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Best known in the past for comedies such as Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, Simon Pegg has by extension been held up as a champion of nerds, particularly when he later starred as legendary engineer Montgomery Scott in the Star Trek JJ Abram's reboot of 2009. Yet even as his fame and fortune reaches new heights Pegg has perhaps bit the hand which feeds him - his fanbase, who are devoted to many franchises, including many well-down science-fiction series.
In an interview with Radio Times Magazine, Pegg initially spoke of cinema being dumbed-down ever since the original Star Wars movies: "Obviously I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science fiction and genre cinema but part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilised by our own taste. It is a kind of dumbing down, in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues. Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about … whatever.
For this writer, cinema is not merely what Pegg talks about above. It can also be an escape; to another reality or another place, another time. For a few hours, we can forget the humdrum of our own existence and submerge ourselves into the characters, the setting, and more, in whatever form that may be - and how that makes us feel observing all that. Cinema does not have to focus solely on real-world issues and problems. That only serves to remind us of everything that is wrong with our world currently, and I don't believe that's in the spirit of Star Trek.
Pegg continues, comparing Star Trek to recent Marvel cinematic successes: “Avengers Assemble, which is a pretty nerdy, comic-book, supposedly niche thing, made 1.5 billion dollars. Star Trek Into Darkness made half a billion, which is still brilliant. But it means that, according to the studio, there’s still one billion dollars worth of box office that don’t go and see Star Trek. And they want to know why.
The irony of this story is that in his (and Paramount's) search for a less Star Trek-ky script - aiming essentially to emulate the box office success of Marvel's Cinematic Universe, is that he may write exactly what he preaches against in his earlier statements. "People don’t see [Star Trek] being a fun, brightly coloured, Saturday night entertainment like the Avengers,” adding that the solution was to “make a Western or a thriller or a heist movie, then populate that with Star Trek characters so it’s more inclusive to an audience that might be a little bit reticent”.
Pegg has taken over script and screenplay-writing duties from Michael Orci - a self-confessed Trekkie - where perhaps the script was something akin to the Star Trek we know and love. The Star Trek that, for many people, was not only quintessential high adventure and exploration, but confronted hard serious issues of the time, all framed in an utopian future. Only when Star Trek: Beyond is finally released will we know if Pegg's statements and philosophies are in line with his actions, or, bound by Paramount's greed, become an almighty hypocrite in the eyes of the Star Trek fanbase.
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WRITTEN & EDITED BY McCLINTOCK - UFP.CLINT@HACARI.COM
