Looking at the cast list of Star Trek XI I see that the only person who I find really exciting is Eric Bana as the bad guy. If the rest of the bridge crew had been better cast I might have been psyched about Simon Pegg as Scotty, but he’s surrounded by third rate actors who probably couldn’t anchor a TV show.
There are not many more announcements to be made on this film, casting-wise, especially as it started filming yesterday, but I trust that director JJ Abrams will continue making bad choices, much like he has done with the casting of Captain Pike, the guy in charge of the Enterprise before Kirk came to town. He’s put Bruce Greenwood in the role, and it’s weird to say that Greenwood is a bad choice for anything, since I think he’s a fine actor. But he’s a terrible choice for Captain Pike, a guy who was the prototype for Kirk (literally – the original Star Trek pilot had Pike as the captain and NBC asked Gene Roddenberry to shoot a new one with some new cast members. Thanks to a two-parter in the original series, the events of that first pilot were made canon in the Trek universe). Pike’s the kind of role that should have gone to somebody with a little more name recognition, who could add a touch of heft to this lightweight cast… and someone who is a couple of years younger than Greenwood. Greenwood has a decade on original Pike Jeffrey Hunter, plus he looks older anyway. By the way, I do have faith that Greenwood could possibly pull this off, and he’s far from the worst casting choice on this picture. That honor must go to Karl Urban as McCoy. Seriously, what the fuck?
At this point all I can do is hope that there’s an actual vision to the bizarre casting and seemingly inane storyline for Star Trek XI (real title to be revealed via a year long viral internet meme game, I’m sure). I want this movie to work very, very much.