Thy Klingon Come

“I’ve met you some place before,” says J.J. Abrams as he rushes into the room.

Oh wow. Movie people almost never remember meeting you before. If I didn’t think the writer-director-producer-walking-think-tank was a total genius before, I do now.
I shouldn’t be surprised. The business of being J.J. Abrams surely requires the sort of observational skills and attention to detail one usually associates with a room-sized chess-playing computer. This man is the Deep Blue of pop culture, a brain that, in the past twelve months, never mind years, has juggled such various creations as Lost, Fringe, Cloverfield and its incoming sequel, a new adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series and a little $150 million movie re-launch of Star Trek, The Original Series.
“That’s right. Re-launch,” he nods, “I’m good with that. That or re-invigoration. These are the original characters introduced in a different way. This is like a prequel to the original TV series so it’s like an origins or superhero genesis story. It’s not one of these re-imagining things. I think if you need to re-imagine somebody else’s work, maybe you should just go imagine something else entirely.”
He speaks with the same machine-gun delivery that one tends to associate with Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino, a excited gush that belies the precision of the language being used. It’s the sound of a million-trillion neurons being fired.
Mr. Abrams was the only candidate for Paramount’s extravagant gamble on hardwired brand recognition. No lesser brain would do. At the point when studio bigwigs came a-calling’ the mighty franchise had drifted; 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis grossed a mere $43 million, an all-time Trek movie low. Even Enterprise, the critically acclaimed TV prequel series, had few takers; the show was cancelled after three seasons in 2005.
There was an additional complication. J.J. Abrams, the thinking geek’s geek, a man who professes an extraordinary weakness for instructional manuals and robots, a man whose hero is Rod Serling, was, shockingly, “more of a Star Wars man”.
“I wasn’t a big Trek fan,” he admits. “But I was always a big fan of certain episodes and certain movies. I love Star Trek Ii: The Wrath Of Khan. Who doesn’t? And I’ve always loved that tussle between Kirk, this man of action, and Spock, this man of logic. I know lots of people who have Next Generation favourites but for me and the writers, it had to be a Kirk and Spock story.”
Getting back to basics would not, in itself, have convinced the Trek hardcore. But Trek XI’s cunning use of reference, buried just beneath the surface so as not to deter the novice, will almost certainly do the trick.
“Hopefully without it being a distraction, there are definitely countless moments in the movie that Star Trek fans will appreciate that non fans won’t necessarily get,” says the director. “In a way it’s irrelevant because the movie is such that even if you’ve never seen Star Trek, you’ll completely get it, you won’t be behind, you won’t feel lost. It’s not some in-joke that only people who have seen the other ten movies will get. But if you do know the world of Trek, we’ve done a lot of little things for you.”
This film, as you may have gathered, is not primarily aimed at those familiar with the Kobayashi Maru. It is, rather, pitched at J.J.’s brilliantly straightforward understanding of what the movie-going punter likes to see.
“You don’t have to like Star Trek. You don’t have to like science-fiction. I like science-fiction but you don’t have to. You just need to like action, adventure, comedy, romance and you’ll like this movie. But I do hope I‘ve done enough to keep your kind happy too. I’m not a Trek geek. But I am a member of the geek community. I understand how important this stuff is for you.”
I haven’t mentioned that I’m a Trek fan yet. Nothing gets past that Deep Blue brain of his.
At any rate, he doesn’t have to convince me. I know he’s come up with goods. The finished Trek product is popcorn heaven, an all-ages all-action matinee that belts along with intent and comes in under a taut two-hours.
“I’m sick of these two hours and forty-five minute movies,” he says. “Seriously, it’s like who has enough time to stay for two hours and forty-five minutes? It‘s exhausting.”
Within far more rigid time constraints, Abrams has delivered something that we’re calling an Obama-era Star Trek. If William Shatner was John F Kennedy in Cuban Missile mode, then Chris Pine’s Captain Kirk, a classic rebel without a cause, not to mention a devil with the ladies, is all about optimism and taking great leaps of faith.
“It’s funny but I was really busy in the run-up to the election, “ he tells me. “I was working between Fringe and Star Trek and lots of stuff. So I really wasn’t paying as much attention to the election as I would do normally. It was only on election night that it hit me. If Obama doesn’t win, then I have really misjudged the mood and made the wrong film entirely.” He hits himself on the head for this imaginary transgression.
“I had a set out to make this movie that was all about getting back to Gene Roddenberry‘s great central idea, that if we can put aside our differences, we can literally shoot for the stars. I just feel it would have been a flop under President Mc Cain. Maybe I‘m wrong.”
Jeffrey Jacob Abrams was born for this. He was 16 when he first entered the ‘biz’, as the composer of the score for Don Dohler’s 1982 horror, Nightbeast. He continues to bang out catchy theme songs whenever he finds the time. The son of two TV executives, J.J. paid his way through college by knocking out the screenplays for Taking Care Of Business, Regarding Henry, andForever Young between assignments. He did not jump into movie-making right away, preferring the freedoms offered by network television. It was on smaller screens that he became a household name, as a leading TV imprint and the clever clogs behind such hit shows as Felicity and Alias.
He continues to work at an incredible pace. Every morning, he leaves the Pacific Palisades home he shares with wife, Katie McGrath, drops his three kids to school, then it’s off to the offices of Bad Robot, his iconic production company. From here, he churns out quality product and signs off on lucrative business deals. Star Trek is his second foray into summer blockbuster season (following on from 2006’s Mission Impossible 3, a $397,850,012 box-office hit) and the first issue from a deal struck with Paramount said to be worth more than $50 million.
He attributes these successes, not to work ethic, but to the people he keeps around him. Star Trek represents a collaboration between Mr. Abrams, his Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, his Fringe exec producer Bryan Burk, and Mission Impossible co-writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.
The 42 year-old displays a similar partiality toward his actors. When he created Alias, he plumped for Felicity’s Jennifer Garner, despite rumours that the network wanted someone younger. When he got the MI:3 gig, he brought Felicity’s Keri Russell along for the ride.
Among the new Trek players, we find former Abrams cohorts, Simon Pegg and John Cho, playing young Scotty and young Sulu, respectively. Heroes’ Zachary Quinto (Spock), LOTR’s Karl Urban (McCoy), former ballerina Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Alpha Dog’s Anton Yelchin (Chekov), and Smokin’ Aces’ Chris Pine (Kirk) complete the eclectic, impeccably chosen crew.
“I approached the cast the same way I did the props,” says Abrams. “Perhaps I should rephrase that. I wanted everything to look like the original and feel like the original. But it had to be its own thing and it had to be through the prism of today. So I had to have a cast that weren’t going to mimic the originals and who had some presence about them so they wouldn’t disappear under the weight of these characters.”
He’d like to stay onboard for the sequel – Paramount are already in ’talks’ thanks to an unprecedented swell of excitement from early test screenings – but only if he isn’t too tied up somewhere else in the Abrams-iverse. If it doesn’t pan out, he’s okay with letting go. He even claims to get a kick out of watching his creations evolve without him.
“I haven’t written or directed Lost since the first series, for example,” he says. “Damon Lindelof’s been running things since then. I get the scripts and I watch the shows and there’s been a metamorphosis into this whole other thing. I keep up. It‘s very cool.”
He is hopeful, however, that any new Trek instalment will, following his example, stay far away from the dark end of the street.
“That is a real thing for me,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong. I love The Dark Knight. It was fantastic and beautifully made. It’s just that I don’t want to be part of that whole dark, post-apocalyptic blockbuster thing. Star Trek isn’t cynical. It’s the idea that humans will not only survive but actually thrive and collaborate with other species. The notion of the final frontier in space exploration is so silly and clichéd in so many people’s minds, but when you actually stop to consider it, Star Trek is, whilst a fantasy, our future. Let’s have some fun with it.”