The Top 10 Lists

10. Majel Barrett, the wife of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, has a role in this film as the voice of the Enterprise computer. She'd also been the computer voice in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (1987), "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" (1993) and "Star Trek: Voyager" (1995), and had played Pike's first officer in "Star Trek: The Cage (#1.0)" (1966). She completed her voice-over work two weeks before her death on December 18, 2008.

 

9. The role of James T. Kirk came down between Mike Vogel and Chris Pine. Vogel was reported as being the front runner for the part but J.J. Abrams decided to cast Pine in the end. Joshua Jackson also auditioned for the role.

 

8. Of the now 11 films, this is the most expensive "Star Trek" film by far, at an estimated $150,000,000. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) had a budget of $46,000,000 and Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) had a budget of $60,000,000.

 

7. Due to the confidentiality and secrecy of the movie's production, various fake working titles were used. The official one chosen by Bad Robot Productions was "Corporate Headquarters", but, also, each of the Key Assistant Location Managers chose additional fake titles for paperwork, permits, and signage. Kathy McCurdy named the movie "Untitled Walter Lace Project" after her grandfather, Steve Woroniecki named it "Untitled Blake Allen Project" after his son, Rob Swenson used "Christa & Christan's Big Adventure" after his twin step-daughters, and Scott Trimble used "The Ernest Castelhun Chronicles" after his great-granduncle who had drowned in beer at the Anheuser-Busch factory in 1937.

 

6. Eric Bana's character, Nero, is missing the tip of one of his Romulan ears. In the movie Chopper (2000), Bana's character Mark 'Chopper' Reed has both ears cut off in order to be moved to a different jail.

 

5. Karl Urban is a longtime self-described "religious" fan of the Original Series. He used to watch it on Saturday mornings in New Zealand with his dad. Shortly before word came down about the development of this film, he bought the complete series on DVD and watched them with his son.

 

4. Zachary Quinto was attracted to the role of Spock as he wanted to explore the character's dual heritages and his position of being caught between both Earth and Vulcan cultures: "He is constantly exploring that notion of how to evolve in a responsible way and how to evolve in a respectful way. I think those are all things that we as a society, and certainly the world, could implement."

 

3. To prepare for his role as Spock, Zachary Quinto grew his hair longer and dyed it, and shaved his eyebrows. He claimed that the change in appearance cemented his performance: "I just felt like a nerd. I felt like I was 12 again, you look back at those pictures and you see the bowl cut. I was sporting that look for a good 4 or 5 years. There's no question I was born to play Spock."

 

2. The USS Kelvin, the ship Kirk's father serves on, is named after J.J. Abrams' grandfather. It was also a scientific reference towards the temperature scale Kelvin, which itself was named after physicist/engineer Lord Kelvin.

 

1. The Korean-American actor John Cho was initially uncertain about being cast as the Japanese-Filipino American officer Hikaru Sulu, but George Takei, who played Sulu in "Star Trek" (1966), encouraged him to take the role as Sulu was a character who represented all of Asia.

Source: Movie Trivia