Those attending VegasCon '08 saw four new character posters for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, which give us our first look at the reborn versions of Sulu, Chekov, Scotty and McCoy. The image above shows Karl Urban as Leonard McCoy and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov; you'll have to go to TrekMovie.com, which had the first photo of the posters, to see Simon Pegg as Scotty and John Cho as Sulu. It should surprise no one that these Starfleet officers are much more photogenic than their original counterparts, and not, I think, merely because they're younger. (I mean, look at this guy.)

This comes on the heels of the first screening of the complete film for Paramount execs, which apparently went very well, though since the source for that could really only be from inside Paramount, I'd take that with a huge grain of salt.

I came to Star Trek late, which led to oddball results like my liking Star Trek: Voyager. (I think that asking "What would Janeway do?" is a good way to lead your life.) So I'm likely to be less offended by canon alterations than die-hard fans of the original series. Thoughts on the new versions of these characters?

According to Variety, Karl Urban is set to star in Relentless, a 3-D action film that will be directed by Demian Lichtenstein.

Relentless is the story of four extreme sports professionals who survive a plane crash in the Amazon jungle. They must use all of their survival instincts to outrun a tribe of homicidal natives, who are hunting them through the jungle. I am willing to bet the natives are also cannibals, because no one makes a jungle movie without cannibals.
The description leads me to envision this as a cross between Alive and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Only in 3-D.

Lichtenstein has been following James Cameron on Avatar, and was trained in 3-D filmmaking by DreamWorks' James Mainard and Phil McNally. "I am fascinated with the new 3-D technology and know that this script is a perfect match to take advantage of the unlimited potential of what 3-D can do. After being mentored by James Cameron on the set of his new 3-D film Avatar, I knew that 3-D movies are no longer just a fad. It is the future of filmmaking."

As I have yet to see a movie in this newfangled 3-D format -- I was ditched for that 3-D redo of Nightmare Before Christmas I don't know how many times, and I had no interest in Beowulf because I am a literary purist. Is it as amazing as the hype? Are we just seeing a fad, a ghost from the 1950's? So far, with Avatar being an exception (mostly because we know nothing about it), it just seems an excuse to make rather silly scripts. Nothing about the upcoming 3-D Journey to the Center of the Earth looks at all appealing, except for the 3-D elements. It all seems like something you line up for at Disneyland. But I confess, I am very behind on this whole trend, so I am genuinely interested to hear your thoughts about it.

Poor Tyler Mane. Sure, he was pretty lame as Sabretooth in the first X-Men, but that doesn't mean he should be passed over in the casting of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After all, while he may not be a big name actor, he did just star in a successful movie (he was Michael Myers in the Halloween remake). But it appears Fox is trying to go with someone new as Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth) -- and by someone new, I don't mean an unknown; I mean someone who isn't Mane. According to CHUD.com, that someone was nearly Karl Urban, an actor familiar to fanboys as Eomer in the Lord of the Rings movies. But Urban's talks to play Creed apparently fell through, and now the studio is going for an even bigger geek-movie star: Gerard Butler. This is from another one of those tips from a "closely placed and highly trusted source," so take of it what you will. It could be true or it could not be, and even if it's true, the story is merely that Butler is being offered the role. He could very well not be interested.

But who cares what he thinks? The more important question is whether or not we are interested. Maybe if Gavin Hood were doing a 300 type of style for Wolverine -- specifically one that looked like Mark Texeira's art -- Butler would fit. Otherwise, the actor needs to be blonder, and naturally so. Maybe Butler could pass for the character with a bleach job all over, but I'd rather not be thinking about it being Butler with a bleach job all over. Remember this isn't necessarily Sabretooth we're talking about. He's likely not going to be in costume much. I wish I could find a picture of my ideal Creed look (it's from a comic about 15 years ago and he's in plain clothes, on a talk show), but I can't. I think all of the actors I always imagined were '60s western guys for some reason, anyway.

Additionally, CHUD.com has heard that Hood is trying to get Natalie Portman to play a character named Kayla. I think we should all just kind of ignore that information and hope that it is as untrue as possible.

Word from The Hollywood Reporter is that New Zealand actor Karl Urban has joined the cast of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek re-start. Fans of fantastical cinema will no doubt remember Urban from his work in Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Supremacy, Doom, The Chronicles of Riddick and Pathfinder. Mr. Urban will be playing medical officer "Bones" McCoy, a character made famous by the late DeForest Kelley. Plot details are still being kept under wraps, but here's what the all-new Enterprise crew looks like...

Captain Kirk (previously played by William Shatner) -- Chris Pine (27 years old)
Spock (Leonard Nimoy) -- Zachary Quinto (30)
Sulu (George Takei) -- John Cho (35)
McCoy (DeForest Kelley) -- Karl Urban (35)
Scotty (James Doohan) -- Simon Pegg (37)
Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) -- Zoe Saldana (29)
Chekov (Walter Koenig) -- Anton Yelchin (18)


...and Eric Bana as the villainous Nero. (With a special appearance from Leonard Nimoy!) Production on the film is expected to run from November to March. So what do you think of the whole crew?

Also, feel free to pick through our numerous reports on this flick. Like right here, here and here.

At his best he gives us Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October. At his worst ... Medicine Man, Last Action Hero and Rollerball. Such is the up and down career of action specialist John McTiernan. (Plus he seems to be having some non-Hollywood problems as well.) According to Variety, the director's next film is called Run, which will star Karl Urban as "an Interpol agent who, while pursuing a murder suspect, uncovers a fraud conspiracy." (Action fans know Mr. Urban from The Two Towers, Doom, The Chronicles of Riddick and The Bourne Supremacy.)

Despite his recent track record (ugh, Pathfinder), Urban will anchor the $30 million production. We're told that the screenplay has "100 pages of car chases," but nobody mentions who actually wrote the thing. And wow! 100 pages of car chases! That's almost as exciting as that movie that promises a 51-minute chase scene! Hell, why not just hire Jeff Gordon to race across the highway for 93 minutes? Who needs plot, characterization or conflict when you have ... cars going real fast!? Plus ... did I miss something? Why would a movie called RUN have an hour-long CAR chase? Oh I'm so confused.

Unfortunately for Patrick Dempsey fans, McTiernan's new project is not a remake of this classic thriller.

Presented in what feels like eleven different shades of gray, Marcus Nispel's Pathfinder is a character study with no character, an adventure movie with very little adventure, and an action flick with alarmingly infrequent action scenes. Other than that, the thing's a bona-fide hoot for 96 straight minutes. Shallow, callow and mindless to a fault, the movie makes Zack Snyder's 300 feel like a model of restraint and cohesion. Keep in mind that I'm a guy who's always had a soft spot for big, dumb, period-piece action flicks -- but Pathfinder is just way too generic, way too obvious and way too stone-faced serious to warrant any enthusiasm.

Worst of all is the fact that Pathfinder contains just enough quality material to make you angry there's not more of it. But basically it's just another story about a noble warrior who wreaks holy mayhem after his village is ransacked by brutal villains. If you're a big fan of the "angry hero / ransacked village / revenge duly wreaked" movies, then you might find Pathfinder to be passable diversion on a rainy Saturday afternoon -- but the flick's about as funny by accident as it is grungy on purpose. While some of the film is visually captivating and (intermittently) exciting, it suffers mightily because of clumsy direction, over-caffeinated editing, and an overall pace that could be best described as ... convulsive.

Man, I am so confused. Doing a search for "Outlander" returns a slew of results about a time-travel/romance series (and, based on this article about them at Salon by "a brainy guy ... [who] wound up reading historical romance novels and loving them," I'm perilously close to buying the things), which I don't think has anything to do with the Weinstein Company's movie of the same name. The latter seems to focus primarily on an alien, first of all, and you'd think that if there were aliens in the books, someone would have mentioned that in one of the reviews at Amazon. Right? It's just that whole both-about-sci-fi thing that's throwing me off. I will, however, move forward on the assumption that, apart from their title, the two things are totally unrelated. (Though I have to admit I sort of hope I'm wrong, because a time traveling, alien romance would be awesome, if only in a car-wreck sort of way.)

The non-romance Outlander, which has been in pre-production for what feels like several lifetimes, is described as a sci-fi epic about "a human-like alien [who] crashes on Earth in 509 AD [and] inadvertently releases a horrible monster that he must destroy with the help of a barbaric Viking tribe." Dude. That sounds simultaneously awful and totally fantastic -- and apparently the idea sprung entirely from the heads of screenwriters Howard McCain and Dirk Blackman, who just might be completely insane (one hopes so, anyway).

McCain will direct, and the film is scheduled to begin shooting in October; Karl Urban is in talks to star, and Patrick Tatopoulos (Silent Hill, I, Robot, Independence Day) has been tasked with creating the monster.