A little less than two weeks ago, we got our first good look at director J. J. Abrams’ reinvented Star Trek universe in motion and most fans found it good. But there was one thing that was lacking from the trailer for the upcoming film that most folks were probably anxious to see- Leonard Nimoy’s return to the role that made him an icon, the half-human, half-alien science officer Spock. Well, AintItCoool has been given a slightly revised version of the Star Trek trailer and one of the main revisinos corrects the lack of Nimoy that we saw before. Check it out below.

Nimoy hasn’t been seen in a big screen Trek adventure since 1991′s The Voyage Home. I haven’t given much of a tinker’s damn about the ongoing Trek franchise for many years. But I have to admit that seeing Nimoy back on screen, giving the Vulcan hand greeting and uttering his character’s most famous lines warms the grinchy heart of this former fan.

Star Trek hits theaters next May.

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With the release of the first real footage from J. J. Abrams upcoming Star Trek reboot in the form of an exciting trailer, fans have probably been pouring over the clip, analyzing it like the Zapruder film. The folks over at Slash Film have posted a collection of 50 screengrabs form the hi-def version available online. Check them out below. 

Columbia Pictures has signed The Dark Knight co-star Aaron Eckhart to star in their big budget science-fiction/action picture Battle: Los Angeles. Eckhart will play the leader of a platoon of Marines battling an alien invasion in downtown LA.

Director Jonathan Liebesman describes the film as “Independence Day meets Black Hawk Down,” which certainly sounds intriguing. It has been a long time since we’ve seen a hardcore, grunt’s-eye point-of-view, science-fiction war film like Aliens or Starship Troopers. However, Liebesman is the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Darkness Falls, so there is cause to be only cautiously optimistic about this film.

Also, while I like Eckhart as an actor, he does have a mixed track record when it comes to picking projects. For every Dark Knight or Thank You For Smoking on his resume, there’s a The Core or No Reservations. Plus there’s that whole separated-at-birth thing he has going with Scott Bakula which sort of freaks me out at times.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

Another new The Day The Earth Stood Still poster, this time for the international release, has popped up.

This one seems to stress a little more action, with jet fighters screaming towards the mysterious spherical object above New York City. Is this an indication that the filmmakers have infused more action into the film, moving it away from the more thoughtful and character-orientated take of the original? Or is the studio trying to sell it as a big, Independence Day-like science-fiction extravaganza in order to get butts into seats? Either way, this film is going to have to be monumentally incredible in order for me to believe that remaking the original 1951 Robert Wise-directed classic.

Via IMPAwards.

Perhaps the biggest object of speculation over the look of J. J. Abrams new Star Trek reboot was the design of the franchise iconic starship, the USS Enterprise. Paramount Pictures has passed along our first look at Abrams’ re-imagining of the Enterprise to the folks at Entertainment Weekly, and we have posted to the right. (Click to enlarge.)

I have mixed feelings about the design. I like the look of the engine nacelles, for some reason they remind me of old 1950s/60s cars that had those fins on either side on the back. The engineering section looks good and I like how the deflector dish at the front combines the old style “radar dish” look of the original television series with the lightup version of the movies and subsequent television series.

The thing that is really throwing me, though, is the dorsal fin connecting the saucer section with the engineering section. It feels like it is sitting just a bit too far back, losing the sense that the Enterprise looked as if it was leaning or surging forward as seen in the image to the left.

So what are your thoughts? Is the new Enterprise the New Coke of Star Trek?

Some production art for the upcoming Terminator: Salvation from production designers Martin Laing and Victor Martinez have shown up online. The pieces, all in the gallery below, showcase a number of various terminator models like the standard T-800 (which Schwartzenegger played in the previous films) and hunter-killers that we’ve seen before, as well as new terminators in the form of giant robots, snake-like “hydrobots” and a gun laden motorcycle terminator.

The pictures come via Film School Rejects, who have done the due diligence on their authenticity.

I’ve stated before how I think any continuation of the Terminator franchise after the first two movies is superfluous. Anything else just kind of defeats what the first two movies had to say thematically. Despite this, and the fact that McG is directing, the prospects for this film have sounded fairly promising so far based on the cast involved.

But really, motorcycles? When have modified motorcycles worked in a science-fiction project? Galactica 1980? That old TV movie version of Captain America? The one Barry Bostwick rode in MegaForce? The computerized motorcycle from Warriors Of The Wasteland?

Please. A terminator motorcycle just sounds like someone feels they are in competition with Transformers. And the last time somebody decided to compete with the Transformers, we wound up with the Go-Bots.

Earlier today, we passed along a report from AintItCoolNews about how screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski is approaching this remake of the classic 1956 science-fiction film Forbidden Planet. Well, forget what we said.

Always one to keep the lines of communications open with his fans when he can, Straczynski was quick to comment on AintItCool’s report, dismissing it outright.

That report is totally incorrect. It’s not going to be retro, and it’s not going to be a continuation. When Altair 4 blows up, it blows up. I have, however, found a way to honro [sic] the original movie without in any way besmirching it in order to do this iteration. Once folks find out what we’re actually going to do, I think they’ll be most pleased. Forbidden Planet remains one of my favorite films of all time, and I wouldn’t even think about doing this project if I didn’t think there was a way to do it that would not in any way diminish the original…which is why this is the the first development in years to actually get to the script stage. Everybody involved is very excited by the approach.

I guess this puts us back at square one for what we know about the film.

Last week, we reported on Warner Brother’s in development Forbidden Planet project as a remake of the classic 1956 movie which starred Leslie Nielson and Anne Francis. However, that might not exactly be the case.

AintItCool has a report today from an unnamed source who states that the project is not so much a remake of the classic film, but more of a “complementary piece” or a continuation. AintItCool’s source also reports that the film’s production design will have the same retro look that the first film sported, including the iconic appearance of Robby the Robot.

When they say “continuation,” I am guessing that this is some form of marketing jargon to avoid announcing that you are making a sequel to a half-century old film. To my recollection, there have only been two attempts at creating a sequel to a film that was decades old. The Color Of Money (1986) didn’t really rely on the audience having seen 1961‘s The Hustler while 1998‘s The Odd Couple II had the advantage of a popular television version keeping the film’s basic premise in the public’s eye. However, outside of the film fans, I don’t think that Forbidden Planet looms large in the average ticket buyer’s consciousness, so hopefully this film will stand on its own in terms of story.

But honestly, I wonder if there is enough material there for a continuation of the original’s story. At its heart, Forbidden Planet is a morality tale, a story with a lesson about the dangers of pride and the ever-presence of our baser natures. Doesn’t the idea of a sequel to a morality play kind of defeat the point of the first story? As we have noted before, the project’s screenwriter, J. Michael Straczynski, is an avowed fan of the original film so I trust that he has a take on the material that will impress.

Some days I wonder if there is any really interesting film news out there that isn’t about yet another classic film being set up for a remake by a clueless studio. But last week, we reported on two such projects- remakes of Akira Kurosawa’s High And Low and the 1956 science-fiction classic Forbidden Planet – that both sounded fairly promising.

Now comes word of a Planet Of The Apes relaunch over at 20th century Fox, that sounds pretty exciting as well. Rather than just try to remake the initial film in the series – and fail, like Tim Burton’s 2002 remake did in trying to recreate the 1968 original’s shocking twist ending – the studio is looking at a remake of the Apes series’ fourth film, 1972′s Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes.

According to the folks over at CHUD, scripters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver have submitted a screenplay entitled Genesis: Apes, which reimages Conquest‘s original storyline in a dark and edgy way. In the original film, set in the futuristic year of 1991, Caeser (Roddy McDowall), the son of the two apes who had traveled back in time to the 1970s in the series’ previous entry Escape From The Planet Of The Apes, winds up leading a revolt of apes against the the totalitarian government who has kept them slaves. To further hammer the theme of the film home, director J. Lee Thompson modeled the film’s violent finale on the recent Watts Riots.

But Genesis: Apes takes a slightly different, but definitely intriguing, direction with its story. First off, it is set in modern times. This film’s version of Caeser came about due to a scientist’s meddling with chimpanzee DNA. Once he discovers that the chimp can talk, he takes him home to be raised by his wife, who is unable to bare children of her own. Several years later, his adoptive mother is attacked and in the act of protecting her, accidentally kills her assailant. He is then taken to labs where, although he is as sentient as a human, he is tortured and experimented on. Although initially rejected by the other apes at the laboratory, he eventually inspires them to revolt and overthrow human society.

Of course, such an edgy concept is probably why the project is just sitting at Fox. Where the original distanced itself from its audience by a fictional two decades during which a fascist government came to power, this new version establishes no such dramatic gulf. It is set in the present and the torture of thinking beings that some would like to consider nothing more than animals may present a disturbing political parallel. As CHUD’s Devin Faraci states, “You just can’t have your hero working to tear down our modern society.”

And that’s a damn shame because this take on the material sounds exciting and fresh. This is the kind of bold and inventive vision for a remake that is unfortunately the exception that proves the rule in these situations. This is the type of remake I could get behind, if only the studios would have the courage to make them.

(And of course, if anyone just so happens to have a copy of the script, the contact us button is over on the right.)

Warner Brothers has hired Changeling scribe and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski to script a remake of their 1956 classic film Forbidden Planet.

The original, loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, tells the story of the crew of a spaceship, captained by Leslie Nielson, sent to the planet Altair IV to check up on a colony of scientists. There, they discover that only one scientist and his daughter have survived the attacks of an unseen monster years earlier. Despite the danger perceived by the crew, the scientist refuses to leave with the them, preferring to stay and continue to study the ancient underground city of the planet’s vanished inhabitants. Some may know the film for introducing audiences to to Robby The Robot.

Normally, I’m against remaking classic films. And let’s make no mistake, Forbidden Planet is a classic. Even setting aside the fact the Shakespeare connection, its story was groundbreaking for 1950s science-fiction cinema. In all other sci-fi movies of the time, outer space was the home of strange and terrible monsters who had nothing better to do than land in small Earth towns and terrorize the citizenry. In Forbidden Planet, it is humans who went out into outer space, only to find that the monsters out there are the ones we brought with us. Besides its unusually cerebral storyline, Forbidden Planet also sported some great state-of-the-art special effects, which still hold up today. Amazingly, the movie lost the Academy Award for visual effects to The Ten Commandments’ far inferior work. With its spaceship crew tasked with exploration, many of have seen Forbidden Planet as a direct influence on Gene Roddenberry when he created writer/producer Star Trek.

But Straczynski is a writer whom I am a fan of and I trust on a project like this. He is a fan of the original film and has worked references to it into his classic series Babylon 5. If there is any writer out there who will get the material and will remain true to it, I think it will be Straczynski. As he stated in an online post last night, “Joe the Fanboy has been chasing this one assignment for over a decade.”

(Two remakes that I actually approve of in one week? Am I getting soft in my old age?)

In addition to the Forbidden Planet gig, Straczynski currently has the features Lensmen, based on the E E Doc Smith pulp novels, and The Flickering Light set up at Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and They Marched Into Sunlight, with Paul Greengrass directing, at Playtone and Universal. He has also completed an adaptation of Max Brooks’ zombie apocalypse novel World War Z, which is at Plan B waiting a greenlight. In his online post yesterday, Straczynski also stated that he is signed for two more projects, but couldn’t give specifics until the studios announced them.

Via Hollywood Reporter.