Is there any chance you’re experiencing a creeping sense of dread about J.J. Abrams’s upcoming reboot of the Star Trek franchise? Not because you think ill of J.J. Abrams, necessarily, but rather because you consider Trekkies to be even lower in the social hierarchy than people with swine flu? Well then, if the early Star Trek 90210 reviews didn’t serve to change your mind, none other than J.J. Abrams himself aimed to assuage your fears with an interview he gave to Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times that ran this weekend. You see, it turns out that before he started working on the film, he hated Star Trek, too!
If you have been tracking the press tour for this film (which has been going pretty much nonstop since Comic-Con 2007), you will recognize that Abrams’ comment that “I was not a fan (of Star Trek)†is part of a calculated strategy to distance his film from the whiff of geek that scares off most members of the general public when they hear the words “Star†and “Trek†in close proximity. Back in January at a TCA press conference, he openly defended his choice to make this film something that appeals to people outside of the Trekkie quadrant by stating, “I didn’t really make the movie just for the people who are already inside, because I like Star Trek but I was never a massive fan.†He also leveled criticism at the failings of recent entries in the genre like Star Trek: Nemesis when he noted that they “always presumed you cared about this group of characters†(read: Abrams clearly felt people didn’t).
All of which forces us to ask one thing: With all this pent-up disdain for Trekkies, how is it even possible that J.J. Abrams and William Shatner didn’t end up being BFFs?
New Team Retrofits the Old Starship [NYT]