Star Trek XI – An Amusement Park Ride Of A Movie
2 min readJ.J. Abrams was interested in the challenge of making Star Trek XI and also in making yesterday’s Star Trek relevant for today’s audiences.
As reported by FilmJournal.com, Abrams wanted Star Trek XI to be familiar to fans yet the film needed to have an identity of its own. “My approach to the entire movie – from the writing, to the casting, to the wardrobe – was to take the spirit of what was written 43 years ago and tell that story through the prism of what is relevant and right for today,” Abrams explained. “I didn’t want the props to look like they were taken off the prop shelf from 1966, I didn’t want the design to look like we were [copying] what had been done, and I didn’t want the cast mimicking the original actors. This story needed to feel like it was cut from the same cloth, yet be its own film entirely.”Another goal was to make an exciting, fun movie, but without forgetting what made Star Trek so beloved by fans. “The goal for me was to make the movie equivalent of that ride at the amusement park you’ve just gotta go on,” said Abrams. “I didn’t want people to feel like this was anything other than an exciting, fast-paced ride. At the same time, I didn’t want it to be shallow and empty. We’ve all seen movies that are filled with action and spectacle and are ultimately devoid of any heart or meaning. The beautiful thing about this script is that it has wonderful emotional through-lines. At its core, it’s about this group of people that barely know each other and go through this massive adventure together and, at the end of it, emerge as a kind of family.”
Adventure was something that Abrams felt was lacking in Star Trek and he wanted it to be included in Star Trek XI. “To me, Star Trek was always promising adventure and it delivered on an intellectual level more often than a visceral level,” Abrams explained. “So this movie felt like an opportunity to do both. Our ambition was to be as clever as the most clever episodes of Star Trek and as action-oriented and fast-paced as my favorite action movies.”
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