aren't you usually a pretty cynical guy?
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No, I'm not cynical at all. I'm skeptical of things when I think I've reason to be.

This just looks about right to me, and I've no reason to think that it's not real, given the provenance and the non-reaction to it by producers who've seen it on line and posted in discussion topics about it. And I'm not embarrassed to turn out wrong on these kind of things, so it's no big deal.

I was openminded about the "series of Trek posters" that got put up here about a year ago, and was wrong; I bought the "Series V Casting Sheet" seven years ago and was right. I'm sure I'll know in fairly short order which way it's gonna go this time. :cool:
 
UWC Defiance said:
Cary L. Brown said:
UWC Defiance said:There are no "evident flaws" in the document as presented.
Click to expand...
Having Kirk potentially younger than officers who are ranked SIGNIFICALLY lower than he is is DEFINITELY a flaw...
Click to expand...

No, that's not a flaw in the casting sheet.

That's a description of the age range of actors they're looking to see for the parts, not the relative ages of the characters.

If anything that's been said about the movie's story thus far is true, it's likely that the guy playing Kirk may play him at several ages.

Show me something that's on the casting sheet that doesn't belong on that kind of a document, or something significant that's missing, or anything suspicious about the formatting, etc.

There's nothing "wrong" with the sheet except that it doesn't match everyone's expectations about the characters. Frankly, the fact that the one-or-two word thumbnails of the minor characters don't match any pre-digested image of them is a point in its favor.
Click to expand...

It is not uncommon, in the military, for an exceptionally young person to have raced up the ranks.
 
Cary L. Brown said:
UWC Defiance said:There are no "evident flaws" in the document as presented.
Click to expand...
Having Kirk potentially younger than officers who are ranked SIGNIFICALLY lower than he is is DEFINITELY a flaw... unless Sulu, Uhura, etc, were all flunked several times...

We get it... you believe this. But why is that, Dennis? What convinces you that this is legit... I mean, aren't you usually a pretty cynical guy?
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Kirk is the youngest man to captain a starship, after all. Given that, it's probable that he'd be younger than some of his subordinates.

I'd be interested to see an unproven Kirk, somewhat resented by his crew because of his reputation and youth.

In any case, if this casting sheet is correct, I'm most excited about the presence of Bones. Without him, it just doesn't work...In my case, anyhow.
 
I wouldn't say there's nothing that doesn't belong on the sheet. If anything, there's not enough. I have no idea if there is a standard form for these sheets, so I can't speak to its format.

It seems to me you would set your characters's ages first. It'd be easier to find actors who could fit into the relative ages for your characters than setting an age range for the actors.
For example, if Kirk's actor is to be 23 to 28, does this rule out any 30-year old actor from playing him? If Kirk is 25, at 37, Matt Damon probably can't play 25 any more, but what if there's a perfect 30-ish actor out there who can?

If the age range is for the ACTORS, it tells us nothing about the ages of the characters. A 24-year old cast as Kirk may be able to play 30. A 30-year old cast as McCoy may be able to play 37. They may just want younger actors in older roles because they're thinking about the future. In the case of Uhura and Sulu, they may want 25-year olds who can play 20 or 21.

The age dynamic between the characters seems an odd thing to fuck around with if you're trying to stay true to the essence of TOS, too. For example, if Sulu turns out to be older than Kirk (or even the same age) it makes Kirk seem like a whinny fart in TWOK (geez, he's an admiral worrying about his age and there's his helmsman older than him). And, in TUC Kirk and Spock talk about how they may have become old farts whom time passed by, and there's old man Sulu out there captaining Excelsior like nobody's business.

Also, at least in my opinion, McCoy needs to be more than two or four years older than Kirk for that relationship to work.

Changing the age dynamic of the characters is a bit different than changing the colors on the set, the type of uniform, the sound a phaser makes, or even small changes in the personalities of the characters.
 
Franklin said:
Changing the age dynamic of the characters is a bit different than changing the colors on the set, the type of uniform, the sound a phaser makes, or even small changes in the personalities of the characters.
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Yes it is, and it's never seemed very likely that we were going to get by with only the latter kind of changes.
 
.. um. Uhura is African American? That's just African (South African I assume) is it not?
 
... oops, me dumb. If I'd just read the post pointing out these are traits desired for the actor, not a character description.

Should have realized that when I read they wanted someone to play Scotty with a "flawless Scottish accent".
 
I'm going to now play Casting Director:


[JAMES KIRK] 23-29 Handsome,cocky self assured and earnest. Great physical condition. 6 ft or less
Chris Evans


[LEONARD(BONES)MCOY] -28-32 Medic on the Enterprise. Smart, clever and a bit danger-loving. Dark hair, blue eyes.
Casey Affleck


[UHURA] 25ish -African American. Brilliant, beautiful, heroic and FUN!, Uhura is almost tom-boyish - as if she grew up in a houseful of brothers.
Meagan Good


[SULU] 25-32 -Asian American male (preferably Japanese). Helmsman on the Enterprise. Extremely fit, capable and dedicated. A bit of a wildcat
Nelson Lee


[MONTGOMERY(SCOTTY) SCOTT] -28-32 a brilliant ship's engineer. Must be able to do a flawless Scottish accent!
Andrew Lincoln

Top that! The key is to find actors that look the part based on the breakdowns (not the original actors) and to not cast A-listers in minor parts (like saying Halle Berry as Uhura).
 
One of the many things that make "Bones" one of my favorite characters was that he was very much NOT "danger-loving".

I loved how he was always the one to voice the common sense, emotional reaction to dangerous situations. "Dammit, Jim, what the HELL are we doing?!?"...
 
John_Picard said:It is not uncommon, in the military, for an exceptionally young person to have raced up the ranks.
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It's not? Which branch of the service have you served in, if you don't mind my asking? Because in the United States Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force, and United States Marine Corps, at least, time-in-grade is a key component of the promotion structure. And you are required to spend a certain minimum time in any given grade before you are even ELIGIBLE for promotion.

Sure, some "hot-shots" get promoted as soon as they hit the lowermost limit. And some people get passed over once, twice, three times, before they "take the hint" and go find another line of work... (something that Ben Finney should have done!)

But your comment about people getting promoted super-fast is inconsistent with REAL military protocols, at least in the United States. So, what is your personal experience with this?
 
A lot that happened on TOS was inconsistent with real military protocols (and never mind modern Trek). The producers applied a sort of American WW II era gloss to romantic notions about 19th century navies and explorers and came up with this peculiar thing.

Of course, part of the argument about these actors' ages has to do with the fact that on the original series a number of characters serving under Kirk should be up to a decade older than him - Scotty, for example.

In the process of casting we often saw oddities like an older, grey-haired security chief later being recycled as an older, grey-haired admiral ("Devil In The Dark" and "The Ultimate Computer"). So there's no point at this late date nitpicking the relative ages of the characters in TOS.
 
I can only say, I sure hope this isn't official, because if it is, they're screwing around with a lot of stuff. Bones was not danger-loving, Uhura was not tom-boyish, and making the obvious assumption that this is set before WNMHGB, Sulu was not the Helmsman. Not to mention that if it's before WNMHGB, Uhura and Bones shouldn't even be there, unless they're gonna make the excuse that the two were just taking a short break from their duties during that very important excursion. (Like in the book "Enterprise: the First Adventure.") If that's the case, then you'd better expect to see Bill Shatner in the movie, because if they're gonna stoop to saying that Bones and Uhura were just on leave and Sulu was just filling in for the Astrophysicist, then I don't think a little thing like death will stop them from bringing old Kirk back.
For that reason, I really don't believe that this is an official sheet. Unless it takes place after WNMHGB (which I might be able to accept but find unlikely), there's just too many fundamental breaks from canon (which, as I said can be excused, but weakly). At this time, I'm more optimistic about Abrams' respect for what has come before.
 
This is one of the cases where "honouring and respecting canon" means that they are changing/taking out the things they didnt like or didnt work.

I want to see Sulu at the helm. It makes much more sense. I'm not bothered about what he did in WNMHGB.
 
I don't want to see Sulu at all (that is to say, none of the minor cast). I'm actually really hoping that this movie won't feature all of the bridge crew, not even McCoy. But, I'm keeping an open mind. Still, you didn't respond to Uhura being tom-boyish or McCoy being danger-loving. Even accepting Sulu at the helm, those are some pretty major re-characterizations.
 
Characters are not static. There's nothing to say that the McCoy we knew wasn't a little danger-loving in his youth.
 
It's just not who he is. Again, I hope that this casting sheet is not authentic because I'm optimistic that the creators will do better than this.
 
Lumen said:
Characters are not static. There's nothing to say that the McCoy we knew wasn't a little danger-loving in his youth.
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I think he just completely ignored your post in responding to... your post.
 
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