EW Talks Trek

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new Star Trek movie coming out and Entertainment Weekly has the whole scoop in their new issue.

“Oh, I feel the pressure,” says JJ Abrams. “In the eyes of a lot of fans, this is sacred material. Every shot, I’m wondering if this is where I’m going to f— it all up.”

Abrams said it was tough to do a full on space opera without turning it into Galaxy Quest (which has been re-released on DVD with lots of new features) but  he thinks he got it right. A self-described nonfan of Star Trek Abrams says he thought the show was a little “talkie” and thus had only one idea when Paramount came knocking on his door. “My first reaction was that it should be a story about Kirk and Spock – because I didn’t know anything else about Star Trek,” he says.

Abrams may have started the production not knowing tranya from Tribbles, but he ended up a supernerd. His movie is festooned with enough Easter-egg reference to classic Trek trivia to keep fansites humming for months. “The movie doesn’t shatter everything you know about the show,” says Zachary Quinto, aka young Spock. “It just comes at Star Trek from a different perspective. It straddles a line between giving people what they’ve known about these characters for 40 years and what they’ve wished they knew about them.”

The film has a cast of young, eye-catching unknowns – Chris Pine stars as rowdy Starfleet cadet James T. Kirk, while Zachary Quinto plays a green-behind-the-ears Spock, and Zoe Saldana is feisty Uhura. “You’ve got apocalyptic movies like Watchmen and Dark Knight – movies that explore the darker side of human psychology – and they’re great,” says Pine. “But this is not going to be one of those movies. This is not nihilistic. This is not grim. This is a bright vision of the future, full of hope and optimism.”

You can read the full story at EW.com then pick up the new issue for Star Trek Through Time. From William Shatner’s suave debut to Tribblemania, Ricardo Montalban to Whoopi Goldberg, Entertainment Weekly takes a look at the franchise’s 43-year space odyssey.