William Shatner Confirms Star Trek 3

By Reggie's Take on September 28, 2014

William Shatner tweeted out that nobody contacted him about Star Trek 3, when it was rumored he had been asked about possibly appearing in the next Star Trek movie. Apparently the rumors might have actually been correct.

Shatner, while attending the Wizard World Nashville Comic Con, told an audience that in fact J.J. Abrams had contacted him about returning to Star Trek on the big screen. Abrams did ask Shatner to keep it quiet, thus prompting Mr. Shatner to make his initial denials when the rumor he had been approached first came out.

Shatner told the Nashville Comic Con, that Abrams called him from London while he was visiting Australia several weeks ago.

Abrams said to Mr. Shatner, “I’m calling because the director of Star Trek, the next movie, has had an idea where you might be involved, so I’m calling to find out whether you would be interested.” Shatner reply was, “It depends on what you do with the character, but I would be delighted.”

Shatner then went on to explain to the audience in Nashville.

“It’s all over the Internet that the director had held an interview and said they want Shatner and Nimoy to be in the next movie. I’ll bet you J.J.’s frothing at the mouth at this point. So the news is out that they have an idea that they want Leonard and myself…they might want Leonard and myself in it. But I would love to do it. But how do you get me fifty years later into the movie? I mean how do you rationalize it. I know it’s science fiction, but even I couldn’t come up with an idea. So that’s the news on that.”

Reggie’s Take:
When reading about this and watching the You Tube video of Mr. Shatner talking about it, I could already hear in my mind all the “reboot Trek haters” foaming at the mouth with even more hatred then they already have.

Hearing this from Shatner’s himself excites me in one sense about the possibility of seeing Shatner in his most iconic role, one would presume, for the very last time. The other, very small part of me, wonders if Paramount should just leave well enough alone.

If done right this could work bringing Shatner back to a Trek movie, even though he died on screen in “Generations” the last time we saw Shatner as Captain Kirk. The website that posted the initial confirmation that Shatner was indeed asked back had some interesting comments and ideas of how they might try and bring Kirk back.

One of the ideas was using the Nexus traveling through the alternate universe and some how a duplicate Captain Kirk emerges from it and also leaving a copy of Kirk in the Nexus for Captain Picard to meet as well, thus still preserving the original timeline. This particular idea in theory sounds like a maybe, but it leaves to many questions and if not done or explained right in the movie could cause even more problems then its worth.

The story idea that one person left as a comment that I liked the best was using Shatner as an older version of Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk who comes back in time and having Shatner’s older Chris Pine, Kirk be a key moment or turning point in the movie much like Nimoy did as Spock in the 2009 Star Trek film.

This idea after thinking about it is really the only way that would make sense and have a way of still seeing William Shatner in the role of Kirk, all be it the alternate universe’s Kirk. You get to see Shatner as Kirk in one more Star Trek movie and you don’t mess with anything that was previously done in the original or TNG movies.

What all do you guys think? If you leave a comment I ask that you keep your reply’s civilized, especially if your not a fan of the previous two films.