Having raised the temperature a few degrees with a tease of a nefarious Benedict Cumberbatch and some pretty thrilling trailers, details are starting emerge about what to expect from the long under-wraps storyline of J.J. Abrams‘ hotly anticipated space epic “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” and a new clip that just premiered is almost exclusively centered around Cumberbatch’s mysterious villain John Harrison.
In a recent interview over at the LA Times, Chris Pine, the actor playing the iconic Captain Kirk, gave a brief insight, “This film is about earthbound terror, it’s about terrorism, about issues we as human beings in 2013 deal with every day, about the exploitation of fear to take advantage of a population, about physical violence and destruction but also psychological manipulation. John Harrison is a terrorist in the mold of those we’ve become accustomed to in this day and age.”
After the runaway critical and commercial success of the first instalment of the rebooted franchise, director J.J. Abrams seems to have had more freedom to go bigger and better for ‘Into Darkness,’ with the trailers showcasing Starfleet ships rising from the ocean, the classic ‘Star Trek’ landscapes of exotic planets, and one memorable sequence featuring Zachary Quinto’s Spock descending into an erupting volcano (glimpsed in full in the 10-minute preview from last year), about which the actor said (in the same LA Times piece), “You can’t even imagine how elaborate this set was, lava rocks, smoke, fire machines, sparks. I had to communicate with a speaker inside my helmet…. It was meditative in a way. I got real quiet and real still.” Quinto also elaborated on how the Kirk-Spock dynamic plays out this time around, “In this movie, Kirk really needs to learn how to be a captain, not just sit in the captain’s chair, and Spock needs to learn how to be a friend, not just be accountable and reliable and responsible. In the first movie, it was about all of us coming together, unifying to defeat an enemy. This movie is more about the way an enemy splits us apart. We have to divide in order to conquer in this film.”
The actors have been friends off-screen for a while now, having met prior to be cast together in the first film at an event organised to show-off a historical copy of the Declaration of Independence (by none other than television luminary Norman Lear), “I remember feeling, as I got to know Chris more, so impressed by his intelligence, which isn’t always the case with such a traditional leading man,” said Quinto. “I remember being pleasantly, not surprised, but …” “You thought I was just a dumb blond,” Pine interjects, before continuing “Actually, I have many more Spockian qualities than I do Kirkian qualities. We were two peas in a pod, in that we think about things way more than we should. We analyze.” No doubt Abrams will be pleased to have such a last real-life bromance behind a franchise that could (potentially) be set to run for lightyears.
Meanwhile, a new clip showcases Cumberbatch’s villain. It’s probably not something you want to see (even if it weren’t somewhat spoiler-y, free of context it makes very little sense), but it does show you that Cumberbatch, after endearing himself to audiences in things like “Sherlock,” can be a real son-of-a-bitch. It’s right after he’s been captured by Kirk and he suggests that the answer to… whatever… Can be found at a specific set of coordinates. Or something really, really bad will happen (we don’t want to say what, exactly). Watch if you want but don’t say we didn’t warn you!
And as the “Star Trek” promo machine gets into full gear ahead of the release, belching smoke and ash and stardust, a host of new photos and posters also arrived, including some handsomely suited and booted leading men (and director) and some less flattering ones of Scotty actor Simon Pegg, check them out below [Recent Movie Posters]
