New Star Trek Trailer Shows A Slightly Warped Kirk

Star Trek's new trailer showed a week early at Wondercon, and it reveals more of James Kirk's struggle to become Captain Kirk. Plus J.J. Abrams beatboxed and Chris Pine talked his favorite Trek episodes. OMGspoilers!

The new Trek trailer will play before Friday's Watchmen release, but we got a sneak peek at it. Here's my imperfect summary:

You see Kirk zooming on his motorcycle, but this time there's a different snippet of Kirk's conversation with Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike. Kirk has his barfight, and Pike says he couldn't believe it when he found out who Kirk was. Kirk says "Why are you talking to me, man?", like in the Superbowl trailer, and then Pike explains that Kirk's father, George, was captain of a starship (the Kelvin) for 12 minutes. During that brief time, Kirk Sr. saved 800 lives, including that of baby James. "I dare you to do better," Pike says. "Enlist in Starfleet."

And then we see a bunch of cadets, including James Tiberius, and Spock says, "You will experience fear. Fear in the face of certain death." Then Kirk, Sulu and Redshirt are skydiving onto that orbital drilling platform over Vulcan, and someone shouts "pull your chute, go, go, go!" They're diving and then Kirk is trying to hold onto the platform by his fingertips and scraping down like a cartoon character. Then there's a snippet of a spacey scene and someone saying "We received a distress call," which I'm guessing is the Kobayashi Maru test that Kirk cheats on in Starfleet academy. And then Nero saying he's waited for this moment his whole life.

And then a planet caving in and collapsing inwards - actually imploding - which I think might be Vulcan, after Nero's drilling platform kicks in.

And then Leonard McCoy says that the Enterprise has no captain and no first officer and nobody to replace them. "Yeah we do," Kirk says, sitting proudly in the captain's chair despite his black cadet shirt.

And then we see a flash of Kirk on the ice planet looking all frosty and upset. And then some other brief shots, and Pike says something about Kirk's destiny, and asks what path will Kirk choose. Spock hugs Uhura (aww). And Sulu fights the Romulans on the drilling platform. And then Kirk, Sulu and Redshirt are in freefall as well.

And Nero says, "James T. Kirk was a great man. But that was another life." (Presumably referring to the fact that this is a new timeline, after Nero went back in time and killed Kirk's parents and otherwise screwed with Kirk's history.) Someone yells "FIre torpedos!" Pike yells, "Emergency evasive!" And Nero shouts "Fire everything!" And then everything explodes. BOOM! The end.

There was a panel discussion with director J.J. Abrams, producer Bryan Burk, writer/producer Roberto Orci, and stars Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto. Abrams bent over in several directions to assure the fans that he really is making the Trek movie for them, despite his statements in the mainstream press about how the film is "not for Trekkies." "We love and are beholden to existing fans of Star Trek," Abrams said. And he said the movie follows Trek canon as much as the original series did - which means pretty well, but not perfectly, since the original series had a lot of contradictions. Orci also added that the film is "a prequel and a sequel," and fans will see how it's building on everything that came before.

Quinto says he and the other actors just saw the movie for the first time, and he couldn't speak for 20 minutes afterwards, because it was so awesome.

Someone asked Abrams if it was true that he rapped on set, and he said it was more like he beatboxed - which he went on to demonstrate for the audience with a little help from MC Chris Pine. "Star Trek in the house."

Someone asked PIne what Trek episodes were his favorite for capturing who Kirk was, and he did a total Shatner impression: "I'M CAPTAIN KIRK!" Then Pine said: "That would be up there - the evil Captain Kirk, the split Captain Kirk one. [Also the one ] where he fights Finnegan. When he wrestles the young boy [Charlie X], I think, I don't know if I would do that. I think what I found about watching the old series is, Mr. Shatner's incredibly funny. I think it's the same humor he brings to Boston Legal, in a whole different way. It's that twinkle in his eye, that you think anything can happen... [That's] something I couldn't recreate."

Finally, Abrams took a question about the Cloverfield sequel. He said they have an idea that they're working on right now that would be "pretty sweet." It's something "connected to Cloverfield," but it sounded like it's not necessarily a straight-up sequel. And he added, "The key, obviously, to doing any kind of sequel is, it better not be a business decision. You better be inspired to do something. That way, you did it because you cared, not because you think you can make a buck."

Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.

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