Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Difficulties of Casting Shatner in "Star Trek"


Worstpreviews, Roberto Orci, co-writer of director JJ Abrams' highly anticipated "Star Trek" movie, told Sci Fi Wire that there's still a possibility that William Shatner may appear in the movie. However, that's less of a possibility than before, since the film is currently in production.

"There are two things," said Orci. "One, from our point of view, we are still hoping to find a way. Secondly, one of the difficulties that was brought up and discussed with Shatner when we all met him and pitched him ideas is that Trek fans are sticklers for their canon. [And,] unfortunately, Shatner's Capt. Kirk was killed in Star Trek VII [1994's Generations]."

There was no such problem bringing back Shatner's co-star, Leonard Nimoy, as an older Spock, joining a cast of new actors to inhabit the roles of the Star Trek crew. But Kirk's death complicates the matter of bringing Shatner back, said Orci.

"The difficulty there is not just ignoring that or explaining it in an unsatisfactory way merely to get him back in," he added. "So that is the struggle: the rigors of canon and not phoning it in just to have a cameo."

Still, it could happen, Orci atested. "From my point of view, it's a very long shoot, and things change. It's just whether we can figure it out."

Another possible problem: The ongoing writers' strike prohibits members of the Writers Guild of America - which includes Orci - from making any changes to the script until the strike is settled.

6 comments:

Jordan said...

Can't it turn out that his "Katra" was stored in an ottoman or on a USB flash drive or something?

JPX said...

Ha! Or maybe they could bring the time ribbon back and save his ass!

Jordan said...

Or they could do what Michael Crichton did with Ian Malcolm in The Lost World (the Jurassic Park sequel) and just bring him back, no questions asked.

(Malcolm died in Jurassic Park and then he just, like, shows up at the beginning of The Lost World with barely a line of prose (if that) to address the contradiction.)

It's like, come on; just give us a do-over. We're not any more interested in the bullshit explanation than you are. I mean, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock is a halfway decent movie, but come on. They had to throw away an entire precious original-cast cinematic outing just to deal with a fickle actor changing his mind back and forth. Just put the guy back in! Who cares!

Octopunk said...

Crichton used the cheap loophole of somebody in the group saying Malcolm didn't make it. Then in the second book that statement is attributed to "reports" as if it wasn't someone who would've been in the room who said it, but rather some ill-informed outsider.

Spock's dream sequence, yo! He could even say "logic dictates this is a dream" and Kirk could go "Yes!" and they could get on with the scene. I bet the fans would love it.

JPX said...

I think the real issue is that Shatner looks like a train wreck now.

Jordan said...

Oh, come on. He looks fine. They can photograph him carefully etc.

Star Trek V was the same year as the previous Indy film. If Harrison Ford can get away with it, so can Shatner. Ford has to star in a whole movie and play a believable action hero (running, punching etc.) Shatner just has to sit there and say something pithy while wearing a shapeless smock.

Malevolent

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