Source: In a very brief interview for Hollywood Today included in the current issue of Star Trek Magazine. Star Trek Movie Actor Chris Pine who portrays the role of Captain James T. Kirk, which was originated by William Shatner, seemed very upbeat about the new movie and compared it to ‘Batman Begins’.

You get the birth, the childhood and beginning of the main characters before the five – year mission. That’s going to be great. You get a sense of where they came from and how they began. Plus anyone who is a lover of big action films is going to love this.

Pine revealed that he has much confidence in the new films ability to attract new fans and the actor feels that the movie has the right balance of action and humor to draw back fans as well as attract newer fans too boot.

by Kaleem Aftab, IGN UK
March 10, 2008 – Chris Pine who is playing Captain James T. Kirk in Lost creator J.J Abrams upcoming Star Trek movie has a rather surprising method of trying to fill in the black hole left by the iconic performances of William Shatner. Pine says that in seeking inspiration for his Kirk, he has not looked to Shatner but another famous intergalactic space hero – Han Solo.

When asked who he would like his incarnation of the Starship Enterprise captain to most resemble, Pine responded, “I would definitely say Harrison Ford in either Indiana Jones or Star Wars. What Harrison Ford is so great at doing is bringing that quality to his characters that if they could be anywhere else in the world they would be there, but he is not, he just is in the middle of s*** and he has to figure out a way of dealing with it so that he can go back to doing whatever the hell he was doing before the film started.

“I’ve always loved that quality about him in Star Wars, this sense of absolute grumpy manner; the accidental hero. Not to say that I modeled my version of James T Kirk on anything in particular but I think I definitely have wanted to bring that kind of Harrison Ford humour to Kirk.”

Any resemblance to Han Solo?

Star Trek is currently filming in L.A and is scheduled for released in May 2009, when we’ll find out if the 27 year-old actor has managed to fulfill his own lofty ambition.

I just ran across this video of Chris from this year’s Sundance Festival as he took the time to sit down with Variety. In the interview you hear Chris discuss his role as Bo Barret in “Bottle Shock” and the history behind the Napa Valley Winery’s which the movie is based on. It’s nice to see something recent of him 🙂

By Missy Schwartz
In the based-on-a-true story Sundance movie Bottle Shock, Chris Pine stars opposite Bill Pullman as one half of a California wine-making duo whose ”perfect” Chardonnay impressed the merde out of the French at a 1976 blind tasting. The day after the film’s premiere, we cornered young Mr. Pine in the EW photo lounge to chat about his first Sundance experience, as well as some other movie he’s in whose title rhymes with ”Far Schmeck.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Are you enjoying Sundance?
CHRIS PINE: I’m only here for a very short time, so I’m going to cram in as much fun as possible. I have to hop on a plane tonight and go back home, unfortunately.

Because you’re shooting some small movie, right?
Yes, it’s a small independent back in Los Angeles. It’s kind of like Star Wars and Spaceballs combined. I think they’re calling it Star Trek. It’s going very well. We’re having a lot of fun. It comes out later this year, sometime near Christmas time. I think people will really enjoy it.

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) Stardate – Chris Pine, who plays the young Captain James T. Kirk in the upcoming $150 million movie “Star Trek,” is starting the new year with his own five year mission. To boldly go where few actors get the chance to go, or dare to.

“It brings a big responsibility,” Pine said on the importance of being Kirk, whom generations of fans know as intimately as a family member. “It’s not your standard tentpole movie. It has a 40-year history attached to it. These are iconic roles that have been done, and done well,” he told Hollywood Today.

It is indeed a big responsibility, and one that will be judged under a microscope. Trekkies are the most rabid of all fans, have always had the largest conventions, most enthusiastic collectors and those who will examine every nuance, line and action of their revered Captain Kirk and the cadet who dares to play him. Not only against how William Shatner played it on TV and film, but against the canon of Trek lore, which adherents believe in almost religiously.

An informal radio survey once reported that a third of the people polled believe the government is capable of producing warp drives, or already has. This is indicative that fantasy passes to belief if you’ve seen it on TV and movies often enough since you were a kid.