Abrams: Chris Pine’s Kirk Is Funny (and Cocky) [UPDATED]

Although JJ Abrams was at the Television Critics Association event this week to promote his new Fox TV show Fringe, he sure took a lot of questions about Star Trek. In the latest, the director gives Hollywood Outbreak an update on the status of the post-production and also talks about the performances of his new Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto).

 

JJ’s word of the day : Amazing
Listen to Abrams Comments at HollywoodOutbreak.com

Transcript.

JJ Abrams: Right now we have a cut of the movie that has 12% of the visual effects near done, but the movie is working and that is the thing that is exciting to me. What is amazing about the movie is the people are awesome and the characters are alive and you love them. Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci] wrote an amazing script and amazing actors made it more amazing. It was really like the fun of watching Zachary Quinto take on the role of Spock which is a incredibly deceptively complicated part, and when you see the whole performance there are things I didn’t even see when we were making the movie. And to have Chris Pine come in and embrace this role of Kirk that is so complete and emotional and funny and cocky and yet vulnerable–it is a wonderful thing. That to me is where I think the best news is. You need that to tell this story and it works. I think it is a testament to this movie.

 

So just to summarize some of JJ’s comments for the week. His Star Trek is not a parody, but Spock is funny, and Kirk is funny too.

 

UPDATE: Abrams on Pegg
Another quote from JJ from TCA, this time on Simon Pegg, the new Scoty.

Simon is absolute genius in [Star Trek]. He was a lot of fun to work with.

[Knoxnews]


JJ looking happy to be there, at the Fox Party on Monday in Santa Monica, CA
(Wire Image)

 

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It’s 12% done.
Can we get 12% of a new picture or trailer – anything?

Maybe Spock is sorta of Sarcastic?

#1
So is that about a nacelle and a half’s worth? :)

It will be interesting to see if they chemistry between Pine and Quinto works as well as Nimoy and Shatner. 10 months and counting.

Amazing.

Sounds awesome! Gives me goosebumps in fact. 88% to go!

…the adventure continues….

With 12% of the sfx completed, there must be some very complicated scenes planned. I’m with everyone else here – throw us a friggin’ bone, please! A sneak peak of something, anything, to keep our tounges wagging until November/December when (just guessing here) a trailer will be released.

Why not a photo of something? Anything.

I couldn’t care less about pictures, trailers, or sneak-peeks. If they come soon, fine. If they don’t come until December, that’s fine too (and probably a better decision when it comes to hype they can manage and sustain up until the May release).

I am just as excited today as I was when I first heard the news. Star Trek will finally move in the direction I wished for 20 years ago—-back to its roots.

There hasn’t been any new Trek since 2005! Can we just have a small taste?!?!?

The word of the day is “amazing”.

Where’s Big Bird? The Count? Ernie?

At least most readers know the definition of THIS word of the day, unlike yesterdays “Kitsch Manuever”

Pine had better blow me away. So far I’m not impressed with anything I have read about him…. Han Solo my a$$…
Quinto I have faith in, however…

That’s 12% of the effects work nearly completed.

With over 1000 effects, that is a lot of rotoscoping, compositing, color timing (adjustment), designing, rendering, painting, modeling, texturing and adjusting to be done.

As a film set 300 years into the future, with starships, phasers, photon torpedos and warp engines, this movie requires a lot of effects to be created.

I would imagine that some of the time for effects is eaten up by the rendering process for 3D elements. It takes time to generate 120 4k frames of a detailed, complex model, animated with sophisticated lighting.

I’ll take a cgi alien pic. At least it would be SOMETHING.

I don’t believe Chris Pine is in this picture. I’m not actually sure he even exists. Oh, sure, there have been some movies he might have been in, but I have only read an article here or there that he was in the movie. There was a spy pic of some dude who looked a little bit like Pine rushing from craft services to the set once, but there was a better picture of Bigfoot in that Patterson film.

Of course, a decent cast photo could prove me wrong. I’m just saying.

Give us something. I would even settle for the end credits…

i’d be happy to see a ramscoop

It’s Amazingly lame and Un- Funny that we had had not even a scrap of tangible info on this film in months other than all the obnoxious backslapping, gladhanding and butt smooching among the cast and production crew.

15 – I heard someone recently discovered some Chris Pine tracks, although skeptics are saying it was actually his neighbor’s.

As for me, I WANT TO BELIEVE.

Did they ship Chris Pine to a Siberian gulag or something after shooting ended for this movie? We’ve heard from just about everyone else in the cast haven’t we? Is he detoxing? Ha she been a part of a news conference for anything? I kinda agree with #15. I’m not sure he exists. Maybe he’s all CG.

That sounds great! Now show us ome characters, cotumes and Starships!

1. Krik Semaj — no no, it’s 12% *near* done… whatever that means, lol!

So 12% of the effects done in 3 months… at this pace, it’ll be 24% complete by October… 36% by January… 48% by April…. uh-oh….

I joke of course. I know they haven’t been doing effects for all 3 months. :)

Sounds amazing, J.J.! Can’t wait!!!

I hate to spoil the party, but this new round of eye-popping happy-happy-joy-joy from the Trek XI camp is becoming annoying even more quickly than the last round.

It’s important to note that JJ is being asked at events unrelated to STXI about the film, but cannot come up with anything concrete except how funny the guys are, while still being complex and vulnerable, etc.

And it’s all good news, but it’s fluff.

For the love of…… !

J.J., show us at least one shot of a Klingon in a sombrero. Give us something!

#12—“Pine had better blow me away. So far I’m not impressed with anything I have read about him…. Han Solo my a$$…
Quinto I have faith in, however…”

I don’t need to see or read anything impressive about him. I’m sure there was something about him revealed in the casting process that prompted Abrams to choose him for the role. He must have felt that there was something specific he could, as a director, bring out of him that was important to the role. I look to the casting of LOST, which (albeit a television show) was fantastic. I’m not worried.

i think Quinto and Pine will be to Nimoys and Shatners K&S what B Routh was to C Reeves Superman

i.e. playing Nimoy and Shatner playing Spock and Kirk…

This man’s word pool is amazing, and extremely funny, and free from any kitsch and unnecessary baggage.

I think this is the most amazing Abrams interview I’ve read so far, and I’ve read a lot of amazing Abrams interviews; all of them amazingly funny and amazingly committing at the same time, and always amazingly meaningful. It’s amazing how one man in this amazingly shallow Hollywood can come across as being so amazingly consistent.

Well, what do we have? Pine as Kirk is amazingly funny and corky. Before Gary Mitchell, Kirk was a stiff guy, but as far as we know GM isn’t in the film, so that’s a amazingly confusing. Maybe we will just be confronted with young Jimmy’s amazingly wondrous metamorphosis from a stack of books with legs to that amazingly funny and corky guy without any explanation, or the amazingly stiff period will just be left out because it hasn’t enough mainstream appeal – who knows…

Don’t care, people will love it as long as it’s amazing and funny.

i have no problem w/ kirk and spock being funny…….what often distinguished TOS and TNG is TOS had more humor……and i remember nimoy saying he felt that spock’s ‘fastinating’ was suppose to be a punchline

#19 Actually, the govt. may not want us to know this, but I think Chris Pine was the one flying the mysterious unidentified craft over Stephenville, Texas.

if they mess this up, im goin to make star trek !!!

did anyone else know that cbs has two full episodes of TOS-R online in HD?

http://www.cbs.com/hd/?show=star_trek_remastered

27:

Iowagirl. Amazingly Amazing. And funny.

If JJ really wanted to announce something cool, he would talk about casting THE SHAT in a cameo or something……

#27 Iowagirl

“Maybe we will just be confronted with young Jimmy’s amazingly wondrous metamorphosis from a stack of books with legs to that amazingly funny and corky guy without any explanation, or the amazingly stiff period will just be left out because it hasn’t enough mainstream appeal – who knows”

Couple of things: You do know the word is cocky and not corky, right? Cocky is to carry yourself with a sense of swagger and bragadoccio and the other is to be stuffed into the top of a wine bottle or have notes attached to you in your dorm room. Another thought was that Kirk’s metamorphosis might be even quicker than it was in TOS. He didn’t act cocky until the second or third episode.

But I did find your post amazingly funny. I mean, it did make me laugh.

Man I really want a cast photo of everybody in uniform!

But glad that its going to be ‘amazing’!

If you count the teaser, we’ve seen about 12% of the Enterprise.

Show us something JJ. Stop TELLING and SHOW.

An Amazing Disaster!

kidding of course

@33
It is time to let go my brother

btw…if anyone is wondering…that really is my brother (who introduced me to Star Trek…so you can thank him for TrekMovie.com)

I hope it’s not “I Mudd” funny or original 1960’s Batman funny.

Maybe they remade that episode for the movie and Spock is an android.
I would not like it then.

I agree with the earlier comments. Please give us some good pictures. I would like a new desktop background for my PC. I’ve had the 1st movie one on my computer for 2 and half years. (The blue and gold A symbol)

I am beggining to lose intrest in the movie. I’ve watched the guys welding about 100 times.

Kirk’s cockiness may be related to his situation. If he’s on top of a situation, he might be a little cocky or self-assured. But taking over the role of starship captain probably made him more serious for awhile until he knew he was in control.

Before that, he probably had a lot of that swagger already.

#33 … Ahh, it’s good to see the site master’s brother is “Of the Body”!!

Star Trek V was funny too. But not in a good way.

Remember before “The Phantom Menace” they had a cool trailer out about a year ahead of time.

The top secret Hollywood stuff is getting over the top. The X-Files trailer is horrible because they don’t want to show anything. Not showing anything doesn’t build up buzz for the movie. Iron Man had some cool trailers that showed something and that did amazing business at the box office. It didn’t ruin the movie that we knew what Iron Man looked like before we saw the movie.

#34

Yes, yes, I know about that amazing word called cocky; thanks for pointing that out..;) I must’ve been so amazingly confused by Abrams’ command of words that this amazingly emotional state made me forget mine for a moment. Amazing but true. :D

Glad though, I made you and AJ laugh. Amazing unusualness. :)

Maybe they can make a new trailer for the movie with people painting the Enterprise. That would be something.

Then a third trailer with them sticking on decals.

A fourth trailer could be them installing carpet on the bridge.

Any other ideas?

Star Trek V may have had a terrible plot and whatnot. But some of the character moments were FANTASTIC. and the flashbacks in the mind meld scenes gave some good addendum to the backstory.

I AM PREPARING TO TOAST A MARSH MELLON

Here’s an idea for a trailer for the new movie. This doesn’t even have to be in the new movie. This would get people talking.

The “New” Kirk (Chris Pine) beams down to a planet with 6 red shirts.

An old Gary Mitchell shows up and says, “I’m from your future Jim, old friend, why did you maroon me on Delta Vega”.

Gary Mitchell then shoots lightning bolts out of his hands and kills all of the red shirts.

Kirk gets mad and starts punching him. About 20 seconds of fight music while Kirk and Gary Mitchell fight.

Then “Coming May 2009…The “New” Star Trek movie in Living Color.

Why did he say Marsh Mellon. Was there some kind of copyright on Marsh Mellow?

Star Trek: The Comedy