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September 5, 2013 8:44 AM   Subscribe

While filming Star Trek Into Darkness, Simon Pegg decided to play a prank on his costars and convinced them that they needed to use something called “Neutron Cream” whenever they were shooting in a specific location. Their reactions are fantastic. [via]
posted by quin (33 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm going to try that on my co-workers. It probably wouldn't be as funny, though. Movie stars have all the fun.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:54 AM on September 5, 2013


Nearly as funny as the prank played on fans who thought they were getting a Star Trek movie, amirite, huh, amirite?

[oblig.]
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:55 AM on September 5, 2013 [34 favorites]


i know! i would have preferred two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble.

[oblig.]
posted by entropicamericana at 8:59 AM on September 5, 2013 [17 favorites]


i know! i would have preferred two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble.

...I would have preferred two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble.
posted by jaduncan at 9:06 AM on September 5, 2013


i know! i would have preferred two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble.

...I would have preferred two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble.


...I would have preferred two hours of people talking about their technobabble in a feelings room, punctuated only by torrents of beige.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:11 AM on September 5, 2013 [10 favorites]


Metafilter: people talking about their feelings in a beige blue room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 9:12 AM on September 5, 2013 [14 favorites]


Simon Pegg really is unreasonably awesome guy. In fact the contradition of finding so much to dislike in a pair of films that have him, Quinto and Cumberbatch, three people who improve the world merely by breathing its air, causes all kinds of cognitive dissonance in me and grrk ssnnzzz fnadfar araeruasre adgaremamreahpaesruepwroejasejrej
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:12 AM on September 5, 2013 [13 favorites]


I for one feel sad that Sgt George has had his mind destroyed by a massive plasma disruption in the 28 model tachyon drive.
posted by jaduncan at 9:15 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


That's why I basically decided to turn off all critical function and ignore the scientist part of my brain (which is most of it) and just enjoy those Star Trek movies for the stupidness that they are. It worked quite well.
posted by shelleycat at 9:15 AM on September 5, 2013 [7 favorites]


two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble

It would be at least different from what else is out there. I recently marathoned all of Deep Space Nine, and my two favorite episodes, Duet, and In the Pale Moonlight, (streaming w/ lots of ads) could cynically be boiled down to that. Duet especially, Moonlight adds some spy intrigue.

"Feelings in a Beige Room" ought to be the title of some vanity-indie thing created by a group of tone deaf hyper-privileged-nauts.
posted by SomeOneElse at 9:16 AM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]


Simon Pegg really is unreasonably awesome guy.

He's also an unreasonably awesome Michael Caine:
Michael Caine and Sean Connery (Nick Frost) drop in on the Comedy Bang Bang podcast (featuring Edgar Wright).
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:19 AM on September 5, 2013 [9 favorites]


That was a very good prank. This amplifies my desire to work with Simon Pegg, or at least have a pint with him.
posted by Ber at 9:22 AM on September 5, 2013


[oblig.]
posted by mkultra at 9:29 AM on September 5, 2013


I loved the Jerry Jeff Abrams Star Trek movies. I can't wait to see what he does with Dune.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 9:30 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


...I would have torrented two hours of people feeling beige, punctuated only by technobabble in a preference room.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:31 AM on September 5, 2013


I can't remember the details now but I'm reminded of the prank played on some visiting bigwig at some electronics facility or other, where he was told that since he didn't have the requisite special shoes, in order to prevent electrostatic discharge he was given a length of light chain and told he had to drag it along the floor as he walked. The chain was less than two feet long so he spent the whole visit bent almost double.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:32 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble

Except for the fact that I teleconference in, you just described our weekly dev team meeting
posted by ook at 9:33 AM on September 5, 2013 [7 favorites]


mkultra, watching that SNL skit during the live broadcast (well, on a 3-hour delay) was the happiest single moment of my senior year in college, graduation day notwithstanding. Thanks!
posted by allthinky at 9:35 AM on September 5, 2013


So did the neutron cream render Anton Yelchin into a Lon Chaney-esque eldritch incapable of appearing before a camera? I MUST KNOW!
posted by pxe2000 at 10:33 AM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble

Oh no, not another holodeck episode
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:02 PM on September 5, 2013


You mentioned Anton Yelchin, and that reminded me of one of the best comments I saw in the review for the first movie - that Yelchin was so freakin' adorable as Chekhov that his action figure was probably going to be a plushie.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:39 PM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


Nearly as funny as the prank played on fans who thought they were getting a Star Trek movie

Debate over the new Star Trek movies is often framed as a fight between continuity nerds and people who want sci-fi movies to be accessible to everyone, but I don't think that's the real problem.

What used to make Star Trek different from other spaceship shows was the insane idealism of Gene Roddenberry. I say insane because even the writers of the show couldn't seem to plausibly articulate their vision of the future, not even as a utopia. I'm reminded of the time Captain Picard self-righteously proclaimed his pacifism to the Romulans by telling them that the Enterprise is not a warship, and in spite of the fact that he was wearing a military uniform on the bridge of a ship festooned with phasers he did so with a straight face. The insane hope seems to have been that even though we have no idea how to end racism or the nuclear arms race the people of the FUTURE will have found a way out. Trek didn't show us solutions, it showed us people passionately committed to the values behind hypothetical future solutions combined with the hope that realistic incremental steps could somehow get us from where we are now to that currently unimaginable future.

two hours of people talking about their feelings in a beige room, punctuated only by torrents of technobabble

Nostalgia for beige rooms is cargo cult fandom. What made Star Trek special was the idealism. That's the critical thing missing from the new movies. For that matter it's been increasingly less visible in the past half-dozen movies.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:52 PM on September 5, 2013 [6 favorites]


I would say two things have been missing - the idealism and the characters.

Somewhere along the way, Star Trek became just another big budget action franchise, with the characters nothing more than tropes painted onto the screen. I haven't seen Into Darkness yet (probably will someday), but in the first Star Trek reboot, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were all the short-hand, sketchbook version of the characters - there was no depth of understanding there.

Go back and watch STII: Wrath of Khan (especially the directors cut). I did so recently and was struck by Kirk's presence and arc in the movie. He's clearly aware of his shortcomings (there's a great exchange between Kirk and McCoy after the first encounter with Khan that goes something like "You gave as good as you got." "I was only able to because I know more about these ships than he does. Now he's learned. I have no other tricks.") And he is confident, but not a stupid risk taker - he seeks input, advice, suggestions, and then moves forward, trusting to his decision, but not blindly or rashly. Really, the only time I would describe him as "cocky" in the whole film is in the Genesis cave when he knows what is going on, while everyone else around him does not.

There's action, yes, but the film is far more about Kirk, his past failures and regrets, and his uncertainty about his future.
posted by nubs at 2:34 PM on September 5, 2013 [7 favorites]


I agree that NuTrek is -- with one notable exception -- horribly deficient in characterization. NuKirk is basically an entitled prick, landing in the captain's chair by destiny and parentage and intrinsic Homo Superior worth, to say nothing of Star Fleet being apparently seduceable by "you love me because I'm a bad boy" charm. He's a massively punchable Luke Skywalker. Uhura hasn't a trace of her original character -- she's an entirely different person. I like Quinto's Spock -- his acceptance of his emotional nature is reasonable given the timeline diversion, and if one misses Nimoy's exotic look and vocal timbre, well, them's the breaks. NuKhan is deeply, deeply ridiculous for all that Cumberbatch is himself wonderful and does his considerable best with it.

One welcome reversal is that of Scotty -- in the original a poorly realized character with a laughingstock accent. Pegg's the best thing about NuTrek.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:02 PM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]


What made Star Trek special was the idealism. That's the critical thing missing from the new movies.

Shows like Battlestar Galactica took direct aim at the notion of an idealistic universe, crushed it as laughable and childish, and in doing so made a ton of money and got a lot of praise. That version of what "real" or "gritty" or "adult" science fiction is will reverberate throughout the genre for a decade or more. It is therefore unsurprising that people writing for a Galactica fanbase would strip out the optimism, nor is it surprising that what remains doesn't really seem like Star Trek.
posted by Errant at 3:26 PM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


Link down, assuming this is what it was.
posted by SpiffyRob at 3:30 PM on September 5, 2013 [2 favorites]


George_Spiggott: "Simon Pegg really is unreasonably awesome guy. In fact the contradition of finding so much to dislike in a pair of films that have him, Quinto and Cumberbatch, three people who improve the world merely by breathing its air, causes all kinds of cognitive dissonance in me and grrk ssnnzzz fnadfar araeruasre adgaremamreahpaesruepwroejasejrej"

Your exclusion of Karl Urban from that list of awesomeness is making me grrk ssnnzzz fnadfar araeruasre adgaremamreahpaesruepwroejasejrej as well!
posted by brundlefly at 4:36 PM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


Good point. He doesn't get enough to do but yes, he's great.

Also it suddenly occurs to me that the next time they make a pic involving Orson Welles at any point up through the Citizen Kane era, they've got to cast Karl Urban. He'd be brilliant.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:54 PM on September 5, 2013


Rats. I waited for a quiet time in a busy day to watch this and now the video is removed at both locations, due to a Paramount copyright claim.

I so do not want to have to wait to see this on the DVD extras.
posted by bearwife at 5:07 PM on September 5, 2013


Rats. I waited for a quiet time in a busy day to watch this and now the video is removed at both locations, due to a Paramount copyright claim

GODDAMN ROMULANS
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 5:43 PM on September 5, 2013 [1 favorite]


Here's a mirror
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 6:22 PM on September 5, 2013 [4 favorites]


Loved every bit of this. It's the perfectly harmless prank that no one feels bad about. And I'm sure actors are told every day to do things that don't make sense, they don't question it, just go along for the ride. Making them perfect victims.

But more than the harmless fun is the pranks turning into co-conspirators as the next unsuspecting actor is targeted. Watch Quinto as they're racing up behind Saldana or right as he's saying the move around line. He nearly loses it after he says it and tries to distract with making a strange face and rubbing the corners of his mouth (apparently actors fail at acting when they are pranking one another. And by the end, everyone is in on it for Karl Urban and John Cho.

I wrote a fake April Fools joke article on my normally serious website for the first time this year, and the most amazing and unexpected part was finding people who took it and tried to trick their friends with it. Apparently being had makes you want to "share the love".

But really, the best part of that video is at the end when Chris Pine and Abrams were trying so hard to contain themselves and not spoil the joke. That gleeful, barely controllable giddiness is the best part of a prank.

But I like pranks. And I liked the new Star Treks. And the old. Though the next Gen movies did nothing for me
posted by [insert clever name here] at 9:19 PM on September 5, 2013


Agreed. The beauty of a prank done right is the inclusiveness. Getting pranked and wanting to share the experience with someone else is very different from wanting to inflict it on someone else. Being able to laugh at yourself is key.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 6:26 AM on September 6, 2013


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