JJ Abrams’ Enterprise Feels Fully Functional
Harry Knowles got the chance to see some early footage from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. The few short clips he saw were early edits without proper cg or color timing. The one bit I found particularly interesting is the first description of the bridge of the USS Enterprise:
“For the first time in the history of Star Trek, [the bridge] looked amazingly functional. It echoes that classic Trek look – but imagine if you handed that design to the folks at APPLE and said… Make it really work. I instantly believed in the functionality of everything. That’s hard to quantify, but it is true. Remember when you saw the war room underground on Hoth in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK? How it just felt functional – that’s what this looked. And it looked Star Trek, without looking as cheap as Star Trek. It was a tech-fetishists wet dream.”
You can read Harry’s full report on AICN.
New Terminators Look Retro in Terminator 4
Character designer Miles Teves explained how the new Terminator 4 will go back to the future in the design of the new Terminators.
“I did all kinds of work on the new sort of Terminator… uh, I can’t describe without being in breach of contract… But there is a new endo-skelleton-type super Terminator that in a way is actually cruder than any of the ones from any of the other films,” explains Teves on the Fanboy Confidential podcast. “This one sort of takes place before all the other films in a weird way. So everything in the film is actually supposed to be cruder technology than we see even in the first Terminator.”
Teves, who worked on Legend and Robocop, complains that filmmakers, like JJ Abrams’ Star Trek or Lucas with the Star Wars prequels, have a tendency like going more futuristic with the technology (Enterprise) when they should be going more retro. But Miles promises this will be different.
“It’s very different. It will probably be the most different film of the [series],” says Teves. ”…the first three films are essentially these hard driving chase films where you have this unstoppable force pursuing the hero. This is dramatically different in its structure and characters. It’s sort of the John Conner story, but strangely enough John Conner was not the main character. There is another guy who is the main protagonist of the film.”
This basically confirms rumors that Marcus (played in the film by Sam Worthington) will actually be the lead in the film, while John Connor (Christian Bale) is actually more of a supporting character.
“It completely takes place in the machine world in the post apocalyptic aftermath,” says Teves. “There will be lots of hardware and cool toys to be sold. And hopefully they will not water them down and they’ll be as cool as the designs. And there was cool designs. A lot of tanks, a lot of vehicles, a lot of weird machines.”
Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese in Terminator 4
Anton Yelchin (JJ Abrams’ Star Trek, Charlie Bartlett) is in negotiations to star as John Connor’s father Kyle Reese in director McG’s Terminator 4 (which is still untitled… I say they just call it T4: The Future Begins). Yelchin would play a teenage version of Reese, who was played by Michael Biehn in the original James Cameron film.
According to Terminator mythology, Reese was born after the first war, and survived the capture and killing of his fellow humans only to serve as a Sonderkommando in one of Skynet’s concentration camps. A a resistance movement, led by John Connor, freed Reese and others from Skynet. Reese volunteered to travel back in time to the year 1984, in order to protect the young Sarah Connor, the known mother of resistance leader John Connor, from a Terminator sent by Skynet. On the run from the Terminator (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), Reese and Sarah shared a night of intimacy, in which her future son was conceived. Reese was later killed by his own pipe-bomb while attempting to destroy the Terminator.
In Terminator 4, Reese befriends Marcus (played by Avatar’s Sam Worthington), an early version of the Terminator cyborg played in previous films by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Christian Bale plays a 30-year-old John Connor. Terminator 4 is the first film in a three film story arc. The more and more I hear about the plot of this film, the more excited I get. I’m not sure about Yelchin as Reese, but there is no denying that he’s a talented actor. I’m very surprised at the level of talent they have been able to attract to this project so far.
David Campbell Wilson, John Brancato and Michael Ferris wrote the screenplay. Paul Haggis has also had talks about coming on board to do some script rewrites before principal photography begins in early May.
Discuss: Do you think Anton Yelchin will be a good Kyle Reese?
JJ Abrams: Star Trek won’t look like a Green Screen Movie
On Friday afternoon, JJ Abrams and the cast and crew of Star Trek sat down with TrekMovie.com to field questions from the fans. Here are the informational highlights:
- The first movie trailer first will “hopefully be in theaters early to mid summer.”
- Production is scheduled to wrap the beginning of April 2008.
- Long time JJ Abrams’s collaborator and fried Greg Grunberg WAS gonna be in Star Trek, but had to bow out because he is attached to another movie. JJ jokes “Who knows, maybe he’ll be a tribble.”
- They are anticipating about 1000 visual effects shots.
But the most interesting bit of the chat was JJ Abrams talking about how he wants the film not to look effects heavy:
“My goal is to make Trek REAL — that is to say, not have it be camp — not have it be phony — not have it look like a scrap of green screen was used anywhere,” says Star Trek director JJ Abrams. “Of course, this is Star Trek. We’re using every trick in the book. But WHEREVER WE CAN, we are shooting on sets — either built on sound stages or expanding upon found locations. This is important. What this means is that the movie won’t have that ‘actors performing in a blue or green void then placed in front of a spaceship set’ feeling that makes me insane.”
“One of our really talented designers recently commented online how we shot on a green screen set and what a shame that was, since we could have built something incredible. And she was right — for that one scene, which will last for maybe thirty seconds on screen, we built only pieces and were surrounded by green. But that is the exception. We can’t build EVERYTHING, and need to make this film on a budget (partly because that’s the $ we have, and partly because I want the studio to see Trek as viable!). The Enterprise will be a combo of the physical and the virtual. A photo is forthcoming!”
Read the full shat on TrekMovie.