Star Trek veteran William Shatner has accused the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, of borrowing its style from old TV science fiction serials.
In the wake of the release of the final poster and trailer for JJ Abrams’s film last week, Shatner has taken to Twitter to allege similarities between new characters such as Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and two 1970s shows. He suggests Phasma’s shiny carapace looks like the original cylon robots from the cult space favourite Battlestar Galactica, while Dameron’s X-Wing fighter uniform is reminiscent of a similar design in the British sci-fi show Space: 1999.
And SWs versus BSG pic.twitter.com/CVmRqnECg0
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) October 20, 2015
Check out SW vs Space 1999 pic.twitter.com/PymvpbzRJi
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) October 20, 2015
It is not clear why Shatner, 84, is going after The Force Awakens, other than that Star Trek and Star Wars have long been seen as rivals. The Canadian actor played Captain James T Kirk in Star Trek’s three original TV seasons between 1966 and 1969 and later returned for seven big-screen adventures, culminating in 1994’s Star Trek Generations.
The Montreal-born actor is a prolific tweeter, and seems to have a real issue with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which is building unprecedented levels of hype as it edges towards a release on 17 December in UK cinemas, and a day later in the US. After the debut teaser trailer for Abrams’s film debuted in November last year, he posted a series of “What Bill learned from the Star Wars trailer” memes on Twitter, including the suggestion that Kylo Ren’s controversial “crossguard” lightsaber was a “bad design” and that Jar Jar Binks might have a rival for worst Star Wars character ever in the form of new “ballrunner” droid BB-8.
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) November 28, 2014
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) November 28, 2014
If Shatner is hoping to stymie the current fascination for all things Star Wars, he may have a lot more tweeting to do. The latest and reportedly final trailer for The Force Awakens was viewed more than 112m times during its first 24 hours online last week, and advance ticket sales on both sides of the Atlantic have broken previous records.
