Take a look at where it all started. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the first foray on to the big screen for the Enterprise crew. According to the director of the latest offering, it's time for something new. No Kirk. No Picard. No problem.
Director Noah Hawley spoke to Variety about the film, which says he has finished the script for, but not much beyond that in the way of progress. When things do get started, it looks like he will be taking a page out of his Fargo playbook, which he adapted to TV for FX.
"We’re not doing Kirk and we’re not doing Picard," he says. "It’s a start from scratch that then allows us to do what we did with Fargo, where for the first three hours you go, ‘Oh, it really has nothing to do with the movie,’ and then you find the money. So you reward the audience with a thing that they love."
Can I just say it? It's about time someone did this. The Star Trek story has been long overdue to move on from it's more established characters. Sure they have done that on TV before, but never really made that effort when it came to the movies. Paramount has to see the success of something like Star Trek: Discovery and realize that this can be done. Sure, that show introduced Spock and Captain Pike recently, but it leans heavily on it's new character. The first season certainly did that. Fans will gravitate to these new character if you give them something interesting. Sure, it's a gamble, there's no denying that. It would be just as big of a gamble to give us something else with Kirk or Picard, if you ask me. Reboots are dangerous territory for this fanbase.
It doesn't automatically mean that this will work out, but just the effort to try something different has to be appreciated. Hawley just wrapped a successful 13 day shoot on Fargo. We'll have more updates on his Trek movie as they become available.
Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures