Abrams: Star Trek XI Reflections
2 min readWith the DVD and Blu-ray release of Star Trek XI just hours away, J.J. Abrams spoke about what worked and what did not work when it came to the movie.
The gag reel for Star Trek XI includes the “Space, the final frontier” speech spoken by Chris Pine (the movie used Leonard Nimoy‘s version.) According to Abrams, Pine’s version was recorded because “it has got to be Kirk, right? But, at the end of the day, it just felt right that we give that to Nimoy, and give Spock Prime the last word…given the legacy of Nimoy and his involvement in this, it somehow felt right. And frankly, his voice is so evocative, that it felt to me emotionally stronger, although intellectually I don’t know how you can argue your point, which is obviously correct.”
Abrams was happy that some of the potential worries ended up not being problematic. “Having read a lot and heard a lot, at the end of the day, the thing I am most happy about is that the thing that many were saying was insurmountable, that ‘how do you possibly recast this movie, how do you possibly have these characters live on without these original actors playing them?’, that that challenge seemed to have been met. That this cast was watchable, likeable, relatable, and the actors were talented enough, that that criticism was silenced and we were able to allow the crew of the Enterprise to live on with a new generation of actors.”
What didn’t work as well? “I agree with almost every criticism I read,” said Abrams. “It is hard not to be hard on the work that you do. So when I hear someone say ‘Nero was not complicated enough’ I say “yeah, that’s right.’ Or if I hear ‘there are some moments, that crazy coincidence that Kirk meets Spock in the ice cave and that took me out of it,’ I can see that. I don’t really hear much that I don’t agree with.”
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