How To Paint Rachel Nichols Green, Watching A Director In Love With His Lens Flair Almost Makes Up For The Blinding Shots, And Leonard Nimoy Is A Class Act: A Behind The Scenes Feature

If you don't watch anything else, watch this. It's an amazing insight into how they made the movie, from J.J. acting like a fanboy over his lens-flare technique, to Leonard Nimoy getting choked up on his final day of filming.

Simon Pegg's Accent Was Kept In Check By The Scottish Police

Nero Is Really Just Misunderstood

Quinto Was Urged By Fans To Audition For The Role of Spock

The Klingons Were Kids

As we mentioned recently, in some of the long shots involving Klingons, they were replaced by child actors wearing replica Klingon guard costumes — and filmed at an angle that made their corridor sets look even larger and more impressive than they otherwise would have.

Filming The Drill Platform Looked Even Cooler Than In The Movie

Even Spock Can Lose His Cool

Quinto Helped Bring In Pine For Kirk

Victor Garber Is A Klingon

According to our old reporting, it seems like a scene merely meant to show some cool Klingons costume updates and tell us what the heck Nero was up to for all those missing years, as well as clue the audience into the passage of the 25 years before we get to see grown-up Kirk. But it does have Nero's most quotable line from the trailer: "The wait is over."

The Star Trek DVD and Blu-Ray is out tomorrow. And our final say on which is the superior purchase? Definitely the Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray version of Star Trek is leaps and bounds ahead of the DVD, packed with a tremendous amount of proprietary extras - essentially, it's the big brother of the two, with over three hours more footage.

The three-disc Blu-Ray version also includes a Starfleet Vessel Simulator which allows you to interactively explore the U.S.S. Enterprise and the Romulan vessel Narada, with 360˚ views and awesome close-ups. For example, on both ships, you can actually fire their on-board weapons, getting a chance to see and hear them. Inside the Enterprise, you can take a brief tour of the bridge — although it does look to be the same views we got on Paramount's Star Trek page before the film, the detail on the Blu-Ray is simply outstanding enough to warrant another look.

The release itself could quite possibly be one of the best recent examples of this newfangled Blu-Ray technology becoming more than just a "better picture" DVD, as we've seen with so many releases before. And with its double digit additional "branching pods," this Blu-Ray is the only option for people who actually care about watching all the special features available - you know, true fans.

Here's is the Vessel Simulator we mentioned:

Additional reporting and writing by Caitlin Petrakovitz.

Paul follows the two geeky Brits on a journey across the United States, where they not only hit up San Diego Comic Con, but end up face-to-face with a real alien. Still no details about the alien's appearance, and last time we talked to cast member Bill Hader he was pretty mum on the details. Will it be CG, will it be someone in a suit, or just a human? Who knows. We do know it'll be voiced by Seth Rogen though.

Simon Pegg twittered this response to Collider's scoop:

Yep. That's us flanked by Blythe Damner and Kristen Wiig. It doesn't get much better than that sandwich-wise.

For a closer look at the horror on these hapless nerds' faces, check out the bigger image at Collider. Paul will hit theaters in 2010.

Of course, if this purely informational videoblog - or "vlog," as the kids call them - doesn't tell you all you need to know about the movie, don't fret; they're willing to tell you even more:

Don't feel that you have to limit your questions to the movie, either; they'll even explain the proper English way to drink tea:


Paul is currently in production for a 2010 release.

[What is Paul?]

Pegg admitted the painful truth to thelondonpaper:

We are recreating Comic-Con for it in Alberquerque, New Mexico. I wanted to shoot at real Comic-Con, but it's a minefield - you can't have a room of 10,000 people and not have one of them look at the camera and go, "oooohh."

There go our hopes of Comic-Con stardom... As well as the chance to appear in the background of one of the most anticipated geek movies of next year. Unless they're looking for convincing extras in New Mexico, of course...

Awwwww… Simon Pegg And Nick Frost Not To Film ‘Paul' At San Diego Comic Con [Bleeding Cool]

What Is Paul is loaded up with photos from the set, and little videos featuring the actors and crew members being adorable, the way Pegg and Frost always are. Paul is about a couple of comic-book geeks who travel cross country to Comic Con and meet a few interesting aliens along the way. I'm loving the little nerdy moments in these videos, like when Pegg states, "We named the RV in the film after the name of the ship that Charles Darwin sailed to the Galapagos Islands in." That's my kind of nerd... sigh.

Looks like Edgar Wright's super aggressive online campaign for em>Scott Pilgrum may have rubbed off on his two old colleagues (Wright directed Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz). I'd love to see these two campaigns get some cross-over, if the films visited each other, it would make an amazing viral.

Rich Johnston's review was an unqualified thumbs-up, calling the script,

chock full of gags, bursting at the seams. Comedy of repetition, plenty of pull-back-and-reveals and overflowing pop cultural references including one Back To The Future gag that had me gasping for breath I laughed so hard. But these references aren't surface, they are used to describe the relationships that the characters have with each other. Why use words to explain how you feel, when you can just find a common episode of Star Trek that does the job a lot more effectively. It's honest, it's true, yes it's mocking but in a way that both validadates and celebrates both the actual reality and the often unrealised potential of the geek lifestyle. Damn it if the screenplay isn't moving and poignant in places. But mostly it's Simon Pegg and Nick Frost revisiting their past screen partnership performances, the friends who know each other so well, forgive the other's eccentricities as their own are forgiven and would likely die for each other. As long as they were trying to Capture the Flag. No one does bromance like these boys.

It also offered this introduction to the two main characters, literally taken from the script itself:
Johnston added that the movie will be shooting at this year's San Diego Comic-Con, along with his hope to be a background geek. Now I'm wondering if we can organize some kind of unofficial invasion of the shoot at the con...

Preview: PAUL Screenplay By Simon Pegg And Nick Frost [Bleeding Cool]

Variety reports that Rogen, Lynch, Bateman, Hader and his SNL-comrade Kristen Wiig have all been added to the cast of Paul, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's movie about two fanboys who discover an alien escaped from Area 51 while on a road trip to San Diego Comic-Con. Rogen will be voicing the titular alien, while details of the other actor's characters are being kept under wraps.

The movie, directed by Superbad and Adventureland's Jake Mottola, begins shooting next month.

Seth Rogen to voice 'Paul' for Pegg [Variety]

Talking to Collider, Pegg says the film, directed by Superbad's Greg Mottola, will be a great "coming together" of the two comedy communities, in the U.S. and the U.K., including some faces we'll recognize from American comedy classics. "It's exciting. We're coming down to figuring out how we're going to do it, and how we're going to make Paul work." And he gives another synopsis of the geek odyssey:

The film is a story of two comic-book geek, fanboy types, who go to Comic Con. It's their trip of a lifetime across the United States. They're going to go to Comic Con, they're going to visit some geeky spots where they want to go. And when they visit Area 51 they happen upon an alien, who's out there, and he enlists them to help him get to a point where they need to meet his pickup ship. So these two guys end up getting involved in the craziest adventure you could imagine, and so it's basically myself, Nick [Frost] and Paul.

And Pegg says Paul, the alien, will be a mixture of practical effects and CG animation. The film should begin shooting in Santa Fe, NM around June 8. The film shoot will take around 10 weeks, but it's such a logistical nightmare, because of clearance issues, to film at Comic Con that he may not actually get to film there. He also says he and Pegg been working on the screenplay for years, since they pitched the idea, in an random, offhand way, to the Shaun Of The Dead producer. And by now, they've honed it and honed it, until it's the script he's proudest of in his career. [Collider]

Greg Mottola will be directing this feature comedy that is now being rumored as heavy on CG and possibly rated R. As we reported months ago, Pegg and Frost will play two slackers, who go to San Diego Comic-Con and then decide to take a road trip to Area 51. There, they meet a small alien named Paul, who needs their help to get home.

CHUD picked up on a Bill Simmons report, featuring the comic genius Bill Hader. According to the interview, Hader mentioned he might be working with Mottola and starring as the alien, Paul, as well.

Gotta say this film just keeps getting better and better. I can't wait to see what Hader does with this alien, since his SNL alien work is still the best thing on late-night TV.

It's difficult to separate an actor from her character, especially when the acting is of high caliber. Of course, actors deserve to have private lives just like all other creative professionals, and if some of them don't read the Lord of the Rings trilogy every year (like Dominic Monaghan), well, that's just who they are. But it's a special gift from actor to fandom when the people who play beloved heroes turn out to be more than a little like the heroes themselves. They might not fight caped evil in their daily lives, but these eight actors possess that crucial bit of understanding that keeps them from phoning in their roles — and convinces their admirers that they're worth every jaw-drop and swoon.

Kristen Bell
After three years as teenaged noir super-sleuth Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell had to move on to something different — and she chose Heroes. Having watched the show since day one, Bell told the minds behind the show that she was a huge fan; the rest, as you know, is history. She's living proof that part of being a great actress is having a deep personal investment in the story you're being paid to tell. Audiences appreciate the hell out of that. And in a fantastic interview with the A.V. Club, Bell further showed her respect for her fans:

The bottom line is, everyone's a loser in their own right. Here's why I like geek culture: People like what they like because they like it. They're not trying to fit into any mainstream likes or dislikes. You want to dress up like a Star Wars character and go to Comic-Con? Do it, if that's what makes you happy. People might look at you as super-weird, but if that's your obsession, go for it.

Damn straight, Kristen! And I expect to see you in our next cosplay round-up.

Wil Wheaton
The man you know as Wesley Crusher just might be the poster boy for actors-in-fandom. Whether or not you like his Star Trek character, you have to admit that his subsequent work as a blogger has made the lives of many geeks, nerds, and fans very happy. He's written extensively and thoughtfully on his experiences in the world of Star Trek and in real life, producing three books: Dancing Barefoot, Just a Geek, and The Happiest Days of Our Lives. He currently blogs at Wil Wheaton dot Net in Exile.

David Tennant
Nobody had to explain Gallifreyan customs to David Tennant when he took the role of the Tenth Doctor on BBC's Doctor Who. He'd already been watching the program for years. In fact, he is a self-described "Doctor Who junkie" and once cherished a Tom Baker action figure. Now an action figure himself, Tennant took us through the production history of the show in a memorable episode of Doctor Who Confidential entitled "Do You Remember the First Time?" — and by the way, it turns out that pretty much everyone on the team these days was a childhood fan.

Felicia Day
You may know her as Dr. Horrible's lost love Penny or a Potential Slayer from Sunnydale, but it turns out that Felicia Day's geekiest — and awesomest — work yet is the creation of the online web series The Guild. Her tribute to gamers is adorable, hilarious, and subtitled in Chinese, Japanese, Italian, French, and German. Yeah, she's one of us.

Nathan Fillion
One of the hallmarks of devoted sci-fi fandom is allowing a fantastic story to become your reality. So Nathan Fillion, who played Captain Malcolm Reynolds on Firefly, endeared himself to me forever when he started making posts to internet fan forums and signing them "The Cap'n." The Serenity star is my kind of man: He devoured comics as a child, holds frequent Halo tournaments as an adult, and has this to say about his experience as the leading man of a sci-fi western (from Firefly: The Official Companion):

I put on my costume in my trailer and took one last look in the mirror. They called me to the set and I remember coming right from my trailer to inside the door of the set. When you walked into the studio, the ship was just to your left with the big open cargo bay door looking at ya. I remember walking up the cargo bay door for the first time in costume. I believe it was David Boyd, our director of photography, who turned and saw me walking up and turned back around to the crew and said, "Captain on deck." Some people clapped and it was kind of neat. It was a reception I will remember always.

David Duchovny
Nothing says commitment like writing two episodes of the show you star in, directing three others, and contributing to the story of five more. He may have left The X-Files a bit too early for some of our tastes, but Duchovny and creator Chris Carter were very much in cahoots as far as this celebration of unexplained phenomena is concerned — and that demands some respect. As Duchovny told the Los Angeles Times, it's an honor to be part of sci-fi culture:

The X-Files was said to be the first Internet show. We had chat rooms and fan sites and all that. Look, I'm usually five or six years behind whatever is hip. So it was around 2000 that I started doing e-mail and finally started understanding what all that was about. ... My initial response — and I still hold this to be true — is that it takes the place of some of the functions of a church in a small town: A place where people come together, ostensibly to worship something. But really what's happening is you’re forming a community. It's less about what you're worshiping and more about, "We have these interests in common." Someone has a sick aunt and suddenly it's about that, raising money to help her or sharing resources to make her life easier. That's what it was about with The X-Files on the Internet.

Ben Browder
Ben Browder's starred in the much-loved Australian-American series Farscape and American-Canadian series Stargate SG-1. Other actors in his position might bitch about being pegged as a sci-fi actor, but not Browder; he was heavily invested in both series, and seemed to have as much fun making them as people did watching them. He snagged a story credit for SG-1 and wrote two episodes of Farscape. As you can tell from the panel recording below, Browder learned his stuff while doing it: he says, "when people tell you that some long arc show which is five years in making is planned in every detail from the beginning, they are full of it!"

Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg will be Scotty in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film, and is one of the creators and stars of the tongue-in-cheek sitcom Spaced — he plays a sci-fi enthusiast and aspiring comic book writer. He certainly brings a lot of talent to both sides of the screen, and when he guest-starred in Doctor Who, Pegg told the BBC:

Doctor Who was a big part of my childhood ... I'd got into Doctor Who just before Jon Pertwee regenerated into Tom Baker, and as a kid I never remember the special effects being as primitive as they were. It scared the hell out of me but I loved it. I particularly recall monsters like the Sontarans, who had very strange heads; the giant insects in "The Ark in Space" and in one episode, Julian Glover tearing his face off to become this one-eyed creature.

He's speaking, of course, of alien menace Scaroth, who manipulated human history for his own ends in the serial "City of Death." If that brilliantly campy special effect impressed Pegg, he had to have been totally immersed in the story, and that is true sci-fi cred any day.

Salutes all around for these glorious nerdy thespians! Now — who'd I miss?

Thanks to tipsters Heather, Sarah, Ellen, and Lily!

Image from Adventures in Time and Space.

We can't tell you how much we want the upcoming Tintin movies to be sci-fi; what genre wouldn't want to claim a couple of movies written by Steven Moffat, directed by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg and starring (amongst others) Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (as the Thompson Twins) alongside Andy "I was Gollum and King Kong, you know" Serkis, after all? It's like the ideal science-fiction movie... except that, really, Tintin isn't really science fiction.

Oh, we've tried to convince ourselves otherwise, pointing out that he went to the moon in a couple of books, not to mention an appearance by a strange meteor. But the fact remains that, overall, The Adventures of Tintin remains a more grounded series, despite occasionally wandering into stranger territories (Plus, sadly, the movies are apparently based on the very not science fiction books The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure).

And so, we're left looking at the amazing collection of talent behind the Tintin movies, wishing that they could come to their senses and just work on a proper science fiction story instead of this Boy Reporter And Pirates stuff, and also sneakily reporting on it nonetheless by disguising it as a post about being sad that the movies aren't science fiction after all.

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost join 'Tintin' [Variety]

Pegg told Empire magazine about the movie, which starts shooting next April with Superbad's Greg Mottola directing:

I’m very, very excited about it. I think it’s a bigger film than probably Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz put together... We’re figuring [the logistics of the alien] out at the moment and having real fun, working closely with Double Negative who did Shaun and Hot Fuzz and Cloverfield and Hellboy II. We’re looking to really work to find the best way to do it and to create something which is utterly believable and sympathetic and has gravity and presence and is somebody that you totally buy. He’s the eponymous hero, so he has to be amazing.

As great as this movie will undoubtedly be, it's not the much-talked about third movie in the Shaun/Fuzz trilogy with co-writer and director Edgar Wright. That movie, currently titled World's End, is still in pre-production, while Wright works on his adaptation of cult comic Scott Pilgrim.

Exclusive: Simon Pegg Talks Paul [Empire]

The screening to 400 select journalists was introduced by Abrams himself, and featured an appearance from Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty in the new movie. Abrams opened by describing the reasons he agreed to make the movie:

The thing about Star Trek is that I was never really a huge fan. When I was asked to do Star Trek, though, I found myself saying ‘yes’. I just thought it was the right thing. There have been 10 movies and about a million series but when the first series came out I always felt it was someone else’s show. I appreciated there was a promise of adventure but quite frankly that’s always what I felt it was: a promise of adventure. It might have been the resources they had doing a TV show – you know, a big adventure going to a cardboard planet, you know? So, the idea of doing this movie where it could feel legitimate and real despite all the stuff that non-fans might thing was silly, was really the challenge.

I’ve seen Galaxy Quest, I’ve seen all the parodies but the key to doing this and making it feel real was a great cast. The cast is amazing and I’m going to show you a scene now where we meet Kirk as a young man. This shows how Kirk ends up joining this group called Starfleet.

The four scenes shown were as follows (All descriptions from Den of Geek):

THE FIRST SCENE: Kirk's bar-fight
The first scene shows Kirk getting his arse totally kicked by some Starfleet squaddies who were letting off steam in a nightclub near the Enterprise site. The squaddies were in fact trying to defend Uhura from Kirk's persistent and relentless pestering, It's a far more intense chat-up than you would ever have guessed from the Shatner-Nichols dynamic, and at one point Kirk makes mention of Uhura's famous linguistic skills, descending to some sub-TOS innuendo with the line "It must mean you've got a magic tongue".

Anyway pretty soon the belligerent squaddies are telling Tiberius to back off. There being only four of them against one of him, Kirk tells them to come back with four more…to make it an even fight! After a bit of a scuffle - during which Kirk ends up inadvertently holding Uhura's breasts before she sends him back into the fray - the squaddies totally whip Kirk, and at the end he's pinned to a table having his face violently pummelled by the lead squaddie, before being rescued by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who's slated as the first captain of the Enterprise.

The following section zips to ten minutes later. Kirk is sitting opposite Pike with cotton wool stuffed up his nose to stop the bleeding, while Pike remonstrates with him for being constantly in trouble and failing to enlist in Starfleet in spite of his genius-level test scores. "You could have your own starship in eight years", he promises. The scene concludes with Pine reminding Kirk that his own father was captain of a starship for only 12 minutes and managed to save over 800 lives - including Kirk's mother - in that time…and he challenges Kirk to do better.

THE SECOND SCENE: An ill Kirk tries to warn Pike of danger
Abrams prefaced this scene by informing us that - after the preceding scene - Kirk continues to get into trouble after his enrolment in Starfleet, and that when all the other graduates have been assigned starships, he is assigned none. Kirk's friend Doctor McCoy (Karl Urban, who REALLY nails DeForest Kelley's voice and mannerisms) manages to get him on board Pike's first run with the Enterprise by invoking Federation Rule 691, which states that a doctor can bring on board any person who he deems to be in need of treatment. In order to qualify Kirk for this loophole, McCoy gives him a nasty but non-lethal virus.

As we join the scene, Kirk's looking pretty ill as McCoy drags him over to a bed in a very spacious and cool-looking sick-bay. McCoy gives Kirk something to allay the effects of the virus, but Kirk has an allergic reaction to it and his hands swell up like Mickey Mouse's.

Over on the bridge, Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin) tries to log on with voice-identification, but the Enterprise computer won't let him until he can pronounce his V's properly.

Chekov announces to the crew that there is a catastrophic electrical storm on Vulcan, and that the Enterprise is running to the rescue. But Kirk recognises the description of the storm as identical to a Romulan attack that took place at the time of his birth, and is determined to warn Captain Pike that he is warping into a terrible trap.

Kirk tracks down Uhura, not yet a fixture on the bridge, and tries to convince her to help him, but then the virus/palliative causes his tongue to stop working! McCoy eventually manages to stabilise him so that he can talk to Pike.

Confronting Pike with the information on the bridge, a very disapproving Spock tries to have the brash young graduate taken off by security, but Kirk is able to persuade both Spock and his captain of the danger they're in.

Dropping out of warp-speed, the Enterprise instantly finds itself navigating the hulks and wrecks of the aftermath of a huge space-battle. This is no natural phenomena…

THE THIRD SCENE: Meeting Nimoy's Spock and Pegg's Mr. Scott
Abrams prefaced this scene by explaining that Kirk's continuing impulsiveness has forced Spock - now in command of the Enterprise - to exile him temporarily on an unnamed location. Here Kirk is met by...Spock! This time it's Leonard Nimoy, who has been aged even beyond his 77 years to play a Spock that has travelled back in time to change the course of history.

As we join the scene, Nimoy's Spock is leading Pine's Kirk to meet Pegg's Mr. Scott, who has been similarly exiled, and is in belligerent mood. Scott has a big scene here, talking with some annoyance about his efforts to effect matter transference onto a ship that is travelling at warp-speed. This is something Kirk and Scotty need to know if they are going to use Spock's handy transporter terminal to get back into the action.

Nimoy informs Scott that his future self will solve the problem of 'beaming up' between speeding ships, and even shows him the formula he is destined to work out. The engineer declares (against the evidence). "Of course! I never would have thought of space as a moving force!".

Old Spock informs Kirk that he will need to get Young Spock's command revoked with the old 'unfit for command' ruse we have so often seen in Star Trek, and that he should do this by getting Young Spock emotionally off-balance. Old Spock declares that it will not be difficult, and that he himself is like that (suggesting that Spock has seen himself in this way his whole life).

As Kirk and Scotty get into the transporter, Kirk playfully accuses Old Spock of cheating by travelling back in time to change the course of events. "I learnt it from a master", Spock rejoins. Ouch.

THE FOURTH (FINAL SCENE): Stopping the Romulan drill on Vulcan
Here Kirk and Sulu are in a drop-ship (inside it's very similar to the drop-ship from Aliens) along with a security officer called Olson. Sulu and Kirk are wearing blue-ish space-suits, but Olson's of course, is red.

Olson will be dead in three minutes.

The mission for our heroes is to stop the chain-like drill that is hanging twenty miles down from an orbiting Romulan ship from completing its work and creating the singularity that will engulf Vulcan. Vulcan only has minutes left before the Big One, and Mr. Spock gives Chekov the helm and beams down to the surface to save the Vulcan senate - including his parents. Meantime he has given orders to have Vulcan evacuate as far as possible in the minutes remaining.

Back at the rescue mission, Kirk, Sulu and Olson are dropped off and free-fall down the endless miles of space-chain. It's undoubtedly the longest parachute jump ever committed to film, and it's totally spectacular.

The chain has a number of interstitial platforms, and poor Olson comes a cropper of one of these after deploying his parachute, and ends up a blot on the landscape. Meantime Kirk and Sulu fight Romulans on the rusting platform/link suspended 4 miles above the Vulcan surface. To make matters worse, there's a vent near them that blasts a decimating wave of energy out every few minutes, so they have to fight around it.

Kirk once again finds himself hanging above a huge drop by his fingernails, with his Romulan adversary trying to stamp on his feet and get him off the ledge. Luckily for Kirk, Sulu's amazing sword - which unfolds to full-length from the handle like a light-sabre, but is made of metal - downs the Romulan nasty, and Sulu pulls Kirk up. Sulu saves Kirk? Huh?

Fear not, it will be repaid with interest in moments. Nero reveals that the interference of Kirk and Sulu has come too late - the singularity is in place. The Romulan ship lets the chain go and Kirk and Sulu find themselves about 60 seconds from becoming part of the rocky Vulcan landscape.

On the Enterprise, they're having a bit of trouble beaming our heroes up. "Try and stay in one place", shouts the transporter officer. Not easy when you're plummeting at maximum velocity. It looks like the end, but not so, for young Mr. Chekov is sure that he knows the technique for beaming up moving objects, and fights his way through the confusion on the Enterprise to rescue Kirk and Sulu just as they are about to become bug-blatter.

If JJ wants to keep premiering footage to small groups of journalists, he can bring over a DVD to my place any time he wants. I'll supply the soda.

[Den of Geek, Empire Online]

According to... well, almost everywhere over the weekend, really, Pegg - who was not entirely uncritical of the three prequel movies in the second season of Spaced - wants to use the Jedi Mind Trick on Lucas to convince them to let him write an episode or two of the upcoming series:

I might try to wheedle my way back into the affections of Lucasfilm and write an episode of the new live action Star Wars TV series.

This is exactly what we need to see happening with the new series - not to be confused with Clone Wars - for the following reasons:

Pegg Is A Good Writer: Or, at least, a good co-writer. Who didn't enjoy Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz? He's also a genuinely funny writer, which is something that's been missing from the movies since... well, The Empire Strikes Back.

Pegg Is A Star Wars Fan: What happens when you let Star Wars fans who made their names doing non-SW projects loose in the Lucasverse? You get things like Grendy Tarakovski's original (non-CG) Clone Wars cartoon, which not only led into Revenge of the Sith but also outshone that movie and the two earlier prequels without blinking.

Pegg Is Not George Lucas: This is important for two reasons. Firstly, dialogue really, really isn't Lucas' strength, as anyone who's seen... well, anything he's written solo can attest to. But more importantly, every franchise needs new blood every now and then (Look at what Chris Nolan has done for Batman), and Star Wars moreso than most. There's an incredible amount of potential in Star Wars still, but it's potential that's realized more in the areas where George doesn't have as much involvement (Video games, comics, novels) than in the more mainstream areas that he keeps a Vader-like grip on. Imagine what could happen if new creators who love the stories and characters, but don't feel beholden to one particular idea of what Star Wars "has" to be could tell the stories that they wanted.

Don't get me wrong; I'm looking forward to Clone Wars as much as the next person, but the idea of someone like Pegg getting to take on the Empire even just for an episode? That's exactly the kind of thing that gets even more excited about the idea of tuning in on a weekly basis. So, how about it, Mr. Lucas?

Image by Scott From New Jersey.

Pegg eyes Star Wars job [Yahoo]

Talking to Wired's The Underwire blog, Pegg explained why he prefers American science fiction to the homegrown kind:

You guys have the best sci-fi in the world. You also have the capacity to do it, as well. You get to make shows like Heroes... American sci-fi is frontierism again in space. It's thrusting and powering forward and gaining new territory... It has a lot to do with national psyche. The U.S. has a significant role to play globally and a precarious position. Fantasy always reflects our own real lives. You can apply that to nations as well. If you look at Star Wars, it is interesting to think about if another Star Wars would come along post-Iraq. After Vietnam, you have a nation that's confused in this conflict of blurring the boundaries of good and evil. Star Wars celebrated America in space. The good people wore white and the bad guys wore black. Star Wars is a reflection of post-Vietnam paranoia.

You can argue that point through the '80s and '90s with movies like The Fly, which showed the enemy being inside, with the rise of AIDS. Now the enemies are among us, with a rise in terrorism, and the zombies came back big time — they're your neighbors.

As for British Sci-Fi, there's always Doctor Who... Even if Pegg has no interest in playing the part himself:

Being the Doctor? I don't think I'd do it for two reasons. One, I'm really loving doing movies. I'm really enjoying working in the States. You have an incredible work ethic. Second, I really love Doctor Who and I'd hate to have to sit down every Saturday night and have it be me. David's done such an incredible job, he's gonna be a tough act to follow. It would feel awful if I just went and balled up the franchise by just being rubbish.

A franchise he's less worried about ballsing up is JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot, perhaps because he's not doing the heavy lifting alone:

Watching Chris Pine, and all the actors, I had skin-tingly moments. I saw them doing their stuff and thought: They've got this so fucking right. Chris had that swagger, and confidence, and big-balls-ness, and I think he nailed it.

And how does Pegg go about nailing his own particular it? Well, apparently just by doing his job:

Certainly not parodying him. It was just a question of playing him. I approached the part like James [Doohan, the original Scotty] did when he got the part. To look at who he is. He's an accomplished engineer, a bit cheeky, likes a drink and a brawl... It's very important to be sensitive and not make generalizations about groups of people, but you can be oversensitive. Scotty's a very affectionate stereotype. He's a popular character in Scotland. He's not a negative stereotype — he's a fun stereotype. The differences between ourselves can be very funny. But Scots are the first people to laugh at the fact that they drink and fight a bit.

Speaking as a Scot myself, I have to say how appalled I am at such a negati... Ehh, who am I kidding? He's kind of right.

Simon Pegg's Geek Roots Show in Spaced [The Underwire]