J.J. Abrams on Star Trek

May is a big month for J.J. Abrams. The long awaited Star Trek reboot finally opens May 8 while Fringe approaches its first season finale. Of course Lost is going strong in season five without him. Between the Star Trek junket and the Fringe presentation at the Paleyfest 09, we had two chances to catch up with Abrams.

Crave Online: How excited are you for people to finally see Star Trek?

J.J. Abrams: I’m just excited to get it out there. It’s been a long time in the works. The idea of finally getting the movie out there overpowers any of the fear I also have, that finally it’s going out there. I’m more excited.

Crave Online: You’ve had to answer fanboy stuff along the way.

J.J. Abrams: Yeah, I mean, the truth is the fans have been fans. They love Trek. They want to see a Trek that makes them feel good. We did everything we could to do them proud so I’m crossing my fingers that they like what they see.

Crave Online: Are you already thinking about a sequel to Star Trek?

J.J. Abrams: Obviously, it was a dream to work with these guys and the whole cast and crew, and it would be incredible fun to get to do it again. It is also insanely presumptuous to assume that it will work when it’s out there, that people will like it, and that there will be a need for another one. If there is, the good news is that there’s a deal for the writers and a deal for the actors. It’s in place. We have not had one meeting. We have not had one discussion. There’s no outline. There’s no script. There’s nothing. We’re fishing for ideas.

Crave Online: In trying to reinvent something that people love so much, was there ever a moment where you thought, “Oh, my God, what am I doing”?

J.J. Abrams: Yeah, there honestly were a few moments where I was looking at what we were doing from the outside in and just started sweating and was just terrified. You get so inside of it that you’re talking about these characters and these issues, and Romulans and Klingons and the Starship. Every once in awhile, you’re on the set and you look at it from the outside and you’re like, “This is ridiculous!” I had to literally psych myself back into the moment and say, “This must be what Peter Jackson and George Lucas have gone through,” and I’d get focused again.

Crave Online: William Shatner wanted to be in the film. Why couldn’t you find a place for him?

J.J. Abrams: Nothing would have made us happier than to have William Shatner in this movie. His character died on screen, in one of the films. When we tried figure out a way to put him in, every time we did it, it was a gimmick. Every time we figured out a way that we thought it could work, it ended up being a gimmick, unless the whole story was about bringing him back, and that would have changed the entire story that we wanted to tell. So, it was either change everything or do it without him. But, we definitely love Mr. Shatner. Working with him is something that we would obviously be thrilled to do, and wanted to do. It just literally didn’t work for our story, and he didn’t want to just do a cameo. We could have done a flashback, but he didn’t want to do that. And, if we had reinvented everything, it would have just been crazy. And, the YouTube thing happened because I was interviewed about it and I said, which was true, that we tried many different ways to get him in the movie and it just didn’t work. I guess he heard it and thought that they were saying that we had tried to get him in, and called him and were making efforts, so he did this video saying, “You didn’t call me.” So, then I had to respond to that and say, “No, no, no, I don’t mean we called you. We were trying, internally, to tell a story that was worthy of you and worthy of the audience.” There was no way to do it and have it not be a cameo, so it didn’t work in this one. But, all is good.

Crave Online: What made you decide to bring Winona Ryder into the Star Trek fold?

J.J. Abrams: I’d always been a fan of Winona’s. One of the models that we had for this movie was Superman, the Dick Donner film. The way that he cast that film, all the lead roles were essentially unknowns and many of the supporting roles were people that you had seen before and knew, to some degree, and obviously, with Marlon Brando, knew very well. I just thought it would be nice, given that we had a cast that was, for the most part, unknowns that we give roles that we could to actors that were known. Eric Bana is essentially hidden in disguise in this movie. You can’t really recognize him. For the role of Amanda, to get Winona Ryder was just one of those things where I thought it would be great to have an actress who people would recognize and, hopefully, not get pulled out of the movie, but feel like there was some support for the younger, fresher faces.

Crave Online: What is going to be on the DVD and Blu-ray? Are there extra scenes?

J.J. Abrams: We shot a few extra scenes. I hate to do this because, whenever you cut a scene, all you’re thinking of is how that time could have been used to make other scenes better. But, of course, the day you’re shooting it, you’d kill someone if they said, “This scene won’t end up in the movie.” You’re like, “That’s not true! This is critical.” But, there’s a scene with the stepfather and young Kirk, there’s a scene of Nero in prison, and there’s a scene of young Spock as a baby, having just been born. There are a couple extra scenes, and they’re all scenes that would have been fun to have in the movie, but some things, like the prison sequence, just confounded the audience. Every time we’d screen the movie for a group, that sequence threw them. Even though it had some of my favorite designs in the whole movie, with the wardrobe, the location and some of the visual effects. It was really fun. But, if it’s better without it, then cut it.

Crave Online: Obviously, our vision of the future differs from the original series’ vision of the future. What moments did you decide to keep and how did you decide to update it?

J.J. Abrams: There were certain things that we all decided we wanted to maintain. As someone who was not a huge Trek fan to begin with, I had my instincts about things that I thought were important, but really Bob Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Bryan Burk and Damon Lindelof were much bigger Star Trek fans than I was and they knew that there were things that needed to be maintained and details I never would have even been able to speak to. I just knew that the shape and silhouette of the Enterprise needed to be maintained. You don’t want to change everything. If you’re a fan, you go, “Oh, wow, it’s different,” but the casual fan or the non-fan will just say, “Oh, wow, it’s a cool design.” That was important.