SciFi Now Interview Excerpts

UK Magazine SciFiNow's current interview has interviews with Star Trek Director J.J. Abrams and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Sadly the interview is not up on their website (limiting considering a potential worldwide audience) but TrekMovie.com has excepts as they discuss their goals for the movie.

JJ Abrams on reaching both new and long time Star Trek fans:

So for me, it was a way to take three groups of people, who represent the whole audience, and say, ‘Let’s bring everyone together and tell a story that starts at the beginning, when Kirk is unformed. When you meet him and he’s an aimless punk who goes to bars, drinks, picks up women, starts fights. Yet you know, and even the neophytes to Trek will watch and say, ‘Kirk? Isn’t he Captain Kirk? How does he go from here to there?’ So for me, it’s giving people a way in to this world in a way it’s never been done. By doing this film with the kind of resources that certainly a Trek film has never been allowed to have before. By delivering on a level of visceral fast-paced action that Trek has never really had at its signature. I think what we’ll take is a story of incredible characters, of incredible potential, of real optimism and wonder, and treat it in a way that provides a kind of emotional connection, visceral excitement, visual spectacle that Trek has never seen before.

Where the characters are at the movie's end:

Yes, the five year mission begins at the end of this film. Not literally; I’m saying that at the end of the movie they’re ready for their five year mission, because this group, when they first come together in this film, is a disparate group. They don’t know each other, they’re just meeting for the first time. Kirk and Spock have a rather contentious beginning to their relationship, and by the end of this experience together, they have become this family. Each of them has put their lives in each other’s hands. By the end of the film, they are now this group that is ready to begin their adventure.

Orci and Kurtzman on how this movie is different then the previous 10:

ORCI: We go back to the origins of the characters, and because it’s an introduction to a world you don’t need to know anything about, is a part of it. The other part of it is that we tell a good human story without using scifi to cover anything up. J.J. has said we made this movie to be a good movie, not a good scifi movie. Just a very appealing adventure. And if that was the goal, we’ll see if we succeeded. That was the intention, not to rely on any crutches of science fiction. When you’re a fan of science fiction, you can rely on things that are fascinating to you, but they might not be as appealing to a mass audience. That can’t be the whole game, there has to be something extra.

KURTZMAN: We are in an entirely different millennium than when Star Trek originated. It was the 20th century when the show began. Cell phones didn’t exist. The future we’re presenting in this movie is much closer to the reality that currently exists than has ever been the case. As a result, it isn’t so much a fantasy, it could be humans traveling in space and accomplishing things. That’s a given now, even on a street level, and because that’s a given now, you have to ask, what is the story?