It’s a holiday in the USA, but it seems that Memorial Day won’t stop new STAR TREK BEYOND posters from hitting our inbox! Today, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Zoe Saldana join the other cast getting their own character posters, featuring Scotty, Sulu, and Uhura among the Swarm vessels.
Unfortunately, it seems that both Cho and Saldana’s photos have been mirrored, as their Starfleet delta badges are shown on the wrong side of their uniforms – a strange choice for such an iconic look.
UPDATE:
Paramount has released revised ‘Sulu’ and ‘Uhura’ posters, correcting the placement of the Starfleet badges (though the photos themselves remain reversed).
Here are the original Sulu and Uhura poster designs, with mirrored Starfleet delta placement:
As with all of the BEYOND one-sheets, you can find high-resolution versions in our poster gallery.
After notorious hypochondriac Lt. Barclay is treated for a real illness, his reaction to the cure sends a strange virus throughout the Enterprise – and soon the entire crew is “de-evolving” back into primitive beasts from their homeworlds’ past! Data and Picard must save the ship – before the captain loses himself to the affliction!
STAR TREK film composer Michael Giacchino, who announced the start of BEYOND scoring sessions earlier this week, took to social media to sneak preview some snippets from the recording.
The classic Trek fanfare, which has launched both the 2009 film and Into Darkness to the films’ end credits sequence:
Walter Rodriguez (left) and Alex Acuña (right) bang out a drumbeat:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF7mERNFdq8/
Giacchino, who is known for his pun-filled track titles, also snapped these photos of the sheet music for four entries:
A Swarm Reception
Thank Your Lucky Star Date
Motorcycles of Belief
Trick or Treaty
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF7bLJlFdkU/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BF7cXTsldmS/
And for those of you who were worried that the recording sessions were running late, or falling behind, or scheduled at the last minute – the music cover pages clearly show a four-day recording schedule, nearly two months before the film’s release.
Well, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise: Funko announced today that they’ll be rolling out a line of STAR TREK BEYOND-themed line of their omnipresent Pop! Vinyl figures later this summer, to coincide with the release of the upcoming film.
[metaslider id=24847]
All seven regular Starfleet crew are represented with their own 4.5″-or-so tall figure, along with Sofia Boutella’s Jaylah and Idris Elba’s Krall.
These nine figures have been projected for a July release – for those obsessive Funko Pop! collectors out there, these are definitely a grouping to add to your set!
There’s no denying the promotional push for Star Trek Beyond hit warp 9.975 on Friday evening when Paramount Pictures staged a fan event for the ages.
From VIPs to exclusive footage, the studio provided an immersive experience for fans and media, sparing no expense, and capturing the unique emotion of a diverse (and sometimes divisive) fan base.
Waiting to enter the event hall – also known as Paramount’s Stage 31.
As a starting point, the location was an inspired choice. Welcoming fans onto the Paramount sets, where the bulk of 700-plus hours of Star Trek has been filmed, was a great move. (Much preferred over the myriad of choices where an event like this could have been staged in Los Angeles.) The setting provided an intimate connection to the series and the creatives behind what ends up on the screen.
That connection was enhanced by a brilliant theater-in-the-round setting for the night’s first event, a Q & A with a number of cast and crew, on Stage 31. The theater set resembled a supped up Star Trek conference room straight of Utopia Planitia (think Federation HQ in Into Darkness combined with any number of observation lounge sets in Star Trek history).
Circled by nine screens, so everyone had a great view, host Adam Savage of Mythbusters did a superb job of engaging fans with the VIPs on stage.
“Mythbusters” veteran Adam Savage takes the stage to kick off the event.
The evening began with the conference room style Q & A with Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin and executive producer JJ Abrams. That session, which included the breaking news bombshell from Abrams that the studio was in settlement discussions with Axanar Productions, was followed by an intimate, spirited and frank conversation with Trek’s biggest stars: Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock) and Karl Urban (McCoy).
Seeing the Enterprise trifecta so connected with each other, their characters, the fans, the moment, was impressive, if not surprising, based on their set interactions from the previous two films.
Following the Q & A, all of the attendees were escorted outside of Stage 31 to a ceremony honoring the great Leonard Nimoy, as the street connecting those particular stages was christened “Leonard Nimoy Way” – and everyone cheered at the special surprise announcement.
It took approximately 20 minutes to get everyone relocated into the huge bleachers framing both the walkway and a small stage with the Trek’s ubiquitous insignia. With Nimoy’s family in attendance, including his son Adam, Zachary Quinto toasted his late friend and mentor in a moving tribute.
The crowd and I salute Leonard Nimoy during the street dedication ceremony. (Photo: Paramount Pictures)
From there, the large Stage 32 doors slid open to reveal a standing-room only area where fans would be treated to the new Star Trek Beyond trailer and about 15 minutes of exclusive footage. But first, everyone was asked to turn their phones over to the Orion girls on hand.
The movement of the fans onto Stage 32 was quick, and soon everyone was enjoying new Trek footage on the big screen. The new trailer blew everyone away, with the crowd roaring its approval for every frame.
Spoiler warning!
As soon as the trailer finished, we were presented with two scenes not yet available to the public – beginning with an extended look at the Kirk/McCoy conversation that opens the theatrical trailer.
The emotion of an extended conversation between Kirk and McCoy sharing a drink was reminiscent of both the Kirk/McCoy conversation from The Wrath of Khan, and maybe more poignantly, the classic Pike/Boyce exchange the basically launched Star Trek at the beginning of “The Cage.”
The scene is clearly early on in the film and follows a “Data’s Day” type opening in which Kirk’s captain’s log is recounting some of the mundane, day-to-day events the crew is slogging through on their long journey.
It was a powerful scene, with warmth, humor and emotion, which appears to connect universes and continuity all the way from “The Cage” to the amazing bar confrontation between Kirk and Pike in the 2009Trek film. If this scenes heartfelt impact successfully sets the tone for the entire film. Star Trek fans are in for a treat.
The other extended scene previewed for fans was not fully intact, and not completely finished in terms of effects and scoring, but showed a large portion of the now well-documented attack from Krall’s forces that disable the Enterprise and cause the crew to abandon ship.
The style of the attack presented is certainly unique in Star Trek lore (unless you want to talk about Voyager’s “The Swarm”), and its unrelenting, frenetic pace did not overwhelm the emotion and feeling of loss that was overcoming the crew as they struggled to save the ship and their lives.
The footage ended with a few more quick shots of different action scenes, included some Jaylah fight scenes, her taking a seat in the captain’s chair, and some shots from what appears to be some sort of slave labor camp where the Enterprise crew is being held, among others. All of the footage felt like it was too big to be contained by the screen, which ultimately is what every tentpole summer sci-fi blockbuster strives for.
End spoilers!
But the night wasn’t over. As soon as the last frame of footage was shown, a huge curtain swung open to reveal what can only be described as the ideal party setting for any Star Trek fan. Costumes and props expertly displayed, interactive photo ops, vendors, food and drink… and a number of Paramount and Bad Robot executives in attendance and walking the room to get feedback from the fans.
I found myself in conversations with three different studio executives, all of whom were interested in discussing the event and the film – wanting to know everything from what I liked, to what I was looking forward to, and what I wanted to see more of.
Kirk’s “Yorktown” uniform and Jaylah’s warrior costume were on display, among others.
The highlight of the night for me came when I crossed paths with Star Trek Beyond co-writer Doug Jung. As I was working my way through the crowd, I noticed him walking with Bad Robot executive Lindsey Weber and I stopped him and said simply, “Hey, thanks for your work. The film looks great.”
He immediately stopped and could not have been more engaged, thanking me for the compliment, shaking my hand and then asking me to tell him what it was that connected with me tonight. That was an easy answer.
I told him that I love when Star Trek films feel like an episode of Star Trek. “I love when it’s about the crew and their small relationships that, of course, feel big, because a movie has to feel big.” (I told him that this is why I defend Star Trek: Insurrection, because it feels like a great two-hour episode of Star Trek.)
Catching up with ‘Star Trek Beyond’ co-writer Doug Jung.
He acknowledged that that was one of their goals – to really show the crew in their day-to- day life in the midst of the five-year mission. He wanted the ship to feel lived in, something that was masterfully accomplished in the extended scene shown to fans with a captain’s log voiceover montage of Kirk walking through the ship, talking about their routine and his own unrest.
We discussed the intense emotion shared between Kirk and McCoy in their conversation glimpsed in the trailer, sharing a drink on Kirk’s birthday. In The Wrath of Khan, the scene featured McCoy counseling Kirk on his internal battle with age, while in this case McCoy counsels Kirk on the mixed emotion of losing his father on the day he was born and the motivations for his life choices.
He was clearly happy to hear me acknowledge that the emotion of that scene came through loud and clear, and he verified that they were definitely trying to capture the tone set in previous incarnations of that moment (from both the ‘life choices quandary’ of “The Cage” and ‘the birthday angst’ seen in The Wrath of Khan).
Starfleet phasers and medical kit props on display. (Photo: Bruce Gibson)
Ultimately the film’s box office success will rely mostly on the finished product and critical reception, but the evening as a whole seemed to completely justify Paramount’s decision to delay their promotional blitz until after the 2016 version of superhero films released in May.
The studio is clearly behind the film and planning a two-month leadup that will culminate in the brilliant idea to launch the world premiere on the eve of Comic Con, a night that will likely even surpass everything accomplished at this incredible Star Trek fan event.
Following what seems to be a daily trend of STAR TREK BEYONDiposter releases, Paramount has now put out character posters for Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin), continuing yesterday’s pattern.
As always, you can find all the BEYOND posters in our gallery.
After bright young lieutenant commits suicide aboard the Enterprise, Counselor Deanna Troi is called upon to investigate the man’s death – and while she’s digging into why Dan Kwan killed himself, Troi begins to receive flashes of a psychic vision which may reveal a murder from years in the past!
This week, several media outlets who were lucky enough to visit the Vancouver film set of STAR TREK BEYOND back in August released expanded interviews with the cast, covering many topics from writing to production.
We’ve poured through five different reports out in the past few days, and have picked out the most interesting segments – the below excerpts are sourced from Collider, Nerdist, io9, Slashfilm, and this other Collider report.
* * *
Simon Pegg and Chris Pine on the flexibility of the writing team to cast input:
Simon Pegg:
We sent an email out to the cast whenever we got here saying, “Look. Look at your character. If you have any feelings or any kind of impulses, you know them better than we do. Let us know.” And that’s been really helpful. And it’s been great to be part of both sides of it in a way.
Chris Pine:
If one person has a great idea then you go with that’ if the script that’s written is great then we go with that. If Karl [Urban] has a great easter egg he wants to throw in from the Original Series we’re like, “Oh that’s fucking great!”
If I wanna do like a side gag or something, you just kind of –There’s a lot of trust I think, there’s a lot of trust to Simon, Simon has a lot of trust in us, and Justin as well, that we know where the characters are, what in the dynamics work, and what might be fun to do. I guess it evens the playing field and everybody has the room to play.
For BEYOND – unlike the two previous films – the Enterprise bridge and corridor builds were built on gimbal systems to shake and turn the constructed sets as if the “ship” was really rocking in space, rather than leaving it all up to the actors and camera motion.
Zoe Saldana:
It’s fucking awesome. That made me want to kind of do a little more. It looks amazing. … So it keeps you always…it keeps you at the edge of your seat kinda going, ‘Oh, my god. What’s going to happen?’ These people are being tossed everywhere. It wasn’t the kind of set where they are jerking the camera.
You have to see it. It’s really comical. You always have that one camera guy: ‘And, action!’ It used to be J.J. too! He’d be, like, jerking the camera… This time, the set really moved. So they went all out to give us that experience, and it was cool.
There is one set that rotates 360 degrees, and there are two sets that shake a lot.
Anton Yelchin:
I feel like a kid playing make-believe. Except now someone has invested millions of dollars into making your make-believe really fucking awesome.
Chris Pine:
What did we do the other day? We were in some dark places of the ship and it was slanted 65 degrees so you had to run up and being tackled by someone, and it’s a lot of fun.
It’s actually way more physical in that regard than the first two films. Something I could equate it to would maybe be in the first one when me and Sulu have this fight outside. It’s definitely the most physical film.
I would say once the setup is established, three quarters of the film is just nonstop action beat after action beat. I wouldn’t wanna scare anybody, I don’t think it’s kind of senseless blowing shit up for blowing shit up’s sake, but I think it has a real drive to it and I think that Justin’s aware of not wanting to dumb the audience down that way.
Director Justin Lin has also brought a new eye to the Enterprise, changing up how the camera presents the vessel’s interior.
Karl Urban:
I think it’s one of the great things about Justin — he’s got his eye keenly on the macro. It’s all about enhancing the performance and enhancing the visuals and actually bringing space into the bridge.
Whereas, perhaps in J.J.’s version, the bridge was really brightly lit and stuff but space is out there. Justin really wants to bring space to us. I think that’s a really interesting concept.
There’s been a great deal of talk about the vast number of new creature designs that have been created for BEYOND, up to fifty new aliens (in honor of the franchise’s fiftieth anniversary).
Zoe Saldana:
There are a lot of 3:30 AM call times. I heard one time there was like a 1:30 AM call time for somebody. It was brutal for that person and the crew that was handling them.
So it’s great. It’s always a fun thing to see just the opportunity that each department has to showcase their work. And you are going to have a lot of aliens. That’s one thing that I always like to see.
If we’re doing a film in space, I don’t want to see just human beings in space. It’s so boring. We must be like the dullest species ever. So we have a variation of a lot of species.
The opening act of the film starts out as “a day in the life” of the Enterprise crew, years into their Five Year Mission – but the time alone in space has taken its toll on the Starfleet officers.
Chris Pine:
What I love about the beginning of this film is that it takes into account what it may be like if you’re on a submarine or something and you’re with the same people day in and day out for months and years. It’s the second year of a five year mission, so what is that kind of repetition like?
How you kind of get out of the day to day doldrums and doing nothing but kind of flying the ship and trying to find stuff. And these films always take place during big moments of high drama, but what happens the day before the high drama?
Zoe Saldana:
They’re at that point when you see them for the first time. … We’ve been working for two years straight. We’re exhausted. I think we kinda need a break. It’s not like we hate each other, but we need a break as people. We’ve just been working and sharing the same space. That’s how you start the movie. That’s where you see us in the beginning.
Every relationship in this movie will be tested on a very, very high scale. The great thing about this installment is that it’s not only Kirk and Spock and J.J.’s Spock and Uhura, his twist, it’s also Chekov and Scotty. It’s Sulu. So I’m really excited about this because now it’s an ensemble more than ever.
Lastly, Zoe Saldana took some time to address the status of Spock and Uhura’s relationship.
Zoe Saldana:
Everybody’s relationship, all of their dynamics are tested. Spock and Uhura are going to be tested as well. To what extent? I don’t know. But I mean they made it in the show. They were old in the show. [laughs]
What more can I say without giving it away? They are in each other’s lives in a very passionate way. So you will see that. To what extent? I don’t know. But I think Spock is absolutely in love with Uhura. I think he’s crazy about her. And if Uhura is done with him, it’s going to kill him. [laughs]
I’m joking. But he really loves me more than I do him.
The news just keeps rolling along today, as Paramount has released yet another set of STAR TREK BEYOND publicity photos featuring the Enterprise crew, Jaylah, and their adventure on the unknown planet from July’s film.
[metaslider id=24809]
A collection of behind-the-scenes shots has also made their way public today, with director Justin Lin and the cast on both the Enterprise set and the Squamish forest location in Vancouver – confirming our set report from all the way back in July.
The rollout of STAR TREK BEYOND marketing continues today, with yet another set of posters for July’s film. Following yesterday’s international design featuring a group of the movie’s cast, Paramount has now released the first character posters for Karl Urban’s McCoy, and Sofia Boutella’s Jaylah.
Each character is eclipsed by a wave of Swarm ships and a bright flare in the shape of the Starfleet delta, just like in the character-based signage seen in Cannes earlier this month.
We expect more of these to come in the next few days and weeks, so stay tuned!
One interesting note, it seems that the Star Trek title is included in some international variants (like this crop of the German McCoy poster), so Paramount appears to be playing on cultural awareness of the Trek franchise in the United States.
