It’s official: filming has begun in Dubai for Star Trek Beyond, and there are some (rather unrevealing) photos of a helicopter shoot floating around the web. Don’t get too excited; this is reportedly a second unit shoot, meaning the actors wouldn’t have been present, and there are no interesting sets, costumes, or anything really to see. These photos and video are of so little substance, we can’t even see a reason to throw a spoiler tag on this one.
Click to watch at The National
A helicopter roams Dubai near the JLT metro station to film some shots for Beyond (photo: The National)
Traffic came to a standstill during filming (photo: The National)
A chopper hovers over Financial Centre metro filming #StarTrekBeyond. How cool?! Partial closures on #SZR until 1pm pic.twitter.com/C5Jfd37Bcx
— What's On Dubai (@WhatsOnDubai) October 2, 2015
Slow moving traffic as #SheikhZayedRoad partially shut for #StarTrek3 filming #Dubai #StarTrekBeyond #StarTrek #UAE pic.twitter.com/xV7uHYVFDm
— megha merani (@dxbmaven) October 2, 2015
I hope they add some CG.
Trek 3 Better reset the timelines. Man these movies suck.
It’s next to impossible to tell what’s going on there besides a helicopter flying around.
Hmmm. Futuristic city… bright sun, heavy shadows.
I’m betting they’ll cg some flying badass crepes and have ‘Operation Annihilate!’ Shatner will reprise his mustachioed role as Dead George.
I have to admit that, as with some previous posters, I find the notion of a Trek film using this modern slave state as a scenic backdrop fairly sickening.
@3 (Michael Hall): I, on the other hand, am find with not interfering in the internal affairs of another country.
@ dswyyne
Agreed. It’s refreshing after the Bush era of interventionist wars to try to no longer insist us pushing our weight around in the Middle East, especially with countries such as Dubai that are trying the best they can to modernize their society withing the constraints of their religion,etc.
I’ve been to Dubai 8 times with the Navy and everytime I go a new skyrise goes up. Dubai is a good place for futuristic shots. I can’t wait to see the results on film.
Wonder if SW,Doctor Who,Fast & Furious,and others,fans are finding it hard to believe,sickening,furious etc.,that they too filmed in Dubai.
@ JRT
Perhaps Michael Hall and TUP will need to retroactively not see those movies…LOL
LOL! I bet a lot of people won’t see them. I do recall some Who fans not being happy about one of the specials being filmed in Dubai,not heard anything about the SW fans though. Yet.
I really don’t care where they film,as long as it’s a fun movie.I bet they’d be complaining if they filmed in China or Israel,or whatever,as well. In this day and age you just can’t please everybody. Hoping for a teaser attached to SW movie in December. I’m really looking forward to this movie,but tthen again I’m one of the few here who loved the other two.
J-R!
Trekcore has more photos of the Dubai film set. Glad to see some more news on the shoot.
http://trekcore.com/blog/2015/10/another-look-at-dubais-star-trek-beyond-set/
Instead of giving us meaningless pictures about the filming of the new movie, why not report on the newest Star Trek Continues episode. Frankly, it’s not one of their best but it’s certainly better than just showing photos of skyscrapers, helicopters, and traffic jams.
Hard to tell what’s going on. Which is good. A few secrets will make the movie even better!
3. Agreed.
Also, any culture that has women as second-class citizens with a just a few more rights that objects and property and that has the death penalty for gay people needs to be reformed. Human rights are nonnegotiable. You also don’t get to claim the reason for treating women like property and killing gay people is that you have an invisible magic man in the clouds that tells you to do it. Spock would call that an illogical superstitious belief in primitive mythology… and their laws would execute him him for speaking out against Islam for it.
The Prime Directive doesn’t apply as were the same species on the same planet… and that little detail that Dubai has a massively higher standard of living and wealth than North America and Europe.
15. Luke Montgomery
Are you saying Quinto is in real danger?!
Just my 2 cents from someone who reads these threads but never posts.
To those trying to evoke the Prime Directive to excuse the filming of a Star Trek movie in a country with controversial laws, it doesn’t work in this situation. The Prime Directive is about non-interference. It is NOT about an absence of opinion about what is going on in a certain society.
Let’s say, for example, Risa is not a Federation planet. And it is discovered that the reason the planet is so idyllic is that they kill anyone who litters. The Federation would not try and impose their beliefs on Risa and try and force them to stop. However, you can be sure the vast majority of Federation citizens would find that appalling. And Risa would certainly not be a planet that the Federation, or Starfleet, would approve for shore leave/vacations.
You could use the Prime Directive argument if those like Michael Hall are indicating that the US should do something about human right violations in Dubai. But it is very appropriate for him to be of the opinion that an entertainment franchise that tends to lead on the progressive side should refuse to not only shoot a movie in a place where those violations take place, but partake in promoting said city as well.
Then shouldn’t everyone filming there do the same thing? That’s bascially what you want,right? We get enough of that stuff in the news,don’t really need it in our movies as well. Not really a big fan of preachy stuff.
@15 (Luke Montgomery): In other words, you want to interfere in the internal matters of a foreign country just to feel better about yourself. How colonial of you.
#12 Kevin – those pics are probably the best in terms of being able to speculate on what the set is, that we’ve seen so far.
It does look like part of the saucer section of a starship. It’s also interesting to note how “old” or “rusted” it appears.
Is this a shipwreck on some alien world that the Enterprise crew is investigating? It doesn’t seem like the ship is in space, although I guess it’s possible that it is and they are filming some exterior shots of characters on the hull of the ship.
Very interesting.
As for politics – i really wanted to avoid it, but I’ll say just this:
While I completely agree with those that oppose and are repulsed by the system of beliefs and laws in Dubai… one way to expose people to more open and accepting and democratic views is to go there and let them see how free people of different ethnicities, genders and religious beliefs are able to live and work together peacefully.
That’s why it’s good to have open relationships with countries like this. Let them buy our products, watch our TV shows/movies. Because they will likely want to be more like what they see and that will affect change.
I, for one, could really care less where it’s filmed. Please give us a well written, cohesive, compelling story, which respects the franchise’s past while giving it legs for the future.
Danpaine – YES! Exactly. Couldn’t agree more.
Ad Star Wars Ep4 was filmed in Tunisia. The bastion of Human Civil Rights. Let it go, people, it’s a movie shoot, not a UN summit. If I have to sit through any movie with a leftist wingnut like George Clooney, you can sit through a few minutes of second unit filming in Dubai.
Been to Dubai, it is an amazing city. Not so much cultural practices, but the people posting here bitching about it have yet to present an argument where imposing our values is somehow superior them modeling better behavior, and letting them figure it out for themselves. Yeah, it’ll take a while, but they’ll come around. The gulf states are somewhat moderate, by Middle Eastern standards, so at least there is progress. The problem with insisting that there has to be an ideal set of standards in place prior to engagement is flawed – you can’t influence ideas of you are not in a place to be of influence.
Exactly. And if Luke Montgomery has his way, cutting off all business and personal travel ties to them as a moral protest until they submit to our moral principles would be disastrous…in the best case, they’d become as bad as Saudi Arabia, or even worse, they’d be the next stop for ISIS.
Luke, your morals an honesty or commendable, but implementation of them is exactly what the muslin extremists want. You are unintentionally enabling them. The “Jimmy Carter thing” doesn’t work, dude.
Luke, remember what Yoda told you:
“Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
24. Phil – October 6, 2015
Been to Dubai, it is an amazing city. Not so much cultural practices, but the people posting here bitching about it have yet to present an argument where imposing our values is somehow superior them modeling better behavior, and letting them figure it out for themselves. Yeah, it’ll take a while, but they’ll come around. The gulf states are somewhat moderate, by Middle Eastern standards, so at least there is progress. The problem with insisting that there has to be an ideal set of standards in place prior to engagement is flawed – you can’t influence ideas of you are not in a place to be of influence.
@ Jay
“While I completely agree with those that oppose and are repulsed by the system of beliefs and laws in Dubai… one way to expose people to more open and accepting and democratic views is to go there and let them see how free people of different ethnicities, genders and religious beliefs are able to live and work together peacefully. That’s why it’s good to have open relationships with countries like this. Let them buy our products, watch our TV shows/movies. Because they will likely want to be more like what they see and that will affect change.”
Exactly. Withdraw and boycott them, and you can be they will revert to more extremist tendencies of their culture. Continued people-to-people engagements is how we will eventually success in helping them to modernize their society. Giving into xenophobia and withdrawing from business and travel actions would even more disastrous than Bush’s wars.
#26. Prodigal Son – October 6, 2015
I wouldn’t be so quick to declare boycotts completely unworkable. Entertainer boycotts specifically seemed to work quite well to help free Mandela and topple Apartheid.
There is something rather disingenuous about this.
Since whenever it was that “Nixon had to go to China”, people from the west have been visiting and trading with China (almost all clothing comes from China).
Yet, China’s continuing record on human rights violations is pretty bad, to say the least – starting with the continued occupation of Tibet. Then there was the Tiananman Square massacre of its own young citizens. Not to mention China’s idea of upholding women’s rights by forcing sterilisations, abortions on them. Let’s not go into animal rights violations…:(
China has the death penalty; there is torture and many citizens who speak out can simply disappear. I don’t believe that gays/lesbians are (well) tolerated in that country either. They may also face imprisonment or worse, if caught.
The media/internet is heavily censored in China as well, as is the practice of any religion, even what is traditional to Chinese culture.
Yet we do business with China – lots of it. It is a popular tourist destination for many westerners.
@ Disinvited
Well, in the rare instances where a huge part of the world comes together with punitive strategies, like with Apartheid and with Iranian nukes, yes, that can work.
Good luck getting half the planet to support to take punitive measures to FORCE “moderate” Dubai to accept emerging Western societal advances on gays..heck, that is barely a mature societal viewpoint in the U.S. right now.
Star Trek 13: The Search for Oil
Snapping ones fingers and decreeing change is unrealistic. After the Civil War the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were meant to address the issues of a freed slave population and ensure their rights as citizens…and it took the country over a hundred years to accept those provisions. Yet, today, with a court ruling that the 14th Amendment is still valid, politicians running for the highest office are railing against an ‘overly aggressive government’. So, as Chancellor Gorkon put it…’well… I see we have a long way to go’..
Must be a slow news day.
#12 Kevin – possibly the saucer section crashed onto a planet? I was actually kind of getting that vibe from a couple of pics from the Canada shoot, so it seems to fit……….I did read where the big E apparently got pretty heavily damaged, so maybe they went into lifeboat mode and separated hulls……….
21. Jay – October 6, 2015
You’re very close to the mark.
In fact, during the 90s, the most popular show on Iranian TV (via satellite) was Baywatch.
I think we can all the people are well ahead of the governments.
Back to the photos from Dubai.
Awesome is the word.
I like the in camera filming that has been adopted for STB.
I don’t know. There seems to me to be a certain artistic ignobility to just after episodically having the E shredded and plunging to its death in Earth’s atmosphere but saved at the last minute by its captain making the supreme sacrifice, only to have the death plunge turn out in the next to merely have been “temporarily” sidestepped.
For my money, if you are going to destroy Enterprise by having it head planetside, I much rather prefer a burn up in a funeral pyre of orbital decay over that which mirrors a traffic collision.
#33. photon70 – October 7, 2015
During the Reagan years, I often commented that the ubiquitousness of Western programming via videotape did more to undo the Soviet Union than any of that administration’s policies towards that end.
Wow. Political discussion on a Trek site. Fascinating.
I don’t remember how many times I’ve been to the sand box in my travels. I just know that I stopped spending money in a city that, like someone above already posted, does effectively promote slavery (but the Arabs use different names for the practice). And though I agree that xenophobia isn’t the answer either, neither is ‘condonance’ thus why I still think just drinking beer in the sand box was the best I could do, give the circumstances…
that being said, it’ll be more fun looking at the film and trying to figure out the real from the CGI because the land scape is beautiful or at least artist. Narcissistic as well, but that’s the Persian Gulf for ya.
STAR TREK BEYOND Poster Spotted at Cannes’ MIPCOM.
http://trekcore.com/blog/2015/10/preliminary-star-trek-beyond-poster-spotted-at-cannes-mipcom-entertainment-expo/
#32 Viking – The Enterprise can’t seperate.
But, like I said before, it does look like possibly a crashed starship – not necessarily the Enterprise. Maybe they are on some search and rescue mission of another Federation starship?
Some of the TOS stories I liked the most were when they were looking for, or stumbled upon, a missing starship and/or crew on some alien world.
#37 Ralph… that poster looks fake. That’s my first impression. Just like the article says, the pictures of Chris Pine, Zachery and Zoe are taken from 2009 promotional material, and the movie logo is taken from Trekmovie.com
We haven’t see any official logo’s or posters from Paramount for this movie. So we don’t know what the logo for the movie title will look like. The one seen here is just a guess that Trekmovie.com is using made from the previous 2 flims logo style.
This looks like a fan made poster.
@27 (Disinvited): Boycotts can only work if the target of the boycott shares your values. That’s why the boycott worked to end apartheid in South Africa, and why they haven’t worked in Iran.
#37 – Further reading the article, it seems that the poster is officially from Paramount – at least they believe so from the 2 pics taken of it from twitter users.
However, it isn’t anything unique to this movie. IF it is a real poster from Paramount, all they did was photoshop a poster from ST09 and add a new title logo for Star Trek Beyond.
I don’t remember a studio doing this before, but maybe. They usuall make an original poster for every movie. This would seem strange that they would photoshop a previous movie’s poster like this.
Don’t they usually take marketing photos of the cast for use in posters/etc. like in the first few days of production? So that those materials can be put together while the cast is busy shooting the movie.
@30 (Phil): But it is not as simple as that. There is a political philosophy involved that many Conservatives and Libertarians believe: being a strict constructionist, when interpreting the US Constitution. Meaning, that which is not explicitly written in the US Constitution, the Federal government cannot impose. This is where the idea of “states rights” come into play. Conversely, you have a school of thought among Liberals who believe that the US Constitution is a “living, breathing document”, and that interpreting it should be based on present-day America, not just what the intent of the Founding Fathers/Framers had in mind. In fact, some within this school of thought believe that, since the US Constitution is a document of “negative liberties” (meaning that the Federal government is prohibited from being proactive in its governance), then, what the US Constitution does not explicitly address, the Federal government should do.
Ergo, not everything is cut and dry like that.
As TrekCore has correctly stated, this is nothing more than a placeholder image the studio is using to help market a film still in production.
The cool (and amazing) thing about this is that they used the logo that Kayla made for when we post an STB story. Go Kayla!
#45. Brian Drew – October 7, 2015
Thanks for the elucidation and I think you also answered my Dubai conference backdrop query as well, so thanks for that too.
Kayla, congratulations. Way to go. Back in the day, getting the Corporate parent to acknowledge fan art in some small way was considered a big deal. Something you created is now a part of a STAR TREK production’s ambient energy. Enjoy.
#40 Jay – I cross-referenced the Memory Alpha Wiki to verify – there were a couple of episodes (The Apple comes to mind) where Kirk mentioned jettisoning the nacelles, and hull separation was an ongoing design feature in the TOS writer’s guide. Being Nu Trek, and given the fact that the Enterprise did get a refit after the reaming they got from the Vengeance, it may well be within the realm of possibility that they could do a saucer sep, especially if it’s a one-time blowing of explosive bolts in the dorsal. Of course, given all the CGI they’ll have to do, the Enterprise may be docked whole at the edge of whatever rooftop that they’re shooting on.
In this world there’s very few examples of nations with unblemished human rights records (including the USA!). In the Middle East, you will NOT any. Israel is an apartheid state with war criminals in upper echelons of leadership. Muslim countries have other types of problems, including gay intolerance, etc. But Americans are not in a position to dictate values. Period.
“There is a political philosophy involved that many Conservatives and Libertarians believe: being a strict constructionist, ”
That’s just bury your head in the sand moronic. Sad and pathetic.
@48
But we in the U.S. have Kaitlyn Jenner to celebrate our societal advances.
Negligent motor vehicle homicide…no problemo…because you are such a great role model. If the tight speedo no longer fits, you must acquit? ;-)