We’ve seen a sneaky preview of the new Star Trek. It is as brilliant as we hoped and more. The review will be posted shortly, but in the meantime here’s an exclusive online Q&A with director JJ Abrams, in which he explains just what made him want to explore the depths of the Vulcan psyche and why he left our cover star’s famous bowl-cut well alone.
ESQUIRE: Would it be fair to describe the plot of your new Star Trek film as the birth of the Spock and Kirk bromance?
JJ ABRAMS: The primary relationship in the movie is these two men who are in pretty severe conflict. Over the course of the story they end up moving a little bit towards each other and become this duo that - in the series at least - was always presumed to have existed from the beginning. This movie posits that they would not necessarily be so friendly when they first met.
ESQ: Why not?
JA: The conflict comes from Spock being a completely rule- and law-abiding logical being, and Kirk being an incredibly intuitive, emotional going-from-his-gut sort of guy. You have these two wildly disparate approaches to life, and when a crisis arises these two characters obviously go about it in a very different way. But they actually have a conflict that arises before that – from the very beginning these two don’t really see eye-to-eye.
ESQ: Were there other aspects of their characters that you wanted to develop?
JA: Being someone who appreciated Star Trek but didn’t really live and breathe that universe, I hadn’t really considered the fact that Spock is half-human, half-Vulcan. You could argue that it would be a very difficult for this guy, growing up with a mother who is not a completely logical being. Being half-human, even though you’d say, “Vulcans are logical, Vulcan children wouldn’t bully him,” on the other hand they could also be testing a theory that he could break and become emotional. That alone was a fascinating idea for a character. With Kirk, instead of just assuming that at a very young age he had the confidence and wisdom and even the desire to lead as the captain, we looked at what makes someone like that. Where would that come from? And how would those abilities actually find that captain’s chair? A lot of what the movie plays with is the becoming of these characters that many people know and love.
ESQ: So this is their difficult adolescent years? Does Spock try out some experimental haircuts?
JA: We embraced a look [for Spock] that was ordered and consistent and familiar because while Earth is emotional, varied and cultured, Vulcans are a much more structured, orderly, peaceful society. The Vulcan approach is to forgo emotion, embrace logic, and therefore control your destiny. That speaks to a more standardised appearance, less of a crazy look.
ESQ: Does he at least get a bit of love action?
JA: There’s this period for Vulcans every seven years called “pon farr” where they go fucking insane. All the pent-up emotion comes out and they lose it and almost go primal. But certainly being Vulcan does not preclude having relationships, even though one might argue that for a Vulcan it’s about the logic of procreation. And Spock being half-human, that leaves him a little more susceptible in the film to desires of the heart…
ESQ: You mentioned to us last time we spoke that you never quite understood why you were supposed to love Kirk and Spock so much. Do you feel that’s been rectified in your film?
JA: I feel that now we have a story that shows these characters in very relatable ways, sometimes more amusing than others, but you see who they are and where they come from. I think if the movie accomplishes anything, it’s that you meet this group of characters that you like, and you see them essentially come together as a family. While I certainly enjoy watching the original actors in their roles, you’re never given that window onto their formative years - how they formed that partnership and that community on the bridge and on the ship. It was really important that the characters be believable and relevant and not just caricatures in a sci-fi world and certainly not impersonations of the earlier actors. I think that we’ve managed to find actors who have brought these characters to life.
ESQ: Did Leonard Nimoy have particular feelings about what should happen to Spock?
JA: He did. The script was very much honouring what has come before, so the character of Spock wasn’t suddenly acting in ways that Nimoy felt offended by or confused about. There were a couple of moments where Nimoy suggested that, for example, maybe Spock wouldn’t strike someone in that way. He had a few little comments here and there, all of which we respected and adjusted accordingly. He was always the most respectful, kind actor. When I say Leonard is the quintessential gentleman, there are no truer words to be spoken.
ESQ: Why are super-intelligent beings so recurrent in sci-fi?
JA: Science fiction doesn’t come from nothing. It comes from the state of things, and hypothesising based on the trajectory of science, where we’ll end up being in X-number of years. I think for many years what people have known or at least believed is that the creation of artificial intelligence, the promise of synthetic humans with none of the limits of biology, is an inevitability. Part of it is, oddly, wish-fulfilment and a sense of possibility beyond what we know. The idea of other species that are not just sentient beings but hyper-sentient beings, feels like something we all sort of hope and assume - because there’s got to be more evolved and deeper-thinking life than us. There is either wisdom to be gained from communicating with other species, or such dangerous intelligence that it’s horrifying: that feels like far more interesting story-telling than meeting the alien who’s a little bit of a dolt, or having the bad guy who’s not quite smart enough to turn the light off.
In the current issue of Esquire, Abrams makes the case for Star Trek for any non-believers out there - when the film is released on 8 May, they will be few and far between.
http://www.esquire.co.uk/2009/04/star-trek-director-jj-abrams-explains-the-allure-of-spock/
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Stay up late for Spock...
- Re: Star Trek director JJ Abrams explains the allure of Spockposted on 05/12/2009
You will watch this movie, resistance is futile. - posted on 05/18/2009
Any more Star Trek fans? I am dying to hear from you.
This is not really a review...
I found the Vulcan way of life simply --- fascinating. Maybe we are all
children of two worlds. If we believe that emotions are advanced brain functions,
and human brains are evolved over time, then it is only logical to conclude
that the ability to experience emotions is not given but acquired over time
during the evolution, that it may serve some purposes in the natural selection,
that down the road it may no longer serve these purposes well, and may
eventually go obsolete.
Evolutional psychology suggests that certain emotions are evolved to motivate
certain actions that benefit self, others or the social order. It is already
long suspected that romantic love is just some kind of trick nature plays
to get us to reproduce. I also like the speculation that, in day-to-day
survival, emotions serve as a crude appraisal of the situation before the
second opinion from rational thinking comes in. When you sense danger, should
you fight or flee? By the time you think it over, you are already dead. Emotions
quickly prepares our bodies for action. Of course many times the appraisal
comes out to be wrong and gets us into trouble, getting us fired or giving
us a heart attack. But the evolution hasn't got enough time to start worry
about these, its main purpose is still to carry us to the reproduction age and
call it a success.
This whole system is really convoluted. By manipulating the chemical levels
of the body, the emotions can be simulated. We may feel extremely irritated,
or profoundly sad, and interpret it as a result of some outside stimulation,
while it could be chemical imbalance all along. In many cases we have been
manufacturing emotions for quite a long time by the consumption of legitimate
or recreational drugs, not to mention alcohol, tobacco and caffeine.
How can I find consolation from all these? Knowing why I am designed this
way, and the fact that this design doesn't necessarily have my best interest
in mind? Understanding the absurdity and futility of life and still willingly
accept it? The final frontier for us is not out in the space but inside
the human mind. Learning how to control it, express it, and not to be emotionally
compromised, will be a life long journey.
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