Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes and clips and puts it all in perspective.
Krall, the new Star Trek villain has already done us all dirty. He's taken away Idris Elba's beautiful face. I hate prefacing this by saying I'm a heterosexual man (actually, I guess I don't hate it because I just did), but I like to fancy myself someone who knows a hot dude when I see one. Some have argued with me on this point, but you'd have to be blind not to see that Idris Elba is a god of beauty. Don't just take my word for it. I've seen every episode of The Wire five times, sometimes accompanied by women, and they have made it very clear that Idris Elba is highly sexy individual.
Why cover that up? I understand that Krall is a new species (not Gorn!) that we haven't seen in Star Trek before, so he can't be human, But why can't this new alien species be the kind of alien species that can chooses a human face and they are no fools, so they choose Idris Elba? It's better than that movie Contact where Jodie Foster travels eight trillion light years only to end up in Pensacola, Florida with an alien who chose to look like her dad. That was awful.
Why is it when Idris Elba is cast in giant blockbuster movies, the first thing they do is put him in a makeup chair for four hours? It's not just Star Trek Beyond, he's barely recognizable as Heimdall in the Thor movies. Maybe Idris Elba doesn't want to be recognized. Maybe he wants his acting to speak for itself. It's like when Charlize Theron turned herself into a person who was much harder on the eyes in Monster (and we told her she was brave and she said “No, don't call me brave” and we were all impressed).
Idris Elba might well be the next James Bond, and here we are burying the lead. But to be fair, I'd rather him playing Krall then most anyone else. In 20 years, they will try to recast Krall in some reboot and we'll all be like “NO! Idris or bust!” because we all know Idris will probably knock it out of the park, face or no face.