So rumors are going around the Interwebz today that “Sherlock” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” star Benedict Cumberbatch will be in “Star Wars Episode VII,” directed by his “Star Trek” pal J.J. Abrams.
Probably not the case.
But it’s reason enough to use the above illustration, originally from Entertainment Weekly, by artist Josh Adams.
Release the Cumberbatch!
It wouldn’t be a “Star Trek” movie without some huge doubts and bitter recriminations. And that’s before the movie even opens.
The new trailer for “Star Trek Into Darkness,” due out in May, has lots of action: Kirk and Spock and Uhura and company tear around – and fly around – shooting guns and facing off with Benedict Cumberbatch as the villain, who a lot of people thought would be Khan but probably isn’t.
The complaints I’ve read so far online seem to be based on concerns the movie is too earthbound, that there’s not (at least immediately obvious from the trailers so far) a lot of spacecraft battle scenes that were never done better than in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
You know what? I’m okay with that. A lot of episodes of the original series and even long stretches of the movies were not set in space, but planet-bound. If it’s a good story, it’s a good story. Example: “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” which plays out, for the most part, in 1980s San Francisco.
Random thoughts about the trailer:
The overwhelmingly dominant color palate is the ice-blue, steely look of a lot of modern thrillers. It does add to the foreboding effect.
“The man who did it is one of our top agents,” the Starfleet official played by Peter Weller says at one point. Cumberbatch – is that a Starfleet uniform he’s wearing? – would appear to be something other than Khan, newly reawakened from a centuries-long nap. Or is he?
Cumberbatch (“Sherlock”) looks cool as hell. But he’s awfully threatening-y, isn’t he? Maybe too much. Is this guy gonna break into monologuing? “I will walk over your cold corpses,” indeed.
The scene with the Star Fleet vessel piloted by Kirk slipping sideways through some canyon or other has ticked off people who think it’s a rip-off of “The Empire Strikes Back.” Well, it has been 32 years.
The Enterprise takes a beating, falling through the atmosphere and plunging into the bay. We’ve seen that before. In fact, in “Star Trek III,” it was entirely destroyed.
Alice Eve as Carol Marcus. Wonder why they put this shot in the trailer?
keithroysdon 