Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with the first of a series of articles covering today’s adventures at WonderCon.

I apologize for not having these reports hit as they happen, like I try to do at Comic-Con, but my computer has been suffering from some serious issues and every time I put it in sleep or hibernation mode it pitches a huge fit and starts complaining about kernel errors.

So, I had to leave the computer in the hotel and kick WonderCon old school today with my pen and paper for the panels and the digital audio recorder for the interviews.

Looking back on it, it was a pretty solid day. The biggest panels were Terminator: Salvation, Star Trek and Watchmen…

I’ll hit Trek first and then do single articles for Terminator and possibly wrap up Watchmen in with some of the other stuff witnessed today.

To be completely up front, I’m no die hard STAR TREK fan. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the phenomena. Like anybody of my generation I grew up watching Next Generation as it aired and like most of my generation it was a family thing to watch original Trek episodes. My stepdad loved ‘em… not sure what my mom thought, actually. Maybe she just put up with them. At any rate, my earliest memories of Austin are right after our move (I was 12) and all we had for a couple of weeks were air mattresses and cots, set up around the TV in the living room, eating pizza and watching Trek reruns.

I didn’t watch much DS9 and wasn’t interested in either Voyager or Enterprise, but I do really enjoy TOS and TNG, with an appreciation for the early Trek films and FIRST CONTACT.

Now that my Trek cards are on the table, let’s go over the panel.

JJ Abrams was the first out and he was full of energy. He didn’t just take a seat or stand at the podium… he grabbed a mic and walked up and down the stage like a motivational speaker, trying (and succeeding) to pump up the audience.

He told the audience that he ran into a weird role reversal when it came to this WonderCon… he’s usually the one trying to keep everything secret and not show anybody anything, but when he told Paramount he wanted to premiere the new Star Trek trailer at WonderCon they weren’t sure about it, worried about security, etc.

Here’s a rundown of my thoughts on the new trailer:

It opens much like the old trailer, with Kirk on his future-cycle riding through the desert, approaching the construction of the Enterprise.

Captain Pike is the voice-over, saying he couldn’t believe it when he found James T. Kirk and that he was the son of the Starfleet officer who was captain for a short time, like 12 hours, and saved something like 600 lives, including Kirk’s. Over this we see some flashes of destruction and baby Kirk in his mother’s arms.

The score kicks in around this point, very Goldsmith-y. And we get a lot of footage of Kirk training, doing that insane skydive… we hold on his face (through the mask) for a while longer, seeing the frost from the atmosphere build up on the faceplate as he freefalls. Spock voice-over says, “You will experience fear in the face of certain death.”

Then someone calls for Kirk to open his chute and he ignores it, falling closer to what looks like a hovering station in the atmosphere. He pulls the chute at the last minute, crashing down hard.

There are lot of action shots, shots of Simon Pegg as Scotty, smiling, a shot of Urban as McCoy and then a few new money shots.

The first was a weapon devastating a planet… it’s like a giant satellite that shoots a ray at a dusty planet, seemingly devoid of all life, that causes the planet to fall in on itself… it looks like the ground is just sinking in at the impact point and the planet is being pulled into itself, like the house at the end of Poltergeist.

Then there’s a moment where someone on the bridge of the Enterprise is saying there’s nobody in command and Kirk steps up and slowly sinks into the captain’s chair. Lots of gravitas to that moment.

And then the final shot of the trailer, which I thought was the coolest, which has some green Romulan torpedoes flying towards the Enterprise… the camera is behind the torpedoes as they speed towards the saucer… they get closer and closer and suddenly the Enterprise’s lasers shoot out, catching most of them, but a few slip through and we follow them through the defensive lasers and into the hull of the ship.

Pretty sweet. Overall, it’s the best trailer they’ve put out. I honestly still don’t know how to peg this movie. It doesn’t really feel like Trek, but at the same time it feels exactly like Trek. I can’t really explain why, but I can say that it looks really epic and extremely fun.

The trailer will be attached to Watchmen this coming Friday.

Now here’s some bullet points from the panel:

- On the panel (Right to left) were JJ Abrams, producer Bryan Burk, writer/producer Roberto Orci, Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine (who is looking deep into your soul, apparently) and Zoe Saldana.

- Abrams was questioned about a comment he made about this Trek being for new fans, not old ones and Abrams was quick to clarify his statement saying that he doesn’t feel the two are mutually exclusive. You can bring in new Trek fans while appeasing the die hards of the original series.

- In terms of canon, Abrams said that this film adheres to canon just as well as the original series did… that there might be some rule bending here or there, but no more so than what you find in the original series.

- Quinto said the most rewarding part of the experience was getting to know Leonard Nimoy and when asked if he studied up on the original series when he got the part, he said that he didn’t, instead pulling his inspiration directly from working closely with Nimoy. He did, however, constantly run the original series while shooting, saying an episode was always on in his trailer.

- Quinto also said that he just saw it cut together and was blown away by it. He made sure to clarify that he’s not usually one to say things like that, usually ending up in the “it’s good” category after watching something he’s done, but not in this case. “I couldn’t speak for 20 minutes after it ended.”

- They stressed that they were all very aware of Gene Roddenberry and his legacy when making the movie and Abrams made sure to point out that Majel Barrett-Roddenberry worked very closely with them, even returning to voice the computer again.

- Abrams was asked if there were any drugs involved during the creation of LOST and FRINGE. After the audience laughed he said, “Yes… No!” Non-denial, that.

- One funny moment of the panel was when a friend of one of the extras from the shoot came to the mic to ask about JJ Abrams rapping on-set. Abrams asked the name of her friend so he can know who will never be working in this town again… Then he praised all the extras, saying how they were incredible and the hardest working part of the production, asked if there were any in the audience and got them to stand up and get a round of applause.

- Then he actually performed his rap, which wasn’t so much a rap, but a beat box-ish tapping he’d do on the mic. Apparently, Chris Pine was the real vocal talent and they gave a mini-performance with JJ tapping the mic in a quick beat and Pine leaning close to his mic going “Uh! Uh! Yeah! Uh! Star Trek in the house!” Yeah, it was nerdy as shit, but funny.

- Pine was asked about Kirk and Shatner’s portrayal of the character, how would Pine’s measure up? He said that he looked at what Shatner did and noticed that he played Kirk with a rather liberal sense of humor, that there was always a twinkle in Kirk’s eye that really makes Kirk who he was. Pine said he couldn’t replicate that successfully and even if he did, it’d just be an imitation, so he tried to find his version of that spark to bring to the character.

- Zoe and Pine both talked about how daunting it was to take on these iconic roles, Pine especially… then Quinto leaned in and said, “I was not daunted,” prompting a quick middle finger from Pine. Unfortunately the angle hid it from my camera, but I’m sure there’s a great picture out there from the other side of the room of Captain Kirk flipping off Mr. Spock.

- Abrams was asked about CLOVERFIELD 2 and he said that the key to doing it was to make sure they were doing it because they have a creative need to do it and not make it as a business decision. They’re toying around with a couple ideas right now and he said if they lock it down and they’re as excited about it when they do as they are now then it’d happen. Right now, all he’d say is that the idea, if it comes to fruition, is “something that would be connected to Cloverfield.” Whatever that means. I assume a different monster.

- Oh, and Abrams was wearing an AVATAR shirt. I got a couple pics from the big screen.

That’s about that. The Trek panel experience. Hope you enjoyed it! Stay tuned for more, including my Terminator: Salvation coverage which will commence as soon as I post this bad boy!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com