FirstShowing.net posted the first part of their extensive interview with Star Trek movie writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and here are few excerpts.
In relation to Star Trek, whose idea was it for the story to take place as a prequel?
Orci: We came to that independently. Certainly that was Alex and my instinct. The first time we ever heard what Paramount wanted it was the same. I'm not sure if they got it from us or we all arrived at that conclusion simultaneously.
Kurtzman: The other thing was that in looking at Trek in its glorious history, it just shocked us that the story of how the bridge crew came together was never told. It was referenced in bits and pieces but it was never told and it's only kind of the most epic big bang story that you could possibly tell in Star Trek. So it felt to us like if we were going to bring something new to the table, that that was the place to start. It just always started with Kirk and Spock for us. It was always about Kirk and Spock.
Orci: And even though I loved "The Next Generation," one of the reasons we felt that Star Trek possibly had passed us by is we never imagined that anyone would want to go back and take on the original Star Trek again. We thought no one would ever go for that and we were not interested in doing sort of the next- next- next- next- next generation. The idea of doing a new crew had already become an old idea and the new idea really was going back to the original crew.
I'm just fascinated how it all happened because Paramount could've made Star Trek 11 with another crew, but somewhere along the process someone said "let's reboot it," to use that term, and this is what we have now. Obviously there is a lot of buzz and interest and obviously it was the right direction to go.
Orci: That would be the idea we pitched and we never heard any resistance.
It's good to hear that's the direction they wanted to go, too.
Orci: Apparently. Or they have good poker faces, we're not sure which.
How has it been working with J.J. Abrams? Is he the best guy to work with in terms of making sure the script gets translated to the screen the way you guys wrote it? How much actual interaction did you have with him?
Orci: Absolutely. We were so lucky to get him to direct this movie. I'm sure you've been doing your own research about him and know that he only thought he was going to produce it. But it was always our secret goal, me, Alex and Damon Lindelof, to really persuade him to do this and persuade someone of his talent and of his caliber to give Star Trek the attention it deserves from a director like him. So we definitely tried to keep him involved but also tried to surprise him a little bit so that he'd have a reaction to it as well. We pitched him the story and as we'd go through writing it, we'd check in every 30 pages, we'd come in and tell him what we're going to write next and let him get kind of excited about it and just kind of kept him in the process throughout, hoping that he would fall in love with what we were all doing. God bless it, it worked.
Kurtzman: I think as a writer all you can hope for is that you will end up working with a director who will translate with the highest possible fidelity whatever you've written on the page to the screen. And having done 20 trillion episodes of "Alias" and then having just finished Mission: Impossible 3, which we all wrote together, there's a shorthand we have with each other. And I think JJ felt appropriately that Trek, if we were going to take the approach, needed a new set of eyes and a new perspective directorially, that it needed to be a little bit more rock 'n roll than previously figured and just bigger. We knew that at all costs, we needed to get him to do it. It was a long and slow process but ultimately, I think when the script was finished, he settled down quickly and we were thrilled.
Was there ever concern that the bigger aspect of this new Star Trek would be rejected by fans?
Kurtzman: Do you mean bigger or more action?
Both I guess. As I said, we know that this new version has become something that people have embraced, but was there ever concern when you guys were writing it, when nothing had been revealed yet, that this reboot was going to be rejected, whether it was because of the action, whether it was because of the bigger aspect, whether it was because the direction Abrams wanted to take it?
Orci: Sure. We certainly don't finish the script and go "Wow, that ought to take this world by storm. Let's go home." Anytime you finish something you hope it's received well but you have to follow your instincts. We felt pretty confident about it actually and obviously, when JJ agreed to direct it, we thought okay, that must mean something because he came around. So in a way, he was kind of our first test case in terms of whether or not we were heading down the right path. His stamp of approval, I think, made us infinitely more confident that we'd settled on the right idea.
Kurtzman: The other thing, we all speak a common language and one of the languages is the language of set pieces. "Alias" had two to three per episode and so we spent so much time analyzing set pieces and how they work and why they work and almost taking a three act structure approach to each set piece. Obviously, there were a lot of set pieces is Mission: Impossible 3, but a lot of the movies that we loved as kids were influenced by the same kind of approach. And so it felt like ironically, when we did "Alias", the set pieces and the action scenes were always what we wrote last. In a way, while we knew some of the things we wanted to do in Trek, we did not start from a place of set pieces.
The fact that the set pieces happen to reflect accurately the kind of emotional storytelling in Trek, was great for us, and so organic to the story as opposed to "Let's just have a big action sequence here because something like this has never been done in Star Trek before." It really just had to do with, did it feel right and did it feel honest and did it feel like it was consistent with what was going on story-wise. The fact is that, if an action sequence does not somehow further character development in a big way, then it shouldn't be there, period. We were more concerned with the non-fans.
Orci: We're fans enough to know we had enough of what Star Trek is about that we thought fans would like this Trek. We were much more concerned with is it going to be relevant to a general audience. And we know that was JJ's concern as well.
http://trekweb.com/articles/2009/01/...ejection.shtml
In relation to Star Trek, whose idea was it for the story to take place as a prequel?
Orci: We came to that independently. Certainly that was Alex and my instinct. The first time we ever heard what Paramount wanted it was the same. I'm not sure if they got it from us or we all arrived at that conclusion simultaneously.
Kurtzman: The other thing was that in looking at Trek in its glorious history, it just shocked us that the story of how the bridge crew came together was never told. It was referenced in bits and pieces but it was never told and it's only kind of the most epic big bang story that you could possibly tell in Star Trek. So it felt to us like if we were going to bring something new to the table, that that was the place to start. It just always started with Kirk and Spock for us. It was always about Kirk and Spock.
Orci: And even though I loved "The Next Generation," one of the reasons we felt that Star Trek possibly had passed us by is we never imagined that anyone would want to go back and take on the original Star Trek again. We thought no one would ever go for that and we were not interested in doing sort of the next- next- next- next- next generation. The idea of doing a new crew had already become an old idea and the new idea really was going back to the original crew.
I'm just fascinated how it all happened because Paramount could've made Star Trek 11 with another crew, but somewhere along the process someone said "let's reboot it," to use that term, and this is what we have now. Obviously there is a lot of buzz and interest and obviously it was the right direction to go.
Orci: That would be the idea we pitched and we never heard any resistance.
It's good to hear that's the direction they wanted to go, too.
Orci: Apparently. Or they have good poker faces, we're not sure which.
How has it been working with J.J. Abrams? Is he the best guy to work with in terms of making sure the script gets translated to the screen the way you guys wrote it? How much actual interaction did you have with him?
Orci: Absolutely. We were so lucky to get him to direct this movie. I'm sure you've been doing your own research about him and know that he only thought he was going to produce it. But it was always our secret goal, me, Alex and Damon Lindelof, to really persuade him to do this and persuade someone of his talent and of his caliber to give Star Trek the attention it deserves from a director like him. So we definitely tried to keep him involved but also tried to surprise him a little bit so that he'd have a reaction to it as well. We pitched him the story and as we'd go through writing it, we'd check in every 30 pages, we'd come in and tell him what we're going to write next and let him get kind of excited about it and just kind of kept him in the process throughout, hoping that he would fall in love with what we were all doing. God bless it, it worked.
Kurtzman: I think as a writer all you can hope for is that you will end up working with a director who will translate with the highest possible fidelity whatever you've written on the page to the screen. And having done 20 trillion episodes of "Alias" and then having just finished Mission: Impossible 3, which we all wrote together, there's a shorthand we have with each other. And I think JJ felt appropriately that Trek, if we were going to take the approach, needed a new set of eyes and a new perspective directorially, that it needed to be a little bit more rock 'n roll than previously figured and just bigger. We knew that at all costs, we needed to get him to do it. It was a long and slow process but ultimately, I think when the script was finished, he settled down quickly and we were thrilled.
Was there ever concern that the bigger aspect of this new Star Trek would be rejected by fans?
Kurtzman: Do you mean bigger or more action?
Both I guess. As I said, we know that this new version has become something that people have embraced, but was there ever concern when you guys were writing it, when nothing had been revealed yet, that this reboot was going to be rejected, whether it was because of the action, whether it was because of the bigger aspect, whether it was because the direction Abrams wanted to take it?
Orci: Sure. We certainly don't finish the script and go "Wow, that ought to take this world by storm. Let's go home." Anytime you finish something you hope it's received well but you have to follow your instincts. We felt pretty confident about it actually and obviously, when JJ agreed to direct it, we thought okay, that must mean something because he came around. So in a way, he was kind of our first test case in terms of whether or not we were heading down the right path. His stamp of approval, I think, made us infinitely more confident that we'd settled on the right idea.
Kurtzman: The other thing, we all speak a common language and one of the languages is the language of set pieces. "Alias" had two to three per episode and so we spent so much time analyzing set pieces and how they work and why they work and almost taking a three act structure approach to each set piece. Obviously, there were a lot of set pieces is Mission: Impossible 3, but a lot of the movies that we loved as kids were influenced by the same kind of approach. And so it felt like ironically, when we did "Alias", the set pieces and the action scenes were always what we wrote last. In a way, while we knew some of the things we wanted to do in Trek, we did not start from a place of set pieces.
The fact that the set pieces happen to reflect accurately the kind of emotional storytelling in Trek, was great for us, and so organic to the story as opposed to "Let's just have a big action sequence here because something like this has never been done in Star Trek before." It really just had to do with, did it feel right and did it feel honest and did it feel like it was consistent with what was going on story-wise. The fact is that, if an action sequence does not somehow further character development in a big way, then it shouldn't be there, period. We were more concerned with the non-fans.
Orci: We're fans enough to know we had enough of what Star Trek is about that we thought fans would like this Trek. We were much more concerned with is it going to be relevant to a general audience. And we know that was JJ's concern as well.
http://trekweb.com/articles/2009/01/...ejection.shtml
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