Character Flaws?

The first theatrical trailer for May 8th's Star Trek relaunch has gone bootleg just ahead of it's official net debut on Monday...

Star Trek Trailer (Bootleg)

As that happens...Scott Thill of Wired: reports there are a few eyebrows being raised over the film footage...

In a heavily restricted preview event in Rome, television guru J.J. Abrams ...tried to shake off some of the anxiety surrounding his forthcoming Star Trek prequel by giving audiences a cinematic appetizer. The meal went over well, but its aftertaste remains somewhat worrisome.

"My goal was to make a movie about the emotional lives of these characters," Abrams explained, according to the Associated Press.

"We've seen a million ships fly by the camera, but nobody is going to care about the ship if they don't care about the people inside."

Not so fast, Abrams. Since 1966, Earth has been simply bombarded by the emotional lives of the seminal Enterprise crew, first on television and then in six, count 'em six, feature films. And that's just the central narratives: Kirk, Spock and the rest of the gang have been peripherally explored in everything from the clunky '70s animated series to pretty much every Trek iteration after that.

And then there is the lamentable "nobody" -- a term Hollywood should really stop using. It's simply not true that nobody cares about the ship if they don't care about the crew: I know a series of gearheads who care more for the ship than they do for who's inside.

Throw in a few revelations gleaned from a series of Star Trek screenings in Rome and elsewhere in Europe, and it's time to move to yellow alert.

...For one, Zachary Quinto's Spock is described by AP as appearing "edgy and hostile" in the preview scenes, two words one would rarely associate with a Vulcan, much less one that has spent the last several decades as a model of cool, calm intelligence.

Less but still moderately confusing is the description of Chris Pine's James T. Kirk, who spends the early scenes of the film as a biker who can't stop getting into fights in 23rd-century Iowa. Not a problem, except that Kirk was a nut for horses more than he was for horsepower in earlier iterations of the Trek franchise. Trekkies might want to check my math here, but I believe he was riding one alongside Jean-Luc Picard when he met his doom in the film Star Trek: Generations...

A couple of points to make

I can accept Kirk riding cars and motorcycles with his affinity for antiques as established in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

As for Spock--It was established very early on that he sometimes had difficulty keeping his emotions in check-or suppressed-being half human--and clearly he struggled at times with that until the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This IS is prequel after all to TOS

I would agree though if Quinto is Over the top edgy throughout then there are problems galore there.

I'm not worried...yet...