The release date for Star Trek Into Darkness is fast approaching. J.J. Abrams is making the press rounds for the film and of course, it seems like everyone is more interested in his involvement with Star Wars: Episode VII at the moment. When talking to SFX recently the director explained that the new Star Trek movie wasn't made for everyone, but he does think that both Trek fans and non-fans will find it satisfying.
Of course you can’t make this for everyone. 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.
He then goes onto discuss the comparisons of Star Trek and Star Wars, and whether or not Into Darkness will have more or a Star Wars influence.
I wouldn’t say that the first movie is an absolute Star Wars derivation. 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.
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.
Like all of the films Abrams has made, I'm confident Star Trek: Into Darkness is going to be great. It hits theaters on May 17th.