An essence of Shatner/Kirk

I kinda think they missed an opportunity when they made the new Star Trek movie in 2009. Chris Pine is okay, and I guess they were going for a fairly young cast, but other than that, I think Thomas Jane would have been a superb Captain Kirk. To me, he even kinda looks like a young William Shatner. Look at these photos and hopefully you'll see what I mean:

Shatner:
http://trekcore.com/specials/rare/Massive_Kirk.jpg

Jane:
http://danieb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/thomas_jane.jpg

Also - and I say the following not to poke fun, but I say it lovingly - it struck me in two movies particularly that Thomas Jane can have the same, almost overly dramatic mannerisms as Shatner in some ways.

The first one is Deep Blue Sea; all the action sequences where Thomas Jane keeps stumbling and falling all over the floor whenever the characters need to run away from danger etc. It reminds me of how Shatner used to jump around during fight scenes in Star Trek.

As for Shatner's melodramatic acting style, I saw Jane sporting some of those tendencies in The Mist, especially during his freakout at the end of the movie, screaming at the sky, etc - I almost expected him to go "KHAAAAN!" at that point.

So, again, I say all of this very lovingly, as I am a huge fan of Star Trek, and I happen to love Shatner's style, both because he's just one of those guys ya gotta love, and that his acting style often belongs to the "so cheesy it's good" category. I just find Shatner legendary, so in my own eyes, it's a great compliment to Thomas Jane when I say he would have nailed it as James T. Kirk.


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