Abrams Talks ‘Star Trek 2’

J.J. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman answered some questions about Star Trek 2 at a recent event to promote the DVD and Blu-ray release of Star Trek.

Here is what Abrams had to say:

“In going forward, the fun of this movie series is that we will have the opportunity given its kind of alternate timeline to cross paths with you know, any of the experiences, places, characters that existed in the original series,” Abrams said. “You’ve got to be really careful, obviously, doing that. I don’t want to do something that is so inside that once again only die-hard fans will appreciate. But I guarantee, whatever the story – and we’re just now working on the script, we’re just beginning the process of story breaking – whatever the final movie ends up being, I know it will be something that will work on its own terms and be something that you don’t need to know and study Star Trek to get. But if you are a fan, there will be hopefully sort of gift after gift of connections, references, characteristic things that you hopefully as a fan hold near and dear.”

“Something like this, and maybe even especially something that involves some weird sort of alternate-reality time travel thing, is you don’t want to not explain it, but you don’t want to explain everything,” Abrams said. “I mean the fun of any movie, I think you have as much fun with the missing pieces as you do with the pieces you get. And so for me, not knowing every detail allows me to get inside of the story and to start to fill in the blanks. But if everything is spoon-fed, typically I feel like you’re being pandered to or it’s too expositional. So I think its always a balance.”

Here is what Roberto Orci has to say about incorporating current issues:

“The torture thing was just a for instance,” Orsi explained. “Someone said, ‘A modern-day issue like torture?’ It’s like, ‘Yeah sure. Modern-day issues.’ … We’re not doing a story about Gitmo, as I read on some site, that its going to be about Guantanamo Bay. But now that we’ve established the characters, we can have a more philosophical allegory where what’s happening in the future represents our world. Like the best versions of it in the ’60s did, represented racial equality, progressive issues.”