JJ Abrams

0:13It is safe. It is an illusion. How you doing JJ? Pretty well sir, yup. I'm doing well. Now I'm sitting beside the Hollywood's biggest visionary. Gotta start with the comment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was reading an interview with Alex who was saying that the dilemma for the sequel was whether to pit the crew against another villain or to have an exploration sci-fi plot where the unknown in nature itself is somehow an adversary. I know you're not credit as a writer, but I'm sure you're involved in the writing process. So how come go with a villain that might not be as villain-esque as maybe we think he is? I think that the key for us was that we come up with a story that intrigued us and got us excited.

0:59And we didn't really look at it from the outside in thinking, well, who should a villain be and how should it work? This was really a question of the characters that we came to love. What are they gonna go through and what's the best way to test them? And as a byproduct of going through that development process of the story, there is a villain in the movie who I think is if villains define the heroes. I think we have a pretty significant heroic punch because the villain is I think a terrific addition to the world. And how can you chose to go that way instead of going, I mean, everyone online is saying, is it gonna be gone? Is it gonna be taken into different direction? Well, I mean, look, I mean, some of the original films did have villains like this and I think that the more mysterious exploratory thing

1:48as in the Star Trek, let's the motion picture, you can get into the advantages and disadvantages of any kind of storytelling. But the fact is that we didn't make this movie for fans of Star Trek, we made this movie for movie fans. If you happen to be a Star Trek fan, I think you'll be really happy. There's a lot of stuff in there that's definitely for you and certainly Bob Orcy and Damon who are massive Star Trek fans made sure that the fans of Star Trek are being not only appreciated but rewarded for their being fans. But what I love about this movie is that you've got characters that you love in insane extraordinary circumstances and I think that Benedict is a wonderful foil for them. One of those insane extraordinary circumstances we see right in the beginning

2:33that I guess most people see this weekend with The Hobbit is them on a new world. So as a director, you get to create not only new worlds but the future of maybe what our planet will look like. So what's more exciting for you? Well, it was great to get to do both. I mean, this movie takes place far more on Earth than the first film did and we got to look at not just London but also San Francisco as future cities and that was incredibly cool and still remains incredibly cool. I mean, we're still working on the film. So part of the fun was being able to say, extrapolating where we are now and where we're going to where we will be and visually realize that. And so that's been insanely fun and there are just endless details and things that people will never see I think in the first viewing that kind of add to the reality and the thought

3:20and the fun of it and it really makes me even more grateful for our designers and production designer and visual effects people. And that's really cool. The new worlds aspect is also really exciting because especially what you see in the beginning of the film, it's like a real sort of primitive species. And so I wanted to make sure that you saw before the end of that sequence not just the sort of the natives at the beginning or chasing some characters but you also want to see as you do an elder, you want to see a baby, you want to see some animal life on the planet. I wanted you to get a sense that by the time you left that place you had seen some really small details and some really epic landscapes. And I think that the fun of that very fairly short sequence

4:05on that red planet is you just get a taste of what's out there in the world and I loved being able to sort of play with scale in that sequence. There's a lot of fun. Do you have something called five questions, five quick questions, one word answers, writing or directing? Directing. Leonard McCartney. McCartney. Hitchcock or Kubrick? Hitchcock. Your biggest influence as a director. Spielberg. And in one word, Star Trek. Epic. So shall we begin?