‘Girls on Film’ Recreate Star Trek 2009 Scene – Recasting Kirk & Pike With Actresses

Have you ever wondered what Star Trek might be like if James T. Kirk was female? (Jane T. Kirk?) Well The Girls On Film project has, and decided to take a crack at it by recreating a scene from the 2009 Star Trek movie with actresses playing the parts of Kirk and Pike. Check it out below.

 

Girls on Film take on Star Trek

In short, "The Girls on Film" project describes its mission thusly "we take great film scenes between men and recreate them with women." So far the fledgling project has taken on scenes from The Town and Fight Club, and this week they released their third scene, one from the 2009 Star Trek movie. They chose the "I dare you to do better" bar talk between young James T. Kirk and Captain Pike. Here it is:

The Girls on Film version is pretty impressive. Here is the original for comparison

The Girls on Film team is comprised of actresses Ashleigh Harrington (who played Kirk) and Cat McCormick, along with director Jeff Hammond. For the Star Trek scene they brought in actress Katerina Taxia to play Pike.  

In an email to TrekMovie, the GoF team talked about why they do what they do:

What is the goal of The Girls on Film?

Ashleigh: Part of our goal in creating The Girls on Film was to satisfy our own creativity and passion for movies by putting ourselves in their leading roles and director’s chair and making ourselves a part of the work we would like to be involved with.

Flipping the genders reflects our collective quirkiness; we want to have fun with our work! Additionally, we want to give our viewers a fresh reason to tune into our episodes. Go online and you can see tons of movie recreations people have filmed on handi-cams in their basements, so lets approach the recreation thing from a new angle: what would a female Kirk be like? I wonder, if Pike was a woman, would she be bitchy or motherly?

With the popularity of Youtube and social networking over the last few years, as storytellers, we have this incredible gift of an audience at our fingertips that is hungry for great entertainment and looking for it 24/7. We want to cater to those people and make something unique and of quality.

Jeff Hammond: The Girls on Film concept is awesome and will inspire viewership. Because of this, people are going to be able to see that we can act, we can direct, shoot, and create professional work. There are multiple ways to get into the Entertainment industry and we’re just taking a new approach.

Q: Why chose Star Trek and this particular scene?

Ashleigh: Star Trek has been at the top of our list since we started dreaming up this project. Its such an iconic, positive story that has inspired and entertained generations, which equals great work for us to try our hand at and a large audience to reach out to.
Jeff, Cat and I are huge fans of JJ Abrams. He is such a talented director and his skill at balancing action with character driven story is unparalleled. His influence along with the smart writing and acting made this movie a clear choice for us.

This particular scene is such an important moment in the story and Bruce Greenwood and Chris Pine do an incredible job. It was an easy pick mainly because of their talent but also because of the simplicity of the set. Recreating the bar was a much easier task for us than building a bridge set!

As our budget on the series increases we plan on doing one or two more scenes from this movie. You can count on seeing Spock on The Girls on Film in the future!

For more and to see other clips, visit  www.thegirlsonfilm.com.

 

 

 

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Heh, that’s pretty awesome. “Real” Hollywood films should have more female protagonists in movies that AREN’T labelled as “chick flicks.”

For example…why couldn’t Flynn have had a daughter who tried to save him in “Tron: Legacy?” But of course it had to be a White Male. Hell, they could even have kept the name Sam…

A fun idea, and executed pretty well.

Pretty darn good ! The Capt Pike chic’s acting was outstanding. The Kirk chic was just OK.

Am I jerk if I think their acting isn’t up to the level of the original?

Though in all fairness, how many actors out there are up to the level of Pine and Greenwood?

Wow it looks so much better without the lens flares.

More impressed with Pine’s performance after seeing this

That was fun to watch. Looking forward to more scenes.

The kirkish lady is good… the pikish lady phoned her lines in and has all the ear marks of being able to do better than she did in this clip… but… for an amateur performance they did well. They should continue and gain experience and familiarity with the medium. They have a future.

This was awesome. You can really see a difference in the way a female would act as Kirk. Not as drunk but just an emotional wreck inside. Great job kirk..or miss kirk.;)

That was actually very good. I think Kirk and Pike as women would probably be better for the modern cinema age then as men.

Take BSG for example, Starbuck and Boomer became women. It was a move for the better and a stroke of genius. @boborci, can you re-reboot trek with gender reversal :p

Oh… And I still want a Kelvin salt shaker :(

Very good! I got into it.

Wow, some of you are more then a little patronising!

I say excellent job!!

Good production value, the actress doing Kirk did not too bad, the other left too much emotion out of the scene, though. Seems like it has the potential to be pretty good, though.

Well done ladies!

EXTREMELY well done, I like it better than the actual movie.
But there should be boobs.

Enjoyed this a lot! And their glass was more interesting than the one in the movie. : )

It might have been more fun to see the bar fight scene. (Meow!)

Sorry.

“I couldn’t believe it when the bartender told me who you are….. your father’s son.”
I wouldn’t have believed it either!

Great work!

Two observations:

1) No lens flares.

2) JTKILF.

With apologies.

One more thought:

3) Women can’t be starship captains. – Janice Lester

Use Bruce Greenwood and the blond chick, and we have a movie.

The blond chick might actually be a reason to use 3D….

Didn’t they do battle star galactica or something?

The scene where Kirk attempts to pick-up Uhura could be interesting…

The girl who played Pike was in a student film of ours in 1999 in Toronto.

Funny to see how she looks now.

HaHa, that was an interesting take. Is it me or have fan films died off this year?

Spectacular! Spectacular!

Cause they are fans of JJ ABrams does that mean they only like this Star Trek and none of the others?

@22, Janice Lester was insane, how could Mrs. Roddenberry’s character Number One be first officer for Capt. Pike if there was no chance of becoming Captain, and she did take command of the Enterprise when Pike was captured.
I think the women did a good job, some of the dialog should have been switched ( daughter instead of son). It would be great to see a female Kirk, especially since this is a alternate universe.

In the book Star Trek New Voyages 2, authors Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath short story “The Procrustean Petard”, did have Captain Kirk become a woman.

I loved their work.

For what it was – an excercise in filmmaking – this was great fun to watch.

nice recreation

No credit to the writers of the scene? Shame on them.

Yes as a joke is funny … but thankfully Bruce Greenwood and Chris Pine have done “much better” …. LOL …in fact this scene defined Chris Pine like young Kirk, I think!

They do credit the writers and creators. Its in the description on YouTube.
“”
An excerpt from the movie Star Trek (2009)
originally directed by JJ Abrams, starring Chris Pine and Bruce Greenwood.

Presented here by The Girls on Film
Directed by Jeff Hammond, starring Ashleigh Harrington and Katerina Taxia.
Created by Jeff Hammond, Ashleigh Harrington and Cat McCormick.

Written by Roberto Orci & Alex Kurtzman””

Meh. The editing could have been tighter. The interaction between the characters wasn’t as dynamic as that between Pine and Greenwood in the original.

That said, it was OK.

What a fun concept. I think Harrington does Pine/Kirk to a tee, and Ms. Taxia does fine as Pike, though pushing through that level of gravitas that Greenwood manages at the end is a mighty endeavor indeed.

I think it was excellant and quite a spin. on this Kirk and Pike scene. where was the kleenix that was supposed to have been stuck up She Kirk’s nose.? LOL

I wonder if boborci and the team ever considered casting captain kirk anything other then a male/white man in the new trek ? Sorta like how Ronald D Moore casted Starbuck as a female character, where the original starbuck was a male OR how Adama was recast as a latino character, versus the original non-latino character.

I dig this. :)

…And now I’m picturing that fight scene wherein tipsy female!Kirk prevents his fall by falling into a hot black guy version of Uhura.

OH MY!

@41

New Starbuck was such an improvement over the old one and that isn’t because she was female. It was because she was simply, more awesome.

For that one episode of the Bionic Woman reboot I saw, all I could think was why didn’t they cast Katee Sackhoff as the Bionic Woman instead??

@42

“and that isn’t because she was female”.

I agree.

I’m wondering if it was even considered or was the team VERY loyal to the past and did not wish to radically change the formula. If they found a better Kirk in a female-actor, then would they change the character ?

Mostly I find it disturbing to see a beautiful woman with blood running down her face. It keeps striking me as an abuse video, and leaves me revolted when I log on.

Thanks for the comments everyone! If you have a second toss a few comments on YouTube!
Jeff – director of The Girls On Film.com

pffft girls cant talk deeep

17

LOL

Alright, I thought the “female perspective” film was fun. But no way were these actresses even close to being on the level of Chris Pine and Bruce Greenwood.

#10

“I think Kirk and Pike as women would probably be better for the modern cinema age than men.”

“Take BSG for example, Starbuck and Boomer became women. It was a move for the better and a stroke of genius.”

I’m actually glad that the new guys kept James T. Kirk as a male. Remaking him as a woman would have changed the character and the Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic. Part of his appeal is his masculinity and ability with the ladies. And how would making Kirk and Pine women be better for the modern audiences anyway?

BSG, on the other hand, was a remake of the original BSG which was a poor man’s “Star Wars” with very few female characters. The show wasn’t nearly the icon that “Star Trek: The Original Series” is. When Ron Moore decided to reimagine the show, he switched Boomer and Starbuck’s genders to female to add a new dimension and to appeal to female fans.
The original show had too much testosterone and Moore wanted to break away from that. Plus, the new BSG has no connection with the old show. There was no continuity to uphold.

I appreciate that no alterations were done to the gender context of the script “your father’s son” for example, i think this is key to the success of the project.

If it was changed to “your mother’s daughter” it would become trite & seem to be a feminist propaganda piece.

Wisely done.

But I don’t really see this as radical or as any type of social commentary, its just two different actors doing the scene. Their gender is completely irrelevant.

If it’s designed as a statement about gender roles, you’re about 40 years too late for that.

@48

Plausibility doesn’t change because of a switch in gender. Talent-level doesn’t change because of gender. The character’s motivations and feelings don’t even change because of gender.

The only thing that gender changes is just that, gender. Everything else is changed by the individual’s abilities.

Which….you guessed it, has nothing to do with gender.

I take exception to the idea that Battlestar’s gender-change was somehow okay, because the show wasn’t as iconic as Star Trek.