Abrams: Next Star Trek Should Go Deeper
2 min readStar Trek XI‘s J.J. Abrams shares his thoughts about the sequel to his blockbuster hit.
Now that the preliminaries of getting to know the new crew are out of the way, it’s time for Star Trek to dig a little deeper, story-wise. “I would say that because the first film was about these characters coming together and meeting, there is an inherently more immediate and, in a way, naive quality to that kind of an origin story,” said Abrams. “I think the key to Star Trek moving forward is that it retain the sense of adventure and fun and excitement, and at the same time, go a little bit deeper. Now that these people know each other, just like any friendships you have, the first month of knowing that person is not going to be the same thing as the first year, or the fifth year or tenth year.”
But one must be careful, when “going a little bit deeper,” to not deliver a sermon to the audience. “No one wants a movie that is a ‘preachy’ film,” said Abrams. “No one wants a movie that feels like it is moralizing and some manifesto, but I feel like it has to go a little deeper. I don’t think that is something you can really argue. It is not this disparate people meeting for the first time. It is people that have been together for, whether it is day, weeks or months–this is a group that is no longer just getting to meet each other. It feels like, by default, the movie needs to go deeper.”
If Star Trek XI does end up delivering a message, Abrams hopes that the fans walk away with a positive opinion and that they don’t feel that they’ve been hit over the head with the message. “The idea of it being some kind of allegory is not to say that we were looking to make the movie into some kind of message film, but it would be nice if after you leave the theater after seeing the second film, you feel like you have been through something meaningful,” said Abrams. “We are just trying to offer the story that is as rich as possible and fun as possible, but we are not looking to get on the soap box.”
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