Justin Lin Talks Big Bad, Story and More for Star Trek Beyond

As part of the release of the trailer Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin spoke with various entertainment sites about the movie. It is refreshing to read interviews from a director that is trying to avoid revealing to much but isn't wasting his time hiding secrets that are not relevant to the main story beats. The years of JJ Abrams saying a whole lot while actually saying nothing was practically a master's course on how to be a politician. As part of the interview he revealed who came up with the "Beyond" part (Simon Pegg), what character isn't returning (Carol Marcus), when the story takes place (2.5 years after Into Darkness), name of Idris Elba's big bad (Kraal), and certain extreme aspects from the last two years (like Super Blood) "exists" but doesn't have a part in the story. Below are the highlights but interesting in reading more from the interview with Lin check out Collider, Dark Horizons and TrekMovie.

Set 2.5 years after Into Darkness
"I wanted to hopefully create an opportunity or a situation where we really see how they react to things and to each other. Those are things that even in all the years of watching Trek we had hundreds of hours with the movies of stuff with engagement, but in this timeline I wanted to hopefully create something where we can be on the five-year mission, we can hopefully explore and push, and introduce new species, and put them in situations where hopefully it then mirrors back and reflects about the exploration of humanity."

Where title came from
"It came from my initial conversation with J.J. He kinda tracked me down and we’re talking and I didn’t know what to expect. I thought maybe he’s offering to go shoot a script that existed, and he said, “No, it’s yours. Go and be bold, and just take it. Be bold and make it what you think you would do to Star Trek,” and the more we talked about it the more we kept saying, “Well, let’s keep pushing, let’s keep pushing,” and that’s when Simon kinda said, “Well, it should be Star Trek Beyond,” and it was his idea and it kinda came from all our conversations and then we looked at each other and like, “Oh! That sounds like the title of this film.”"

On 3D
"In this case, I felt like, especially with space and the depth, I think you get a different experience going 3D, so it’s definitely been kind of designed into it, and I feel like in the nature in how some of these shots are constructed, I would want to see it in 3D, you know? But it will definitely be a bit of a different experience in watching this movie 2D. So that was definitely taken into account. I don’t think I would have agreed to 3D if it was just, again, to like milk people for more money. I just don’t think that’s right."

Kraal (or Krall)'s motivations
"When [Idris] came in, he had a lot of [prospective] projects and when I talked to him about this character, it wasn't about this or that it was about building or having a philosophy or point of view. And I like his character because his character is really challenging the way of the Federation's philosophy and there are a lot of things that when I was growing up I wanted to see. It was just really embracing the idea that the Federation, what would happen if you were going on a five-year journey and you're trying to also not only explore, but also maybe introduce other people to this way of thinking. What would that mean? What are the consequences to that? I mean, spreading a philosophy that you believe in that you think is great, are there gonna be any other points of views that's gonna counter you? And I think that those are the things that I thought of as a kid. And also then as an adult when I watch Star Trek. And I think we got to kind of explore that a little bit."

Do you see real world parallels in the themes you are exploring in Star Trek Beyond?
Lin: Star Trek has a very 1960s sensibility of who has the bigger ship usually wins, right? And if you look at it, the attack [on The Enterprise in the trailer], these ships are 40 feet long, but there’s like 4,000 of ‘em, and so I think even in the way they’re being encountered and how people are coming, you can’t help but…

Was it tempting as a Star Trek nerd to load in all the cameos that you could think of?
Lin: [Laughs]There are a lot of talks and a lot of — I got a lot of calls with offers of people wanting to come in… ... i appreciated it but it would’ve taken away from the film."

On Super Blood (that cures death), Intersteller Transportation (that kind of makes starships obsolete), and the Spock/Uhura relationship
[Co-writers] Simon [Pegg] and Doug [Jung] and I have spent some time on that. [laughs] Star Trek has been around for 50 years, and every filmmaker that comes on has a different point of view, and it’s a universe that can support many points of view and journeys and adventures. I embraced what JJ has brought - without him this whole group wouldn’t be together - so I’m definitely very appreciative of him. At the same time, do we address it? No, but we don’t discount it. We don’t sit there and say it doesn’t exist, it’s part of this universe now. ...So there’s definitely an acknowledgment and their relationship is consistent, I feel, to what was built before.

On script writing credit
"The WGA has to figure it out, because I don’t know who those writers are, I never met them. I came on, I had an idea and then Simon [Pegg] and Doug [Joug] came on. I had one conversation with Orci after I came on, and that was it. Nothing was refurbished [from the first script] because I don’t know what was done before I came on." (Bob Orci will get a producer credit only because contractual obligations demanded it but he is clearly persona non grata. Would love to hear the story on what happened to cause Paramount et al to do everything they could to remove Roberto Orci from the franchise.)