J.J. Abrams recently gave an interview to AMC as his new television show “Fringe” hits Fox tomorrow night, but of course I am more interested in the Star Trek related questions. It never gets too deep just as everything Star Trek related has been quite incognito, but he did address the William Shatner issue and as much as I thought it was all a big marketing trick and Shat would end up in the film somehow I am starting to think he is definitely out.
When asked, “How do you react to William Shatner’s ire at not having a role in the movie?” J.J. responded:
It was very tricky. We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn’t quite feel right. The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn’t want to do a cameo. We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the Trek canon and consistency of storytelling. It’s funny — a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon. Well, his character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that.
Sounds to me like it was a good decision to keep him out as putting him in would have probably felt extremely forced and would have taken viewers out of the film.
