By Pauline Adamek
J.J. Abrams is chuckling to himself, admitting that even he didn’t fully realise what he was getting into when he agreed to direct a new Star Trek movie, particularly one that chronicles the early days of James T. Kirk and his fellow USS Enterprise crew members. The short, unassuming 43-year-old director (who created the TV series Alias and Lost, and turned big screen director with Mission: Impossible III) comes across more like a bespectacled college kid than a Hollywood player. “Honestly, I didn’t know that there were ten movies when I first started this,” he laughs. “I was like, ‘Oh, Star Trek, that’d be cool!’ I thought that this one might be number five or six. I didn’t know.”
Didn’t he know that he was about to embark upon the eleventh feature film in the classic sixties TV show’s franchise history? Not that Abrams watched them all or anything… though surely he watched the most renowned one, 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. “Obviously I knew that one very well, and I did see that one again,” he admits, before adding, “but at a certain point, the movies weren’t necessarily relevant to what I was working on. Instead of studying every Star Trek thing, I just watched all the episodes of the show which were important for this story.” Abrams says that he strove to ensure that he was telling a story that wasn’t too beholden or shackled to what had come before, and that he wasn’t merely attempting to replicate earlier storylines. “I wanted to do something different. When I found out that there were ten movies, I was like, ‘There’s eleven now?!’ Once you get past ten…that’s a lot. It would’ve been detrimental to the film if I approached this as the eleventh movie. So we’ve called it Star Trek, and we approach it as Star Trek, and not as something that came after the tenth movie.”
It has been over forty years since Gene Roddenberry created and launched his fictional futuristic universe that eventually became a cult phenomenon. Unlike anything ever previously televised, the science fiction drama Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69) was actually cancelled after its third season due to low ratings. Rich in its conception, the original series has served as the foundation for four additional live-action television series, one animated television series, and ten theatrical films. The franchise also extends to dozens of computer and video games, hundreds of novels and publications of fan fiction, several fan-created video productions, as well as a themed attraction in Las Vegas. Hence Trek fanatics (or Trekkers, as they prefer to be called), on top of the original series, can immerse themselves in a variety of incarnations of this fictional universe, including The Animated Series (1973–1974), The Next Generation (87-94), Deep Space Nine (93-99), Voyager (95-2001) and Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-5), which was a prequel, of sorts.
Roddenberry publicly marketed his TV series as a frontier Western saga set in outer space, but according to his authorised biography, he privately told friends that he was actually modeling his series on Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathon Swift’s satirical novel of exploration and social observation, intending each episode to operate on two levels: firstly as a suspenseful adventure story, but also as a morality parable. The show tackled many hot issues of the time, such as imperialism, political and social oppression, sexism and racism. Its characters – the infuriatingly calm and logical half-alien Spock (Leonard Nimoy); the sexy, feisty and all-too-human Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner); the level headed Dr. “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelly); the excitable Scotty (James Doohan); the highly logical Chekov (Walter Koenig); the eccentric Sulu (George Takei) and the sexy but fiercely independent Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) – have become true sci-fi icons.
From what the press has been shown of the incomplete movie thus far, director J.J Abrams’ youthful “origin” story – focusing on how all these beloved characters first came together – doesn’t deviate in any significant way from the chronology of the original TV show. The filmmakers appear to be reverent to the heavy, interlocking weight of the mythology of the series, almost to the extent of checking the requisite boxes. Star Trek’s plot is set in motion when a Federation starship, the USS Kelvin, is attacked by a vicious Romulan named Nero (Eric Bana), who is gunning for one of the film’s heroes. From there, the film then brings Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) centre stage, and charts the origins of their friendship, including how they came to serve as officers aboard the USS Enterprise. The movie depicts how the whole original series crew came together: McCoy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin). The adventure soars from Earth to the planet Vulcan, and promises plenty of interstellar battle action.
J.J Abrams claims that he’s never seen this origin storyline addressed in previous Star Trek incarnations. “Yeah, there was a TV show, but that doesn’t mean that this story was told,” he says. “In fact, this story is actually different from what happens on the show.” It seems that Abrams is hoping that his movie may provide an entry point into the series for newcomers and sceptics, as well as satiating the appetite of established fans. “This movie does the thing that I never felt the show did: it gives the audience that has never seen Star Trek a way in, by giving them characters that they can really relate to. If you’re already a fan of Kirk or Spock, then great. You’ll still have that. But if you’ve never felt that affinity, then this provides that sort of thing. Also, the spectacle, given the resources that we had, is far greater than Star Trek has ever been able to do in the past.”
Interestingly enough, Abrams has never been an avid Star Trek fan. While most filmmakers would probably pass on a property that they held little affinity for, Abrams – when approached to produce the film – at least gave the script a read, and claims that he was instantly hooked by the exciting screenplay and the prospect of making “a sexy, scary and huge adventure comedy. It wasn’t until I read the script that I honestly knew. Firstly, I knew that I would go to the set and I would just be jealous of whoever was directing the movie. Secondly, I showed it to my wife, who knows that directing a movie is a lot of time away and we have three kids. It’s not exactly the thing that I’m running to do, finding more things to direct.” It was Abrams’ wife – also not a Star Trek aficionado – who urged him to direct the movie. “Despite it being Star Trek, it would be fun to do,” the director explains. “I thought it was cool to take something that didn’t appeal to me, and to then make it into something that would. That was an interesting idea.”
Hence, Abrams took the non-fan, outsider approach to telling this story. It’s an exciting and dramatic adventure on a huge scale, within which lay an emotional story of friendships. We meet Kirk as a young man: he’s an aimless, cocky troublemaker unafraid to escalate a bar fight. He is recruited by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), and somehow manages to work his way through the Starfleet Academy, and finally on board the USS Enterprise, where he clashes with Science Officer Spock. It was this relationship that Abrams says he found so compelling. “The main character was this guy who was aimless,” he explains. “He’s this lost guy, and he ends up being challenged to do something in his life that would give him purpose. Over the course of the story, Kirk goes on this amazing journey. That, to me, is fascinating. Then there’s this character of Spock, who grew up as this half-breed, confused about who he was, and struggling. He’s not completely Vulcan. He’s not completely human. He’s always questioning himself: ‘Am I going to be emotional? Am I going to be logical?’ He ultimately chooses logic, but it was a fascinating idea that he was a little bit lost. That was his cross to bear. This is Spock’s burden: ‘Who are you and what path are you going to choose?’ Then you’ve got Kirk, who’s very much a waste. It’s the story of these two characters who finally come together, but what I loved is that when they come together initially, they hate each other. There’s this amazing conflict.”
It all sounds suspiciously like the traditional romantic-comedy formula, where the guy and girl can’t stand each other but eventually fall in love. Abrams disagrees. “No, but there’s a lot of comedy in it. I would say that it’s a brotherly love story.” A bromance?! Abrams shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “We can use that term if you like, but to me it’s the story of two characters who end going places and meeting people.” Abrams goes on to emphasise that it’s not just about Spock and Kirk, but rather the whole family of characters on the Enterprise. “By the end of the story, you’ve got this group who at the beginning either didn’t know each other at all or had these odd or contentious relationships. By the end of the story, their lives are in each other’s hands. That group is the thing that honestly – with all deference to the original show – I never found a way into. I always felt like it was for other people. I never knew why it mattered so much and why those characters were together.”
It’s been a long wait for fans of this series since the last big screen adventure. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) featured the Next Generation cast, including Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Jonathan Frakes as Commander William T. Riker. So far, internet buzz seems to indicate a faith in Abrams’ ability to deliver a good picture. He has assembled a young cast – already dubbed by the excitable studio marketing team as “the stars of tomorrow” – to portray the youthful incarnations of Star Trek’s beloved characters. But will this tactic work, or will it feel more like “Starfleet 90210”? To be fair, the new cast members are not teenagers. Most are in their late twenties to mid-to-late thirties, with Chris Pine the youngest at 28. Kirk is the film’s lynchpin, but curiously enough, his was the last key role to be cast. As the other cast members were locked into place, the fruitless search for the new Kirk began to cause a great deal of nervous anxiety. “It was so hard,” Abrams confides. “You don’t understand. I was so scared of this. I knew that we were going to cast the movie without hugely established stars. I thought that Spock would be the hardest character to cast, and we cast him first. Zachary Quinto came in, and I was like, ‘Huh! Oh, my God!’”
After Zachary Quinto and the others were cast, Abrams was facing a looming production start date with no captain. “We kept seeing actors, and we were like, ‘Oh, no. This is really hard.’ Then Chris came in, and he was cocky but lovable. He was funny, and yet he could be really dramatic and he could play scared and he could play tough. The Kirk character has so much to do in this movie, and there are so many extremes. With everything that I threw at Chris, he was just hungry to do it. I was like, ‘Okay. I want you to do this movie.’”
Abrams says that Pine hesitated, as he was also being considered for another picture, with a director whom he’d worked with previously. Abrams was insistent. “I said, ‘Oh, no. You have to do this movie. You don’t understand.’ He was like, ‘Well, are you going to put me in a leotard?!’” Pine signed on after being reassured he was not going to look stupid, and then faced the massive responsibility of stepping into the shoes of a beloved character. The young actor insists, however, that the weight of the movie did not rest solely on his shoulders. “It’s not just Kirk’s movie by any stretch,” Pine says. “This is a movie about all of these characters, and my role is just as important as Zach’s [Quinto] and it’s just as important as John’s [Cho]. But I guess by virtue of being the captain, there is some kind of responsibility. I mean, it was very easy for me in the beginning to get wrapped up in that whole idea of responsibility and the weight on my shoulders and all of that. At the end of the day, when you think about what we’re doing – which is making a movie about people in space – it should be entertainment.”
Part of that fun was manufactured by Abrams on set, who made sure that his cast members were buoyed by an easy, lively atmosphere, rather than the heavy responsibility of making a $150-million-dollar movie. “I first experienced that when I auditioned,” says Pine. “I could feel that passion and that positivity and that collaborative spirit. It’s very easy to get out of your head and into really what the fun of it is – it’s Star Trek. This should be fun.”
Like Abrams, Pine wasn’t a fan of the series. He first auditioned for the film in the spring of 2007, about six months prior to the commencement of the shoot. He felt that he’d given a dismal, failed audition. “It was so bad that it was funny,” laughs the actor. “I just thought nothing of it. Six months went by, and I came back to town after shooting a couple of movies, and my agents were like, ‘Do you want to go in for Star Trek again?’ I said, ‘Not a chance.’” Pine wasn’t remotely interested, and sought the opportunity to take some time off. “I didn’t want to do anything, let alone a sci-fi adventure that’s already been done. But they said, ‘You should really meet J. J.’, and that was the wisest counsel that I could’ve gotten. Whether I did this or not, J. J. is a force to be reckoned with in this business, and will be for aeons to come,” Pine says, comparing the young filmmaker to Steven Spielberg. “I went in and I remember sitting in the waiting room. It’s the best feeling as an actor to feel like you don’t really care if you get it or not because then you usually end up doing your best job. I remember going in, and I really fell in love with J. J. I had a man-crush on him from the moment that I walked in. You cannot help but be infected by J. J.’ s energy. He’s passionate about making movies.”
When challenged by FilmInk’s “bromance” theory, however, Pine is careful to put it into a clearer context. “True,” he says. “It is a relationship between two men who spend a lot of time together in space. Absolutely. It’s a relationship between two men in space. It’s like Master And Commander with Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. Maybe we’ll next be on the cover of ‘Out’ magazine,” he jokes, adding, “You can have all the fights, chases and explosions in the world, but you have to care about these people. That’s the genius of J. J. He realises that you have to establish strong relationships between the characters in order to sell $150 million worth of special effects. Otherwise, there’s no heart to it. So yes, it is very much a story about two men learning to really love one another. At the end of the story, they become fast friends. They respect one another for those same characteristics that piss each other off in the beginning. They butt heads because they’re Alpha Males, but they strongly believe in what they believe in.”
Zachary Quinto, who plays Spock, further explains his take on the friendship that evolves between the two characters. “The heart of the movie is really the convergence of the crew of the Enterprise, and understanding where all these different characters come from,” he says. “There’s tremendous conflict between the points of view of these two characters at the beginning of the film. Through the course of the movie, that conflict resolves itself and gives way to a mutual respect and understanding. I don’t think that it’s really so much about us going, ‘Now we’re friends. At first we hated each other.’ It’s framed much differently than that – in a world of high stakes.”
To gain the requisite “look” for his role as Spock, Quinto spent two hours per day in the makeup chair perfecting the hair, ears and brows. He says that his reaction to the transformation was cumulative, as the look evolved with a series of hair and makeup tests. Quinto recalls the nerve-racking eyebrow day of reckoning. “The Saturday before shooting, they shaved off about three quarters of my eyebrows, and then shaped them into much narrower and more angled points. Then they daily added individual hairs with glue.” He held some trepidation that his brows might never grow back. “There were conflicting reports, but most people said that they would grow back and luckily they did, with a vengeance,” he adds, wryly.
Quinto was the first actor to be cast, and almost immediately found himself doing promotion for the film at the biggest fan-boy festival of them all, San Diego’s annual ComiCon. His first meeting with Nimoy was in the elevator at the convention, when they announced that Spock had been cast. “It was like we were going into the Pentagon or something,” Quinto recalls. “They pulled the SUV’s in and then hurried us out so that we didn’t get accosted by fans. We didn’t even speak to each other until we were standing in the elevator. I was like, ‘Hi, Leonard. I’m Zach.’ He goes, ‘I’m Leonard.’ The elevator stopped and he said, ‘You have no idea what you’re in for, kid.’ Then he got off.”
So, what was it like? The frenzy, the enthusiasm, and the insanity of ComicCon? “It’s one of those experiences that only happen very few times in one’s life, if at all,” Quinto replies. “It was a definitive moment. It’s the kind of thing that you look back on rather than really experience when you’re in it. I remember being very gathered. I was calm. I wasn’t nervous. I just took it in. It was exciting and impressive. There were a lot of people there that day.” After the whirlwind of ComicCon, the pair found time for a more substantive conversation, and subsequently Quinto spent time at Nimoy’s home. “At the end of the convention, when we were about to leave, I said, ‘Look, I would love to get in touch with you and hang out.’ He said, ‘Absolutely.’ His wife invited me to a barbecue at their house.” Quinto says that he was fortunate to spend a great deal of time with Nimoy, eating and talking together, and hanging out. “We’ve become friends, definitely,” he smiles. “I consider Leonard a friend, which is something that I’m very proud to say.”
Quinto says that because he got cast so early, he had months of time to settle into what the experience was going to be. “I utilised Leonard to a pretty extensive degree of connection and communication,” he explains. “I did a lot of my own reading and research. There’s a good friend of mine who’s like a walking encyclopedia of Star Trek knowledge. He was very helpful, and I spent a lot of time with the script.” Quinto says that he develops the characters he plays by culling information from the screenplay, and claims that he didn’t watch any of the episodes of the show until they started shooting. “There was a loop of the original series going on in my trailer to remind me of the world and how fun it is and what all that means, but I didn’t really rely on that at all for preparation. I wasn’t interested in doing that.”
It’s probably safe to surmise that Quinto doesn’t share any scenes with Nimoy. Abrams, on the other hand, says that Nimoy was wonderful to work with. “This was a guy that never wanted to put the ears on again,” the director laughs. “He’d been asked a lot to come back and do the character and he’d always said, ‘No thanks.’ We wrote the script. Well, we had a meeting with him and pitched him the idea. He said, ‘That’s interesting’, but he didn’t commit to it. So we wrote the script just hoping that he’d say yes because if he didn’t, we would’ve been screwed. We would’ve had to start over, because the story was with him.” Nimoy read it and agreed to do the role, to their relief. “Leonard was so supportive and so kind. In some way, he blessed the movie. Imagine playing a character for more than forty years, and here’s this young kid coming in who’s suddenly taking that over. To hand over that mantle and say, ‘This is yours now’ was just a wonderful thing to see. He did it all so graciously.”
The new Sulu, Korean-born John Cho (best known for the Harold And Kumar films) describes himself as a moderate fan of the series, but admits that he was more into Star Wars. “I was very young when I came to America,” he explains. “As I got older, when I was in high school, I got into The Next Generation more.” Like his counterparts, Cho watched the original series as part of his preparation to step into the role made famous by George Takei. “I watched the first couple of seasons just to bone up, but it’s one of those things – I found that I knew a lot more about Star Trek than I realised. It’s very much a part of American culture. The collective data that you have is probably higher than you might think.”
Cho says that he found the prospect of stepping into the shoes of a beloved actor somewhat daunting. “Maybe he and Shatner are most known as actors from this series, with their personal mannerisms,” he says. “I felt that there would be no way that I could pull that off. That was just dangerous territory, so I preferred to stay away from that. I didn’t get super far away, but I felt that it would be unwise to approach anything like an imitation of George Takei.”
But what happens to your performance as an actor when you’re in the midst of making an epic adventure? Is it hard to keep your head wrapped around a story like this when the fate of the universe is in your hands? Answers Cho, “Is it hard? I don’t think so. It’s pretty easy to accept these things when you walk onto the bridge of the Enterprise, particularly with our set, because it’s unbelievable. You walk in there and you just accept it.”
Pine was also impressed with the detailed set of the spaceship. “It’s surprising how adept your imagination gets at going to that place, especially when you’re working with the best crew available,” he says. “Everything is working, and it’s like the most efficient factory on the planet. It goes above and beyond what anyone could ask for. So with that kind of play-set, you become like a big kid, and you just happen to have everything that you need.”
Amongst all these Alpha Male leading characters is the lone female, Uhura. Resplendent in a pale-blue outfit – Fendi couture from top to toe – actress Zoe Saldana elegantly glides in on five-inch burgundy stiletto heels and immediately volunteers the information that it took two hours to ready herself with hair, makeup and clothes for the day-long interview junket. “If it were up to me, I would’ve gotten here at 10:15am and been like, ‘Yo, what’s up?’ with jeans and a t-shirt, but that might not help to promote the movie.”
Having been raised partly in the Dominican Republic and later in Queens, New York, the stunningly gorgeous and petite actress – whose parents are Dominican (father) and Puerto Rican (mother) – says that she considers herself a black woman. Saldana says that she feels her preparation for the role actually began five years previously when she worked on Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal, playing a character who was a Trekkie. “When J.J. approached me, I started doing a little research.” It was her mother and grandmother, however, who were diehard Star Trek fans from back when the original series aired. “They used to watch it in Spanish because my mom grew up in the Caribbean and it was different,” Saldana explains. “Subtitles are always much more dramatic.” Saldana says that her mother was absolutely ecstatic when she heard that her girl was being considered for such a legendary role. “J.J. had offered it, and I was afraid of saying yes. I didn’t know if I should. I was so afraid of stepping into a world that was very big, and I was afraid of falling short of that. My mother was like, ‘Zoe, are you crazy?! It’s Uhura!’ But she just doesn’t get it. She was like, ‘Oh, my God! Please do it!’”
So, did she help her daughter prepare to play Uhura? Saldana laughs, and then delivers an impression that sounds uncannily like Rosie Perez. “Oh, my God! My mom volunteers way too much. She lives in New York, and she’d call me because she read the script too. She’d call and leave these funny voicemails that I’d play for all my friends in my trailer. ‘Zoe, it’s mommy. So for this scene, Uhura is concerned and she’s nervous, but please, please play her hard. She’s hard.’ She was the best acting coach. I was like, ‘Thank you, Uhura expert.’ It was definitely for Uhura that this ‘stage mom’ came out of her. I was like, ‘Who are you? You were never a stage mom!’”
Zoe was on the set of Avatar, working with director James Cameron, and was on the fence about taking the role until Cameron invited J.J. to his set and basically insisted that she take the role. “A little birdie had told Mr. Cameron that I was being considered for Star Trek, and he invited J.J. over,” Saldana smiles. “Jim comes up and says, ‘I have a surprise for you coming today at eleven.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ There was J.J., and he had his hat in his hand like a little kid. That’s the most wonderful thing, when you see all these amazing directors – they’re all in awe of each other, and they admire and respect each other so much. I remember Jim saying to J. J., ‘Well, what are you waiting for? This is your girl.’ He goes, ‘What are you talking about? I gave her the role. She hasn’t said yes yet.’ So James came over to me and said, ‘What’s going on?! Are you stupid? It’s Star Trek! You’re going to turn that down?’ I said, ‘I’m just really afraid.’ He said, ‘You’ve been dangling off harnesses and falling off horses for the past two years, and you’re afraid of playing Uhura. Are you kidding me?’ I said, ‘Okay!’ So I basically said yes to J. J. on the spot.”
Like most of the other cast members, Saldana got to meet with Nichelle Nichols, the actor who had created her role. “I met her twice, and she came to the set,” Saldana explains. “If anything, I felt like meeting her was what I needed to get to the bottom of who Uhura was. There was a lot of Nichelle’s personality that became Uhura.” Saldana goes on to explain just how intrinsic Nichols’ contribution was towards the conception of the character. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and his counterparts knew that they wanted a female officer on the Enterprise, but they had no idea whether she was going to be an Asian officer or a Latin officer or some other cultural type. When Nichols walked in to audition, they decided that she was exactly what they were looking for. “They created Uhura with Nichelle,” Saldana explains. “She even named her character pretty much. They asked, ‘What book are you carrying?’ She got everybody to read this book about African tribes called Uhuru. To meet her and to see her mannerisms and the way in which she conducts herself – there was a lot of Nichelle in Uhura.”
So, does J.J. Abrams see this movie as “Star Trek 11” or as a 21st Century reboot of the creaky franchise: Star Trek (Zero)? Abrams dodges the question. “Well, my guess is that if we ever did a sequel, we’d probably do it with a subtitle to the thing.” When asked if Paramount’s approach ran along the lines of, “We have this franchise that’s broken. Can you fix it?”, Abrams confirms this theory. “More or less,” he replies. “They wanted to reinvigorate this story. Like any studio, it’s a piece of property, and an opportunity to make a business deal.”
Star Trek Beyond is in cinemas now. This article was first published in 2009.
