http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/j-j-abrams-reveals-his-star-trek-movie/

  • November 18, 2008, 9:51 am
    J. J. Abrams Reveals His ‘Star Trek’ Movie
    By Dave Itzkoff

    “I’ve never been a fan of ‘Star Trek,’” J. J. Abrams told a movie theater full of journalists on Monday night – a perfectly reasonable sentiment, except that Mr. Abrams happens to be the director of the big-budget, high-stakes “Star Trek” film that Paramount is releasing in May.

    For Mr. Abrams, a creator and executive producer of the television shows “Lost,” “Alias” and “Fringe,” this was his possibly sympathetic, possibly suicidal way of explaining the premise of his “Star Trek” movie, the eleventh in the long-running science-fiction franchise.

    “Despite all the stuff that a non-fan would find silly, clichéd, crazy, my goal was to make it feel legitimate,” he said. To his mind, that meant exploring the earliest adventures of Kirk, Spock and company – set before the era of the original 1960s “Star Trek” television series – and recasting familiar roles with young, polished, relatively untested actors.

    The unspoken but understood message: if Mr. Abrams’s “Star Trek” is going to justify its estimated $150 million budget, it had better reach beyond the die-hard fans of Vulcans, Tribbles and dilithium crystals.

    Mr. Abrams then played the new trailer for “Star Trek” as well as four longer clips from the film. While Paramount wouldn’t dare let us photograph or record these scenes, under threat of torture by mind-controlling Ceti eels, we’ll do our best to describe them the old-fashioned way.

    1. The young James T. Kirk (played by Chris Pine) is drinking forlornly at a bar in 23rd century Iowa (where they still serve Budweiser). Without much success, he flirts with a young Starfleet recruit named Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and picks a fight with four Starfleet grunts who clobber him. Kirk’s bravado impresses another Starfleet officer, Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), who knew Kirk’s late father, and goads Kirk into joining the Starfleet Academy. “Your father was the captain of a starship for 12 minutes,” Pike tells him. “He saved 800 lives, including your mother’s. Including yours. I dare you to do better.”

    2. A medical officer named McCoy (Karl Urban) helps smuggle Kirk aboard the starship Enterprise by injecting him with a vaccine that induces the symptoms of a mysterious disease. While his hands and tongue swell up, Kirk races around the ship, trying to convince the crew they’re about to enter a trap set by the nefarious Romulans. We get our first glimpse of the young Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto of television’s “Heroes,” in a mop-top haircut and pointy ears), as well as Spock’s human mother (Winona Ryder) and the Romulan bad guy Nero (Eric Bana, in heavy-duty prosthetic makeup).

    3. The Enterprise jettisons Kirk on a remote ice planet, where he meets the aged, future incarnation of Spock (ladies and gentlemen, Mister Leonard Nimoy!) as well as a young Starfleet engineer named Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg). With Old Spock’s help, Scotty completes a mathematical formula that permits living beings to be teleported onto vessels moving at warp speed. (Of course.) As Kirk and Scotty prepare to beam back onto the Enterprise, Kirk wonders if time-traveling and peeking into the future is cheating; Old Spock tells him it’s “a trick I learned from an old friend.”

    4. In a lengthy action sequence, Kirk, Sulu (John Cho) and a third, red-shirted Starfleet recruit (don’t get too attached to him) parachute from the upper atmosphere of the planet Vulcan onto a giant drill that is burrowing a hole to the center of the planet. Kirk and Sulu disable the drill, but not before it drops a charge into the planet’s core. Back on the Enterprise, Spock realizes that the charge, when detonated, will create a black hole where his home world used to be – and he now has mere minutes to evacuate the planet’s entire population.

    What happens next? Will the new “Star Trek” erase our bitter memories of the last five sequels? (Not including “First Contact,” which I now concede was a pretty good entry in the series.–D.I.) With a crowded summer 2009 season approaching, and movie studios nervously watching their wallets, you can expect many more updates between now and May 8.