YouTuber Futuring Machine made a brilliant fake Star Trek trailer that seamlessly put the classic stars of the series into the newer films.
Star Trek has a wildly impressive fandom. They make their own original movies, create real-life and working technology that was featured on the show, and create mind-altering trailers that feature the classic actors that help make this series what it is. Sure, technology is a bit out of control but you have to appreciate what fans can do with a bit of tech and a lot of creativity.
Future Machine posted a video on their YouTube channel that showed a de-aged Deforest Kelley, William Shatner, and Leonard Nimoy in the roles of Dr. Bones McCoy, Captain Kirk, and Spock respectively, Kelvin timeline films. Those roles were played by Karl Urban, Chris Pine, and Zachary Quinto, but this “deepfake” trailer has replaced them with the original actors.
It’s both impressive, beautiful, and scary as hell.
The trailer serves as a great set up to a non-existent film that the creator is calling The First Generation. It uses scenes from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to set the story in the “present” and then uses scenes from Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek: Into Darkness as “flashbacks” of sorts. It centers around James Kirk cheating during the Kobayashi Maru and how it translates into how he is now as a captain.
While all the faces of the original trio are the original actors, the voices of Kirk and Spock are still the same. At least in the flashback scenes.
While “deepfake” technology is a thing to worry about for news and how its report, seeing it in action here is rather ingenious. While it doesn’t look as good as say, Disney’s use of it to bring back Peter Cushing for Star Wars: Rogue One, it’s still extremely impressive that a fan did this.
The “surprise” at the end of the trailer though, probably the least impressive “deepfake” that was done. All and all, it’s a rather impressive piece of fan-made Trek.