Thursday, March 5, 2009

Star Trek @ WonderCon 2009

The Star Trek movie panel was one of Saturday's highlights at this year's WonderCon. We knew that "a special guest" would be attending for the panel and it was pretty easy to guess that it would probably be J.J. Abrams. It was also pretty easy to guess that some of the cast members would probably be rounding out the panel -- it was just a question of who. After a really energetic intro, J.J. brought out his fellow exec producers/writers Roberto Orci and Bryan Burk and Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock). The fans, of course, were thrilled!

(Apologies for the less-than-stellar video quality -- all the people walking around wreaked havoc on my camera's light sensor during this panel.)

We got to see the brand new trailer for the movie and it was incredible. I wasn't the only one in the audience who got chills watching it. They imploded a planet in the trailer. Imploded a planet in a matter of seconds. They also showed Kirk on the losing end of a bar fight during a clearly misspent time in his youth before he joined Starfleet Academy. The trailer included the moment when Kirk first takes command of the Enterprise. Bones (aka: Dr. McCoy) says that there's no one qualified to take over the captain's role (the context seemed to be that the original Enterprise captain--Captain Christopher Pike, perhaps?-- had been killed during a battle). Kirk replies that yes, there is, and the next shot we see is him taking his place in the "big chair" for the first time.

[Edited to add that the trailer is online now at http://www.startrekmovie.com/]


If the new stars of the Trek franchise were overwhelmed or (not unreasonably) terrified by the thousands of devoted fans who came to see them at WonderCon, they did a great job of hiding those feelings. JJ and Chris were especially appreciative and respectful, with JJ buttering up the audience with a well-worded soundbyte about how he knows Trek fans are smart enough to understand that the movie has to appeal to both them and the uninitiated to successfully reboot the 40+ year old franchise. It might have been a good soundbyte to get out there, but it's also a smart one that makes sense.

More pics and video from the panel below--including JJ and Chris performing a live "Star Trek Rap!"









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