As J.J. Abrams prepares to take us ‘Into Darkness’ with his eagerly-anticipated Star Trek sequel, the filmmaker spoken to SFX Magazine about the upcoming film, as well as discussing the comparisons between his 2009 reboot and George Lucas’ epic space opera Star Wars – which of course Abrams himself is set to resurrect with Disney’s Star Wars: Episode VII.
“I wouldn’t say the first [Star Trek] movie is an absolute Star Wars derivation,” said Abrams in the latest issue of the magazine. “The irony of course being that Star Trek came out before Star Wars. We’re inheriting Star Trek, so we’re allowed to do space stuff. Of course when Star Wars came out, people referred to Star Trek, because it was spaceships. Everything is sort of a derivation of everything else. Just the way Star Wars was of Flash Gordon and of dogfight war films in the TIE Fighter sequences. Everything has something it borrows from.”
Abrams then went on to tease the direction he’s taking the story in Star Trek Into Darkness: “Where this story goes, if you’re going to go to a place that’s as intense as some of the stuff is in this movie, I think you need balance. And so while there are moments that are pretty dark and crazy, those scenes just won’t matter to you – you won’t care about them – if you haven’t been laughing along the way and rooting for these characters you have to feel for. The idea is to try and balance it, not to have it be one thing or the other.”
“Of course you can’t make this for everyone,” Abrams continued. “There are going to be detractors. But I think that the important thing is this movie, at least the ambition behind it, is… if you’re a Star Trek fan, you’re going to be very happy. Because the movie acknowledges, in a big way, what has come before. If you’re not a lifelong Star Trek fan, like myself, what I think and hope is that you’ll have a great time and you’ll be gasping and shrieking and laughing and crying and all that stuff in a way you would not expect to in a Star Trek movie.”
Star Trek Into Darkness opens in the UK on May 9th and in North America on May 17th, with a cast that includes Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Bruce Greenwood, Alice Eve, Peter Weller and Benedict Cumberbatch. For more Star Trek Into Darkness goodness, be sure to pick up the latest issue of SFX.
Originally published April 4, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
