There’s plenty of of secrecy surrounding J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek sequel, with the plot being the closely guarded secret. With filming well underway, Captain Kirk himself Chris Pine, found some time to head over to London for the premiere of his new action-comedy This Means War, co-starring Tom Hardy and Reese Witherspoon.
While there he was asked by Radio Times how things were going with the Star Trek sequel, he said that his new co-stars are fitting in well and so far filming has been “fantastic”, adding:
They’re getting on great. We have a really good, warm, inclusive group from the first one and I think everybody’s kind of getting the hang of things and fitting in quite nicely.
As for the plot, speculation has the story following in the footsteps of the 1982 Star Trek sequel – with Khan Noonien Singh to feature as the villain. Originally Benecio Del Toro was offered the role but passed on the project, however in a stroke of good fortune, Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch was cast in what is presumed to be the nemesis role.
That said director J.J. Abrams isn’t letting on what role he’s playing, though was ecstatic to have landed the British actor:
Who said he’s our villain?…Honestly, he’s just an incredible actor. If you’ve seen his work in Sherlock, he’s just got incredible skills. He’s an amazing stage actor. He did amazing work (on stage) in Frankenstein. He’s brilliant. You try to cast people who are great. We got lucky.
Other thespians in supporting roles include former Robocop Peter Weller playing either a commanding officer or a chief engineering officer, and former Doctor Who star Noel Clarke will play a family man with Nazneen Contractor as his wife. The India-born actress is best known for her turn as Kayla Hassan on the final season of 24. Joseph Gatt who played a Frost Giant in Thor is also on board.
When the release date for the sequel was announced, it was also said that Abrams would be shooting in 3D – somewhat contrary to his previous statements about using the medium. A fan of the widescreen format and whip pans, he doesn’t believe the 3D medium assists the narrative, which is shot using digital cameras. Abrams recently explained why he’s prefers to be shooting on film, and why post-conversion was instead chosen.
We’re shooting on film, and the reason for that is I wanted to shoot with anamorphic, and you can’t shoot 3D in anamorphic.
While Abrams’s movies are visually impressive, he seems to use ‘lens flares’ quite a bit, perhaps this was a contributing factor for not shooting in 3D?:
I’ve had some people make fun of me about that. Yeah, we’ve done some tests. Not only lens flare tests, but we’ve done 3D tests. We actually converted a bunch of the original movie, which looked really good. That was the thing that made me feel like, maybe that would be okay. But, I didn’t want to shoot the movie digitally…It will be converted, for those who want to see it in 3D. But, I wanted to match the look of the first one and shoot it anamorphically.
Robert Orci who co-wrote the story with Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, recently stated that the sequel will offer more in way of the Enterprise engine room – the first surprisingly was shot in a Budweiser brewery. Though while the story’s been worked on for some time, script changes still seem to be happening as Spock himself Zachary Quinto recently told E! Online:
It was the middle of December and finally I had to be like, ‘We need to read the script.’ They waited a pretty long time, but that’s because they were working on it. There was a writer’s strike the first time so they weren’t able to let the script evolve. Now it’s really changing…on a regular basis.
However Orci was quick to clarify on the TrekMovie message boards, saying that the changes are minor, with nothing affecting the main plot:
The story hasn’t changed, the structure hasn’t changed, and the action sequences haven’t changed. Most changes are minor. The changes I suspect Quinto is referring to are the character interactions as we fine tune the level of their various friendship. Given that the time past in real life is different than the amount of time passed in the movie world, it takes a polish to get it just right.
As for Spock’s love interest Zoe Saldana, who’s was promoting her new movie The Words, had this to say say about Uhura and Spock’s relationship:
All I’m going to say is, if you put all the time and energy and wit into setting these two characters [Spock and Uhura] together in the first movie and didn’t follow through, it would be a shame.
Another bit of interesting info is while sources have reported that no original cast members will be a part of this story, it turns out that Leonard Nimoy was recently invited to the set, tweeting the news himself.
While it’s always cool to find out tidbits of info just to make sure the production is going smoothly, a film of this magnitude offers far too much in the way of entertainment to ruin the plot with any more hints – all will be come clear when the untitled Star Trek sequel beams up, May 17th, 2013.
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