Star Trek 3 actor and co-writer Simon Pegg is back with more insight into the development of the upcoming sequel film, talking to Den of Geek about approaching the story from a new perspective.
[The responsibility is] terrifying. We learned a lot. It’s interesting actually, I had certain issues with “Into Darkness” as well. It’s interesting to be able to take those forward and be at the helm a little bit.
You’re always learning when you’re working with a series of movies because you go okay, what did people like there? What did people not like? What did we like? And that’s a crazy way to work because we’re shooting in summer come hell or high water.
So Doug Jung and I are just sort of hashing out the story and meanwhile people keep coming in and going, “So can we build that? Can we design that now? Can we make that costume? What are you wearing? How many people? How many planets?” You’re like, “I don’t know. Let us try and fucking think of the story.” But that’s how the process is working.
“Necessity is the mother of invention” is our mantra at the moment and it’s bringing out the best of us. It has to. We have to come up with the goods. It’s good because there’s not room to be kind of like, “Yeah we’ll take a break today; we’ll sort that out next week.” It has to happen and we have to write it and it cannot be bad. It has to be good and it has to meet a certain criteria which we set for ourselves.
On the original Bob Orci / JD Payne / Patrick McKay script, now discarded:
[Our script is] completely new. I haven’t read Bob (Orci)’s script and they didn’t want us to. So we went back to the drawing board. We had creative meetings with [director Justin Lin] and there were things he wanted in there.
I haven’t written like this before. I’ve never been a custodian of something, it’s usually mine what I’m writing. Whereas with this, you’re given a bunch of stuff — “Look we want this in it and this in it.” Or Justin will say — he’s got an amazing visual mind, Justin. He’s great at that kind of choreography.
So he’ll say, “What if this happens?” So Doug and I go, “Okay, right, let’s try and get that into it.”
On taking Trek 3 back to the franchise roots:
[This one is] more about spirit. It’s very easy these days, in the kind of post-modern era, to get bogged down in self referentiality or thinking, “Oh, let’s put Harry Mudd in.”
In a way I felt like if anything — and I really, really am very proud of “Into Darkness” — but I feel like the thing that for me was kind of jolting was that it kind of wanted to embrace itself a little too much, rather than take off and do what “Star Trek” did, which is to go off into the depths of the galaxy.
It was about referencing not only a previous film but also kind of hanging onto the coast of Earth a little bit. So for me it’s now about the spirit of adventure and exploration and also, in modern terms, just how would that be for people, to be away for that amount of time and that kind of stuff. We’re trying to evolve the story at the same time as not letting it go.
[“Star Trek” is] a beloved franchise and we’re very aware of that. And also it’s also fun. These days people kind of think, “Oh, things have got to be serious.” You’ve got to see a lot of soul searching and what if you saw this character being all dark?
“Star Trek” was very, very optimistic — it was all about forward motion and the human condition. I feel like that’s what it needs to be.
The next Trek film is slated for release in July 2016.