By In a recent interview with MTV News, J.J. Abrams talked about why he felt keeping the identity of Star Trek Into Darkness‘ villain a secret was a bad idea; something I realized as soon as Kirk punched Khan in the face and he didn’t react and I went “oh, he’s just khan” and I could hear my excitement for the rest of the movie deflating like a balloon.
“The truth is because it was so important to the studio that we not angle this thing for existing fans. If we said it was Khan, it would feel like you’ve really got to know what ‘Star Trek’ is about to see this movie,” said Abrams, the man who directed a film four years ago that was thematically about Star Trek as a franchise.
The idea was that for the first hour of the movie, the characters in the movie don’t know, and it felt like if there were articles about Khan, it would take away from the story. The truth is, I think it probably would have been smarter just to say upfront: “This is who it is.” It was only trying to preserve the fun of it, and it might have given more time to acclimate and accept that’s what the thing was.
I don’t know what’s up with this sudden burst of Into Darkness-themed regret from Abrams, but I don’t really get it. Sure, Into Darkness wasn’t nearly as good as it could’ve been, but I didn’t think it was bad. The Khan stuff was dumb, sure, but the film ultimately delivered in the necessary areas: fun character interaction, good action setpieces, and hell of lens flares.
Can’t help but wonder if we’ll be doing all this again come Episode VII time.
[Source: Collider]