Nine Minute Star Trek Into Darkness Preview Description
2 min read
Last night in Los Angeles, a nine-minute preview of Star Trek into Darkness was screened to journalists courtesy of Paramount Pictures and by J.J. Abrams, who introduced the preview.
The nine-minute preview will officially debut ahead of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey later this week, where more details will emerge. For this preview, Abrams asked that minute-by-minute details not be shared just yet. Spoilers below the cut!
The clip began in future London (Stardate 2259), where a couple visiting their comatose daughter in the hospital (Noel Clarke and Nazneen Contractor) are told by Benedict Cumberbatch‘s character that he has the ability to heal their child. Clarke asks the identity of the strange man, but gets no answer.
The next scene is on a class M red planet. In this scene, Kirk and McCoy are racing through a field of red trees running from an alien tribe (the same tribe where they had been working undercover), only to run out of real estate at the edge of a cliff. The two are forced to jump into the water below.
The tribe is said to be on the brink of extinction, unless the Enterprise can stop a volcano from exploding. This dangerous task is being attempted by Spock, (with help from Uhura and Sulu), who has a device that will stop the eruption, that is if Spock doesn’t become a victim of the volcano before his work is completed.
Empire reported that “there is a link to one of the original Trek universe’s most memorable lines of dialogue.” MTV said that “Spock invokes a very famous line uttered in the classic Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
According to Screenrant, “Kirk is put into a position where he must choose between the needs of the many or the needs of the few.”
Finally, Ain’t It Cool News reported that composer Michael Giacchino uses Khan’s theme. “You know the cue: James Horner‘s blast of French horns that signals the arrival of the hijacked USS Reliant. Here, it’s incorporated into a scene that finds Kirk and Bones running for their lives from a pissed-off pack of natives on a planet about to be ravaged by a massive volcano.”
As for the “ship under water” scene, that is said to be to keep from violating the Prime Directive, which probably means that this body of water isn’t on Earth, but on the alien planet with the red trees.
Star Trek Into Darkness opens in theaters May 17th, 2013.
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Well, that makes things interesting. I didn’t realize the Enterprise was a submarine vessel but that’s pretty cool lol.
Kahn? Oh, you must mean Madeline. Yeah, I don’t remember her having that attribute either.
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=196807&page=4
“It’s not Garth and it’s not Mitchell.”
– Dennis Bailey
I’d like to know how Dennis Bailey can be so certain that Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing either of those characters. Must be sheer arrogance and foolish egotism on his part.
I stumbled across this on-line, concerning those nine-minutes. Here are the results:
What is interesting is the name of the planet and the Mayan-like culture(I would assume)that Kirk and the Enterprise crew encounter at the beginning of the upcoming film.
*Even now, at the end of the nine-minute presentation, I cannot conclusively tell you who Benedict Cumberbatch is playing. We do meet him very early in the footage, though. The film starts with an alarm clock going off, waking a married couple played by Nazneen Contractor and Noel Clarke. They quickly get ready, peeking out their window at the rainy cityscape of London in the year 2259. They drive to the London Children’s Hospital to visit their little girl, who appears to be aging prematurely, sick and near-bald, completely unresponsive. Clarke walks outside to catch some air and try to pull himself together, and someone steps up behind him to say, “I can save her.” Clarke turns around and we get our first look at Cumberbatch.
Clarke asks, incredulous, “Who are you?” and before we can get the answer to the question, we cut away to a Class M Planet called Nibiru, where we catch up with the crew of the starship Enterprise. We were asked not to provide a complete blow-by-blow of what you’ll see, but I can tell you that much of the footage you saw in the announcement video last week was taken from this early part of the film, including Bones and Kirk (Karl Urban and Chris Pine) fleeing through a strange red jungle, chased by a group of aliens because they evidently stole a sacred scroll from them. At the same time, Spock (Zachary Quinto) is onboard a shuttlecraft piloted by Sulu (John Cho), getting ready for his descent into a volcano. While the Prime Directive is definitely a primary concern for the crew, they are determined to stop the volcano from extinguishing an entire race of aliens who are not yet ready for space travel, and Spock’s the one who has to actually descend into the active and about-to-erupt main crater.
And where’s the Enterprise during all this? Hidden underwater in one of Nibiru’s oceans, of course.
The stuff with Kirk and McCoy is very funny, and a nice reminder of just how strong the chemistry is with this cast. Same with the stuff between Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock. The moment they bring in the main theme by Michael Giacchino is perfect, lovely and thrilling at the same time. I really love the look of these films, and the alien world is beautifully realized, as is the London of the future. I like that we pick up with the crew in the middle of an adventure and we see how they’ve come together now with the time that has passed since the end of the first film. Abrams and his screenwriting team, Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof, all seem to get the dynamic that makes Kirk, Spock, and McCoy such great archetypes, and it really crystallizes in a moment where Kirk asks McCoy what Spock would do if it were him inside the volcano in peril in a situation where any effort to help is going to violate the Prime Directive. McCoy growls,” He’d let you die,” and there’s no arguing his point.”
I still find it strange that the Enterprise is hidden under the alien planet’s sea.
Aside from that, it sounds like an interesting start.
Nibiru? And what is the name of the alien tribe? Annunaki?
Enterprise underwater really makes no sense. First, it’s a starship, not a submarine vessel. Second, there is no need to hide from a pre-warp civilization underwater when the ship can be perfectly hidden in space. And third, hiding the ship in order not to violate the Prime Directive makes little sense if you are already directly violating it by interfering with the natural events on the planet.
Cool and interesting, perhaps. Logical and consistent with Star Trek? Not really.
Could be that the planet’s name is in reference to that 2012 nonsense about that planet colliding with the Earth. Maybe the film could also be a social commentary on the 2012 Mayan nonsense as well.
It’s hard to say.
You’re concluding all that based on a vague account of a nine minute preview. I could think of ways around everything you’ve said, so I’m sure the writers could too (e.g. Enterprise under water makes plenty of sense, it’s a pressurized metal ship capable of getting close to a star and resisting the pull of a black hole, so a little water shouldn’t be too much to handle… there’s obviously a reason the ship is so close to land; if it could be in space to accomplish it’s mission, it would be, so it’s probably faster to dip under water than fly into space… and Trek crews are famous for intervening in primitive culture’s affairs but still wanting to hide the fact that they’re aliens. There are literally dozens of episodes where they do just that). It may make sense in the actual film.
“Enterprise under water makes plenty of sense.”
I disagree. Here’s a good article about that:
A Scientist Explains Why The Enterprise Can’t Go Underwater
http://badassdigest.com/2012/12/11/a-scientist-explains-why-the-enterprise-cant-go-underwater/
It’s also inconsistent with Trek canon. Unlike Voyager, NCC-1701 does not have the capability to land on a planet surface nor does it operate underwater.
“there’s obviously a reason the ship is so close to the land”
Obviously. To make it look cool, no doubt. But, to quote from the article above, “sacrificing basic physics for a cool shot is not in the best tradition of Star Trek. The best tradition of Star Trek is something that could really serve our world right now.”
“Trek crews are famous for intervening in primitive culture’s affairs…”
Meddling with natural forces on a planet is more than just intervening. It’s playing God. That clearly constitutes a direct violation of the Prime Directive, and is certainly not something a Starfleet crew is allowed to do. However, such action would be justified if the crew is somehow directly responsible for the disaster that it is trying to prevent.