Star Trek Into Darkness, alternately known as “The Wrath of Spock,” ended with several clear directions they could take things in a sequel. The Federation was going to have to deal with its looming war with the Klingons, and Kirk was probably going to grow closer to Alice Eve’s Carol Marcus or at least catch more glimpses of her in her underwear since she officially joined the crew of the Enterprise. Beyond that, Kirk & Pals were finally (finally!) setting out on their long-delayed five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilizations.
Funny thing about that: J.J. Abrams is now off in a galaxy far, far away, his would-be replacement Roberto Orci was more or less fired and his script completely scrapped, and Simon Pegg and Doug Jung co-wrote a new script as fast as possible while the newly hired director Justin Lin went into pre-production. We got our first glimpse of what they came up with when the 90-second teaser dropped online earlier this week, and to some it looks like more of the same from this rebooted version of Star Trek just with maybe more Fast & Furious-esque stunts this time. The fact that Justin Lin has apparently made another Star Trek action movie is not surprising. What might be vaguely surprising, though, is that this new movie doesn’t appear to be honoring anything which was leftover from Into Darkness. Carol Marcus is long gone, and the Klingons don’t appear to have anything to do with what’s going on.
Or are we reading too much into a mere 90 seconds of footage? Could they be holding back on some of those elements until later trailers or possibly until the film actually comes out? Probably not. Devin Faraci of BirthMoviesDeath got some answers from Justin Lin about this.
First of all, Into Darkness’ “magic blood” ending could be seen as an indication that McCoy found the cure to death. Will that be a thread in the movie? Nope:
[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.
Okay. What about Carol Marcus?:
We pick the crew up about two and a half years after Into Darkness. There were many iterations where we did go and explore [Carol Marcus], but we figured it was two and a half years… It was something we talked about and worked on, but in the presentation of this film it didn’t quite fit in. It’s there with the transporter and everything [laughs].
As they’d say in Arrested Development, say goodbye to these!
Well, at least are Spock and Uhura still together? Probably not:
What we’re doing is appropriate to the two and a half years. It’s a continuation in a way, and I don’t want to ignore things and act as if they don’t exist, so there’s an acknowledgement and I think their relationship is consistent to the way it was before.
Translation: They’re on a very, very long break.
Here’s the question: Are you annoyed that they’re going to pretty much ignore Star Trek Into Darkness? Were you looking forward to Kirk and Carol together again? Geeking out over the prospect of a full movie with the Klingons as the bad guys? Or are you happy to be rid off of both of those things since most people only remember Alice Eve’s underwear in that movie, not the character she played, and the re-designed Klingons lost some of their appeal? Or did you go even deeper with it and only really care about the “magic blood” and crazy transporter logic of Into Darkness? Or does none of this really matter because, dropped story lines or not, this still isn’t the version of Star Trek for you?
Source: BirthMoviesDeath