ST09 Austin 'preview' was surprise full screening

[Bounty]

Oh Paramount, you pranksters. There was supposed to be a 10 minute preview of ST09 in Texas yesterday, before a TWoK showing, but then this happened:

According to our man on the scene, the evening started off normally at the Fantastic Fest Star Trek event at the Alamo Draughthouse Theater in Austin, Texas on Monday night. Star Trek filmmakers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof kicked things off by telling the crowd of around 200, that they would be seeing the Star Trek preview after Wrath of Khan. Two minutes in to the showing of TWOK, the film appeared to have ‘melted’ and the guys came back out on the stage and appeared to be stalling for time while the film was fixed…and then, wearing a ball cap, Leonard Nimoy came out in front of the audience holding a film can.

Nimoy noted to the crowd that it just didn’t seem fair that people in Australia were the fist to see the film and asked them "wouldn’t you rather see the new movie?" And apparently the crowd went wild. After that they showed the entire new Star Trek movie. Nimoy stayed for the entire event as did Orci, Kurtzman and Lindelof.

According to a friend who called in to TrekMovie after the event, the audience reaction was very positive. There were "genuine laughs" at the jokes and "quiet moments" with the serious character stuff. And apparently the crowd applauded at the introduction to each character. The film ended with a standing ovation.

First review snippets say "it's good", which is hardly surprising when you screen a Trek movie to Trekkies. the official gala première is in Australia today, i expect first reviews to be coming in shortly after that.

[Ilya Muromets]

Lucky them. Although, this probably means a possible flood of spoilers via the internet. Me, I don't really mind spoilers, but those that do and are looking forward to the film will probably be pretty paranoid about clicking stuff related to ST11 right now.

[The Romulan Republic]

Good to here that it got a good reaction. I'm still holding out some hope that the inevitable money I spend on a ticket won't be wasted.

I wonder what the die hard Trekkies thought of the new actors? I expected a lot of Trekkies to reject anyone new cast in the roles of Kirk and Spock, and I must admit I was rather uneasy about it myself.

[Bounty]

It's been unanimously positive from what I've heard. Apart from Pine, who is apparently good but not great, the others - in particular Quinto, Urban and Pegg - have their characters nailed.

[Darth Onasi]

I suppose the whole alternate timeline thing and "HAY LOOK IT'S LEONARD NIMOY" should mitigate the idea of new actors in the roles to hardcore trekkies.

[tim31]

Looks like they wanted to avoid dropping a bridge on anyone. But jeez, a whole month ahead? And stooging AU out of first viewing? Well played

[Bounty]

Observation seen elsewhere: Abrams has got to be pretty confident about the movie he made to do a bait-and-switch like that. Imagine if you went to see TWoK on the big screen and got Nemesis...

[tim31]

Bearing in mind that there are actually plenty of people who would have screamed like fangirls at Nemesis being thrown on instead of the classic they thought they were seeing.

[Bounty]

Bearing in mind that there are actually plenty of people who would have screamed like fangirls at Nemesis being thrown on instead of the classic they thought they were seeing.

True. Still, you didn't see Baird doing a stunt like this.

[Kuja]

Carlyle of Spilldotcom (my favorite review site) was actually there for it, and his reaction to the movie was massively positive, something which has finally started to get my hopes up about it.

[Darth Onasi]

Bearing in mind that there are actually plenty of people who would have screamed like fangirls at Nemesis being thrown on instead of the classic they thought they were seeing.

Yes but these people are usually recaptured by the asylum very quickly.

[VF5SS]

Carlyle of Spilldotcom (my favorite review site) was actually there for it, and his reaction to the movie was massively positive, something which has finally started to get my hopes up about it.

I'd be more excited if that review didn't consist of vague expletives and other nerdy superlatives. Where's my spoiler review?