It’s now been ten years since Paramount Pictures rebooted one of the greatest sci-fi franchises of all time and gave us a brand new “Star Trek.” This film helped reinvigorate the franchise and made stars out of the likes of Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana. While we continue the wait for a a fourth movie that may never happen, enjoy this fun trivia about the making of this epic reboot.
1. The origins of the reboot can be traced as far back as 1968, when “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry announced at a fan convention his plans to create a movie prequel detailing the formation of the Enterprise crew.
2. Before this film materialized, Paramount was developing a different reboot called “Star Trek: The Beginning.” This version would have been set during the Earth-Romulan War and centered around Kirk’s ancestor Tiberius Chase.
3. The crew relied on an abandoned Budweiser plant factories to depict the cluttered engine rooms of the Enterprise.
4. John Cho was initially reluctant to play the role of Hikaru Sulu, as Cho is Korean American and Sulu is Japanese American. However, original Sulu actor George Takei encouraged Cho to take the part.
5. In certain scenes, the special effects team had to completely reanimate Eric Bana and Leonard Nimoy‘s mouths. That’s because Bana severely injured his teeth and Nimoy’s dialogue was changed during the older Spock’s first encounter with Kirk.
6. Kirk is shown eating an apple during the Kobayashi Maru training sequence. This mirrors a scene from “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” where an older Kirk eats an apple while recounting the story of that infamous scandal. According to director J.J. Abrams, this homage was completely accidental.
7. Winona Ryder was cast as Spock’s mother Amanda, despite being only six years older than Zachary Quinto. This is because the film was originally supposed to include an early scene of Amanda giving birth to her son.
8. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” star Wil Wheaton provided voiceover dialogue for many of the Romulans on Nero’s ship.
9. Karl Urban‘s Dr. McCoy mentions joining Starfleet after going through a nasty divorce. This pays homage to an unused story from writer D.C. Fontana, which was originally written for Season 3 of the TV series.
10. There’s a reason Nero is MIA for so long in between traveling into the past and battling the Enterprise crew. A deleted subplot reveals that Nero and his crew were captured by Klingons and imprisoned for several decades.
11. IDW Publishing released several tie-in comic books that flesh out the events surrounding the film. 2009’s “Star Trek: Countdown” explores the events that led to Nero’s journey into the past and features Captain Picard as a major character. 2010’s “Star Trek: Nero” expands on the movie’s deleted Klingon subplot.
12. This turned out to be the final “Star Trek” film Majel Roddenberry worked on. Barrett provided the voice of Starfleet’s computers dating back to the original TV series. She passed way in December 2008, two weeks after completing her dialogue for the reboot.
13. A lucky few fans were given a surprise early screening in April 2019. The Alamo Drafthouse advertised a screening of “The Wrath of Khan” with a special 10-minute preview of the reboot. Instead, Nimoy and the film’s writers interrupted the film and asked attendees if they’d rather watch the new “Star Trek” instead.
14. Paramount initially planned for a fourth film in the reboot series to follow 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond,” one which would bring back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk. However, the film was canceled in January 2019 after negotiations broke down with Pine and Hemsworth.
15. “Star Trek” may be getting rebooted all over again. Quentin Tarantino has pitched his idea for a movie and has voiced an interest in directing after completing work on “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
29301
Kurtzman co-wrote “
For 35 years, we’ve had to put up with friends’ impersonations of 
1. Fans have covered every inch of this movie, but they may not know that the film’s original/”official” title is actually “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.”
3. Yup, that’s a space baby on Khan’s stolen starship, the Reliant. How’d it get there? In a deleted scene — of which no known footage currently exists — we would have first met Khan’s baby in the cargo container home to Khan’s followers on Ceti Alpha V. Chekov, with Captain Terrell, would have encountered the small boy as he looked out the window of the container. Then, the boy’s second and final appearance would occur in Reliant’s transporter room as he is drawn to the flashing lights of the Genesis torpedo building up to detonation. 
7. Ever wonder why Scotty is crying over the death of mid-shipman Preston? That’s because Preston is Scotty’s nephew. Deleted footage — incorporated into the Director’s Cut — would have revealed that info, as well as fleshed out the officer’s screentime in a way to better justify Scotty’s tears over Preston’s deathbed. 
9. Khan’s right-hand man, Joachim (Judson Scott, right), was supposed to be named Joaquin, a character that appeared in the original series episode “Space Seed,” which introduced Khan. Due to a production issue — and possibly the fact that the studio would have had to pay royalties to the original episode’s writer for using his character in the feature film — the character’s name was changed. 
11. Producer Robert Sallin, at a recent LA screening of the film, revealed that he was responsible for executing the final shot of Spock’s photon torpedo coffin on the Genesis Planet’s surface.
13. Shatner originally rejected Meyer’s rewrite; Meyer realized that the actor’s main concern was that Kirk was “not the first through the door.” That he wasn’t at the level of big-screen hero that the actor wanted to play. So Meyer made some tweaks, sent a new draft to Shatner, and — soon after — the actor called and, in a message on Meyer’s answering machine, gushes about the script. He went so far to call Meyer a “genius,” according to the filmmaker, who — to this day — claims to still have that tape. 
Hard as it is to believe, the original “
1. Mel Gibson can thank Riggs for landing him the juicy lead role in 1990’s “
3. For all that his character complained about being “too old for this s***,” 
5. “Star Trek” icon 
8. During the course of the movie, Murtaugh tells Riggs a story about surviving a battle in Ia Drang Valley during the Vietnam War. Funnily enough, Mel Gibson would eventually go on to star in 2002’s “
9. The film once featured completely different opening and ending scenes. Originally, the movie ended with Riggs and Murtaugh bidding farewell rather than Riggs showing up for Christmas dinner at the Murtaugh household.
11. While we’ll probably never see a “Lethal Weapon 5,” now that the franchise has been rebooted for TV, Shane Black apparently did write a story for a new sequel. In an interview with Nerdist’s The Writer’s Panel podcast, Black revealed that he co-wrote a 62-page treatment that would reunite the iconic cops in what the filmmaker thought would make for a “very good movie.”
Call it a 50th anniversary present or the ultimate “Star Trek” holiday gift: either way, fans of the sci-fi franchise — especially the original 1966 TV series that started it all — are about to unwrap something special.
The result of their labors — as spotlighted in “The Roddenberry Vault” among a series of extensive documentaries, special features collected clips, interviews of “Trek’s” original cast and creators and a roster of current Hollywood movers and shakers they inspired, and a dozen original episodes presented for context — will be, for “Star Trek” fans everyone — downright thrilling, as the Okudas recounted exclusively to Moviefone.
As you started exploring, how quickly did you start finding the most significant pieces that have been hidden away? Did they slowly reveal themselves, or was it early on you were like, “Oh, we’ve got a goldmine here?”
Is this the last undiscovered bit of “Star Trek,” do you imagine? Or are there still places to look for amazing discoveries like this? It feels like, here we are, 50 years later, and 50 years from now there’s still going to be an appetite for this kind of material.
What keeps you guys motivated to do the great archival work on the “Star Trek” franchise that you’ve done?
William Shatner (actor, Capt. James T. Kirk, “Star Trek: The Original Series,” “Star Trek” theatrical films I-VI, “Star Trek: Generations”): We’ve invented, through science fiction, a mythology, and “Star Trek” is a huge part of that. So many great science fiction writers had ideas for “Star Trek,” even if they didn’t write exactly for “Star Trek,” so it was 50 years as a mere television show, and through various iterations expanded to affect a great deal of our culture, far beyond anything we know.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”): Initially, when I watched the show in the ’60s, it meant what everybody talks about as that inclusion of different characters, different races, and hope for the future — all the kind of stuff that we know about. And then, when I was in college, it was about great fun and getting your mind off of your school work and everything just for an hour, just to not really concentrate on other things, having a good time.
Star Trek: Voyager”): It’s an optimistic, hopeful view of what we could possibly achieve in the future as humanity. If we can get it together. That’s what Gene was so brilliant at with the original series, in the very beginning, was showing in the height of the Cold War, a Russian officer on the bridge. Not that long after World War II, a Japanese officer on the bridge. Blacks, whites, women, everybody. And everyone was together and everyone worked together.
Adam Savage (“Mythbusters” host, “Star Trek” fan): I grew up with the original series airing on television in the early ’70s. I watched every episode a million times. Science fiction has always had these two pulls, but one of them was about real social commentary, and that’s where “Star Trek’s” strengths are. I grew up inculcated with a sort of lovely liberal, diverse ethic that “Star Trek” baked right into the show, and that came right from Roddenberry.
The best “Transformers” movie is still the first one.
1. For an animated movie aimed at kids, “Transformers” has a crazy-high body count. This is because Hasbro wanted to clean house and introduce a new toy line to coincide with the launch of Season Three. (The movie served as a bridge between the second and third seasons.)
3. The debate over whether or not to kill Prime caused “steaming arguments” among the filmmakers, 
5. Two things that writer Friedman had to fight to get into the movie: Arcee (above), the first female Autobot, and having the Transformers interact with humans Spike and his son, Daniel. 
7. The Autobots’ Matrix of leadership, the shiny thing Prime passes on to rookie Hot Rod (pictured), was inspired (naturally) by the Petrean Touch in Catholicism.
9. Welles’ 
11. 
13. Friedman’s least favorite? “Wheelie was a pain in the ass.”
15. The movie’s most iconic song is Stan Bush’s “The Touch,” which — you might wanna sit down — was originally created by Bush and ‘co-writer Lenny Macaluso for 
17. For the film’s 20th anniversary in 2006, IDW published its own adaptation. It includes extra scenes, such as a battle between the missing combiners and Omega Supreme at the Ark, as well as Shockwave and Reflector being destroyed by Unicron.
19. The movie takes place 20 years after the events of the series’ Season 2.
21. Unicorn in robot form originally featured more organic features. He would have rocked some serious ’80s long hair in addition to a goatee and mustache. (Please let it have been a mullet!)