Maybe I’m just too tired to be a Shatner fan anymore?
September 20th, 2008
I wrote a really long piece about Shatner’s and the fan’s behaviour regarding his involvement in the new Star Trek film, it made me really mad, made me not like Shatner, made me sick of hearing about him, so I deleted it and wrote an abridged version.
JJ Abrams had this very reasonable thing to say about Shatner’s involvement or lack of in the film:
“It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn’t quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn’t want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the ‘Trek’ canon and consistency of storytelling. It’s funny — a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that.”
All very reasonable in my mind. This movie is not about a 77 year old Captain Kirk being brought back to life, it’s about a young Kirk and his crew. Shatner apparently is upset because no one offered him a part, well because they never officially had a part I suspect, I mean they tried to write one in but it didn’t work. You don’t offer someone a role when you don’t have it, besides which Shatner has been quite vocal in the past and I’m sure in private that he wouldn’t do a cameo. So this video makes me like Shatner quite a bit less than I was already starting to. I mean really, get a life.
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Categories: Star Trek | Tags: cameo, Captain Kirk, jj abrams, Shatner, Star Trek, Star Trek film, William Shatner
Maybe I am showing my age….. I remember Shatner in the originals of ST.
Now I like him in Boston Legal ….
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By Lee on September 21st, 2008 | Reply
I was loving him Boston Legal although I starting to get a little annoyed about the lack of character growth for him, they just seem to be doing the same thing over and over.
He’s just starting to really piss me off with the Star Trek movie stuff, I also remember a time when he would dis the fans and the franchise.
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Eh… he’s always been a bit self-important. When he started being able to laugh at himself (Priceline commercials come to mind), I started liking him more. But there’s always been that hubris there.
As for this… Abrams seems correct in his decisions and statements. Shatner isn’t even denying any of it. Abrams never offered him a part, cameo or not, and that was a good decision, as Shatner says. Where Shatner falls into the trap of hubris again is when he starts talking about how he brought Kirk back in his books, as if that’s somehow relevant to the topic at hand.
I’m sure if Abrams was going to write a movie involving Kirk coming back, he could pull that off, and it’s a good bet that Shatner would be involved. That’s not the project this time, though.
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