Star Trek Beyond star Chris Pine loves playing ‘super-fallible idiots’ like Captain Kirk and Wonder Woman’s Steve Trevor

AS STAR Trek celebrates its 50th birthday, captain of the USS Enterprise Chris Pine dishes on the new film and his role in the upcoming Wonder Woman.

IT’S been 50 years since the world was introduced to the Star Trek universe. In 1966, midway through a decade of civil and social upheaval, creator Gene Roddenberry had a hopeful vision of the future with humanity united by a thirst for knowledge and exploration.

Thirteen movies and six TV series later — with a seventh due early next year — and that ideal is more relevant that ever, according to Chris Pine, the man who has played James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the Starship Enterprise, ever since director JJ Abrams rebooted the series in 2009.

Pondering a fractured modern world in the wake of terror attacks, the UK leaving the European Union, a certain US presidential candidate threatening to build a wall between his country and Mexico and even our own recent divisive federal election, Pine says the original vision of the beloved TV series carries right through to the third of his films, Star Trek Beyond, which opens today.

Chris Pine arrives at the UK premiere of Star Trek Beyond at Empire Leicester Square.

“The starting points of this franchise and its fundamental themes can be seen in any wide mastershot of the original bridge of the Enterprise — a black woman, a Russian man, an Asian man, an alien and a white man all working together in a time of great civil and social and world unrest,” says Pine.

STAR TREK CAST: Anton Yelchin’s death ‘beyond terrible’

HEARTBREAK: Anton Yelchin’s parents post tribute to son

“I think there is a primal element of humans that wants to tear each other apart but there is also a social element that knows we have to work together because that is the only way our species will survive. So I think it gives fundamental notes of what it means to be human. This franchise, 50 years on, takes that theme of unity and federation and asks ‘is it worth it?’ Your bad guy is someone who thinks that it’s not and our good guys think that it is.

“It’s a nice simple antagonist/protagonist story but could not be more relevant in a world where we’re losing sight of the importance of working together in (the face of) people’s desire for nationalism and closing borders and blaming refugees for their problems and all that sort of nonsense.”

Star Trek Beyond actors John Cho, Zachary Quinto, Justin Lin, Chris Pine and Karl Urban in Sydney this month.

Similarly Pine looks to a brighter future as humanity’s best hope rather than a return to a mthyical past, viewed through rose coloured glasses, particularly in his homeland.

“I think in American political rhetoric it’s always talking about the shining city on the hill and that there once was this great time,” he says. “If you look at American history — even if you look at a time of great political wealth, we had slavery or we had Jim Crow or we had unequal rights for women. We didn’t really have marriage equality until the last five years. We’ve always been trying to kill each other since day one.”

Star Trek Beyond marks the third time that Pine has played the role made famous by William Shatner in the original series. But it’s a different Kirk that audiences meet this time, three years into a mission into deep space and, while he has overcome the father issues that plagued him for the first two films, he finds himself wracked with self-doubt and questioning his place in the universe and his career choices.

“He was so driven by certain emotional directives like ‘beat Dad, be better than Dad, the system that killed your Dad sucks’,” says Pine. “And now he’s not plagued by that so much any more — he has proved himself and has done a pretty good job. All of that hot-headed, boiling emotionalism has kind of petered out and without that clear-minded directive he doesn’t know how to go about his business. That resonates deeply for me.”

Chris Pine’s Kirk has resolved some of his father issues in Star Trek Beyond.

Like Kirk in the first Star Trek film (Kirk’s dad was played by Chris Hemsworth and it’s just been announced that the Aussie actor will return to star opposite Pine in a fourth film), Pine followed in the footsteps of his own father, also an actor with decades of TV credits from Gunsmoke to Lost In Space to CHiPs and Parks and Recreation. But rather than being smitten with the profession as a youth, Pine originally wanted to be a baseball player, having seen the ups and downs of acting at very close range.

“I ran really far away from it because I grew up in a household where you had good years and you had very bad years,” he said. “There were a lot of bad years and I thought there was no way I wanted to do a business where I saw what happened to my folks, which is where they are bankrupt and then they are making some money and then making a fortune and then they are not. And I just didn’t want to do that. And so I didn’t until it was the only thing I did that I was good at 20 or 18 or whatever — and so I did it.”

Having made his feature film debut in The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Pine has carved out a varied career from action thrillers such as Unstoppable and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit to comedies (Horrible Bosses 2, This Means War), animated films (Rise Of the Guardians) and even musicals (Into the Woods). Now he’s making the leap into the superhero world, joining the DC Extended Universe as love interest Steve Trevor in next year’s Wonder Woman. While he’s cagey on details about the first superhero blockbuster with both a female lead (Gal Gadot) and director (Patty Jenkins) he says it’s a “a really great story, told really well”.

Chris Pine will join Gal Gadot in the upcoming Wonder Woman films

“I loved working with Patty — she is a phenomenal actor’s director — and you have Gal Gadot who is so physically stunning, she is beautiful beyond belief and also has a beautiful heart as a human being herself and you really feel that on screen.

“Of course she is going to be aspirational — she is going to be what every little girl wants to be. There is a beautiful message in it about revenge philosophy — the eye for an eye mentality that has been the male M.O. for millennia — and I think we take that on interestingly.”

And he has absolutely no qualms about playing the love interest/support role that until now has been overwhelmingly female territory in superhero films in particular and action movies in general, likening himself to Michael Biehn’s Cpl Hicks in Aliens.

“I was watching Alien and Aliens in the past couple of days and if you look at Sigourney Weaver — and we are talking about 1979 and 1986 — and she is pretty effing badass,” he says.

“Almost everyone dies in those films except for Sigourney, so it’s not like this is completely new — but I don’t mind being Michael Biehn. (Steve’s) not a damsel in distress — she is a superhero and has way more powers than I do and certainly in hand-to-hand combat she would win. I could maybe funny her to death.

“But I have not played a superhero — I have played Kirk and I have played this guy, Steve Trevor, and they are super-fallible, kind-of-arrogant idiots — but have a sense of humour about themselves and know how to take a punch and they are just very, very, human. I like playing those guys.”

Star Trek Beyond opens today.

Originally published as Star Trek Beyond star Chris Pine loves playing ‘super-fallible idiots’ like Captain Kirk and Wonder Woman’s Steve Trevor