Frakes: Sign Me Up!
1 min read
If Jonathan Frakes has his way, he will be directing Star Trek 3.
The actor made his desire to direct the sequel known after Roberto Orci stepped down as director of the film, which is due out in 2016.
“Hashtag, BringInRiker!” he told the radio station in a recent phone call. “I’m all over it. I’m all over it.”
Frakes has also made “first contact” with J.J. Abrams and his agent has contacted Paramount Pictures. “I would love that job,” he said. “I say, unabashedly, I’d be great at it and would love to do it.”
The actor knows that the chances of him directing Star Trek 3 are slim though. “I’m trying to keep the lid on how excited I am about the possibility, knowing it’s such a long shot. But there’s nothing I would like better.”
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Let him do it.
It may bring a tinge of TNG to NuTrek, and First Contact is my favorite trek movie so there’s that.
IMHO, First Contact is the best of the TNG films so if that’s any indication of his skills, then they’d be foolish not to consider him. Frakes can bond with Chris Pine. They could share 1980s “CHiPs” stories about Chris’ father and Michael Dorn on the set back then.
Yes, First Contact was great — and if that’s the game Frakes brings to this, that would be awesome.
But Insurrection was horrible, so I hope that’s not the way we would be going…
Won’t happen – he is old Trek. And if it does happen, it is strictly a save-face action as why wouldn’t they have used him before Orci? A guy who has directed 2 prior Trek films vs a guy with no directing experience at all? They may end up doing it just to try and look good with the fans but it won’t be on purpose.
My first reaction was “no”, as the directing on his two Trek films was alright, not brilliant. But looking at his filmography on IMDB – he has been working on a lot of modern TV shows, including Agents of SHIELD episode “The Well”, and five(!) episodes of Burn Notice. So he may well be capable of making a snappy, modern-looking Trek film, especially if he has the same budgets to work with as Abrahms has had.
But the more important question is – Who is writing the script? We don’t want another STID mess.
He’s done a lot of other work since then too. Every good director has the occassional flop. I think if he did get the director job for Star Trek 3, he would be a great fit. He’s familiar with the franchise and I’m sure he and his team would be leaning toward fresh ideas.
I think the blame for the lameness of Insurrection is largely with the script, rather than with direction. It certainly was not Michael Piller’s finest hour. Frakes did very well with what he had to work.
Frakes is an able director, knows Trek, and has reverence for the property. We could do far, far worse. Just look at the director who did Nemesis, and knew nothing of Trek lore or story, it was a mess of an action movie.
Insurrection as written by Michael Piller was different in a much better way than after Berman and the Studio had their say.
Source?
I think Frakes would do great. I also heard on Twitter that Robert Duncan McNeil (Tom Paris) is interested in the job. Either that or get JJ to do it again, under the condition that he uses fewer lens flares. 😉
Maybe they’ll ask Abrams to nominate a successor. He knows a bunch of directors who have worked on his TV shows and done 2nd unit work on his movies, so he’d know if one of them could replicate his style adequately.
Ronald D. Moore, by himself, with no one else involved, would be excellent.
I also read a while back that Frakes used to have many meetings with Abrams with potential story ideas, which Abrams never entertained, but shows that Frakes is ambitious enough to collaborate.
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Ron Moore’s more a writer & producer than he is a director. He’s only directed two projects, according to IMDB: one episode of BSG, and one of Caprica.
If I heard he was involved at the script stage, that’d be exciting. But I want someone who’s passionate about directing to be the director.
That’s two more projects than Orci (from an infinitely better writer/producer to boot!) I hope whomever is selected will be at liberty to ditch Orci’s storyline – that’s something I’d truly find exciting.
I don’t know if I’d say it’s just the script, plenty of shots looked less than cinematic to me. For the most part I thought it looked like a 2-hour episode of TNG, just with better CGI. Especially when they were running from the transporter-drones. I half expected some chick to grab an old guy and lie down on the grass to make it easier for the Crystaline Entity to vaporize them.
First Contact, on the other hand, was a masterpiece. Or maybe that’s just how I remember it, I haven’t seen it since it was in the theaters. I remember being very impressed with how much it DIDN’T look like a TV episode.