Robert Orci’s Star Trek 3 may beam William Shatner up after all. After the star of the original series said that he had been contacted about appearing in the third film in the rebooted franchise, which looks primed to celebrate the franchise’s 50th anniversary in 2016, new rumors are swirling about his role in the film.
The latest report from Badass Digest claims that William Shatner would appear in “one scene” in Star Trek 3, opposite the new Captain Kirk played by Chris Pine, and next to both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, both of whom play the character Spock.
That much was probably pretty obvious. After all, why cast William Shatner if you’re not going to at least have him meet his counterpart once? (X-Men: Days of Future Past went out of its way to put James McAvoy and Patrick Stewart side-by-side, as you’ll recall.) But given the many timelines and alternate realities inherent to the Star Trek franchise, the bigger scoop – if indeed this rumor is true – would be the identity of Shatner’s version of the Kirk character.
Related: Download a Free Commentary Track for ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’
Badass Digest claims that William Shatner will be playing an older version of Kirk in Star Trek 3, obviously, but that he will be specifically playing the future version of Kirk in the J.J. Abrams timeline. The report is much hazier about how the team-up will actually occur. Time travel? Holodeck simulation? It could be anything.
But if you ask us, it would be a lot more satisfying if future Kirk was from the Mirror Universe, in which the moral compass of many classic Star Trek characters are reversed. This would set the stage for the ultimate confrontation: Kirk vs. Kirk. And Shatner would have the advantage, since an experienced captain would know moves that an inexperienced captain hasn’t even learned yet.
Then again, it would be even cooler to gradually let the cast of this new Star Trek reboot grow goatees over the course of this franchise, and reveal that the J.J. Abrams-verse was set in the Mirror Universe all along. But that’s probably just us.
Bad Robot is notoriously secretive about its projects, but with Roberto Orci in charge of Star Trek 3 instead of J.J. Abrams, it’s possible that we’ll have a little more transparency about the third film in the rebooted franchise. Then again, maybe we won’t learn the truth behind these rumors (if there’s any truth to them at all) until Star Trek 3 comes out in a few years. Until then, keep those salt shakers handy, and release one single grain any time an unverified rumor emerges from the internet.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
