A rumored new Star Trek film might once again recast the roles. Do you think that these characters are still inherent to Trek? Would you rather see them once again on television?
Jeff Bond: I think Trek can work on the big screen but you have to come up with a compelling reason WHY it should be on the big screen. I do feel it would be tough to launch a movie franchise with new characters–the Abrams films and the The Next Generation movies to an extent worked because the characters had become icons that translated onto the big screen. You would need superstar actors (something Trek movies could rarely afford) to start out with fresh characters in a new movie series.
Rich Handley: It all boils down to finding a good script reason for bringing characters back, then finding the right actors to portray them. If you can justify the story with a quality plot and strong dialogue and a meaty message, then do it. And preferably on television rather than in a movie. That being said, I’d be all for a new movie series with an entirely new cast playing entirely new characters in entirely new eras. The Star Trek universe is limitless, and I’d gladly embrace something new just as readily as I’d welcome a return to the old, provided it was worth watching. Like it said, it comes down to good writing and casting.
Carol Pinchefsky: I’m okay with new a new Star Trek movie, because more Trek is better than less. But Star Trek has proven its success again and again on television. I would really love an expanded Trek universe on television.
Peter Briggs: I’m pessimistic. But hopeful. After the opening scenes of Star Trek Beyond (until the destruction – again! – of the Enterprise), that film felt as if there were no fresh ideas at Paramount, and that’s something we also saw before with the Picard movies – with the exception of First Contact, I don’t feel the other Next Generation films worked, as they all felt like small ideas with talking heads in bland rooms, saved by expansive VFX work. Making a two hour movie requires big, outside-the-box thinking. It all boils down to a script. I’ve written on a lot of existing I.P., and making a successful extension of an existing subject depends to an extent on how immersed and inventive your writer is. Be a fan, but don’t reverse-engineer and replicate what came before. Writing on Strange New Worlds would be a treat, because there’s so much history in the original show, so many characters and story strands, that you can achieve terrific fan-service if you go that route. But having to come up with a two-hour self-encapsulated Trek theatrical experience is something else entirely. Although none of that means anything if you still don’t buy into the camaraderie of your core characters.
Image courtesy CBS/Paramount
Ian Spelling: I’ve not heard about yet another recasting. Not sure how I’d feel about that. But if someone makes new films with new characters? I’d check that out. That said, just because I loved what I saw on Discovery, I am super-stoked to see Anson Mount, Ethan Peck and Rebecca Romijn continue to reinvent Pike, Spock and Number One on Strange New Worlds.
Bob Greenberger: It all comes down to whose hands it is placed in. After reading Quentin Tarantino’s comments about his proposed story, I am perfectly fine with it never getting made. I have no idea what the others who have come and gone had considered. Star Trek will always start with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the Enterprise. A new interpretation of those characters, that universe, and its universal optimism could work in the right hands. Paramount has been notoriously bad at picking those hands and changing their minds since the 1970s.
John Kirk: The JJ-films have somewhat jaded me to the notion of a new version of The Original Series on the big screen. I think Abrams’ greatest contribution to the franchise is to show die-hard fans how vulnerable it is to change and personalization. Abrams wanted to put his own mark on the franchise for that purpose, in my opinion and I am leery of directors like Tarantino who also have that streak of self-indulgence in their productions. In my mind, it’s a vulnerable property that begs to be changed for the sake of making it more relevant to modern times.
For me, The Original Series is a classic, It shouldn’t be changed. Perhaps I may seem simply like a traditional gatekeeper, but it seems wrong to alter the make-up of a franchise that has delighted fans for fifty years. Only with new shows like Discovery and Picard where the basic episodic nature of Trek has been changed, or canon has been altered without care to the continuity of the franchise, have we seen schism within the franchise where the atmosphere of Trek fandom has become toxic on a scale that I’ve never seen before.
I think the ego of new showrunners, whose careers have seen a different type of television storytelling than what was typically associated with Trek, has played an enormous role in how it is portrayed, on the large or small screen. Creators want to make their own mark on a production, and it’s difficult to do that with an existing fandom like Star Trek. But, the presence of a new age of Star Trek fans has made it possible for new creators to introduce it in ways that will allow it to find a foothold and succeed, at the expense of upsetting die-hards who are, sadly getting older and disappearing.
I can handle change, but a fundamentally new production would be meant for them; not me, I’m afraid.
John E. Price: The MCU has changed the game. Movies were once thought to be necessarily bound to two-hour stories or, at most, trilogies. The MCU has proven that a well-thought-out complex story can unfold over a series of movies and that audiences will be on-board if it’s done well. Star Trek effectively invented the idea of a cinematic universe, it’d be criminal to think they couldn’t do it when starting with a new story from scratch. That will require a lot more talent in the writing and production than has been evident for two decades, however, and a lot more creativity than “let’s cast a new Kirk!”
Larry Young: If they recast the whole crew a mere decade later, I’m not sure there’s a forceful enough presence of the IP in the world for people to buy in like they do the various Supermans and Spider-Mans and Batmans. It’s like that famous line in Stand by Me: “Boy, you don’t know nothing. Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman’s a real guy. There’s no way a cartoon could beat up a real guy. That’s the difference to Star Trek fans. Captain Kirk is a real guy; Chris Pine is just an actor.
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