In a new interview with Film Journal International featured (in print) at this week’s CinemaCon theater owners convention in Las Vegas, STAR TREK BEYOND director Justin Lin shares some more insight into how he was hired for the project, as well as a look into some more new information on this July’s adventure.

Lin spoke about the efforts put forth by the previous team helming the film – the lead by then-director Bob Orci, who left the project early late 2014 – while detailing J.J. Abram’s request for him to take over the project:

I’ll be very clear: I don’t know what came before me. We basically had to start over, and that was one of the selling points for me… we had to start from scratch. A clean-up mission wouldn’t have excited me.

I got the call from J.J. and he kind of laid out the mission. For lack of a better term – and I think this is out in the open – it was a bit of a rescue mission.

I think something had gone wrong and they wanted to start over. After ‘The Fast and the Furious,’ I was kind of done coming in on the third film in a franchise, but if there was going to be a franchise where I’d do it, it would be this one.

It was J.J.’s call that jarred something in my head, and I realized that ‘Star Trek’ is a big part of me… it was something I was invited to do and I was happy to accept.

Lin tackles one of the most controversial things seen in December’s teaser trailer – the destruction of the Enterprise – head-on in the interview.

I didn’t come in saying ‘Let’s destroy.’ It was more like, ‘Let’s deconstruct’… [Simon Pegg, Doug Jung, and I] felt that with this being the 50th anniversary of ‘Star Trek’, let’s deconstruct it and hopefully rebuild it in a way that reaffirms why we’ve loved it for half a century. That conversation went a lot of different places, and one of the most interesting places was the Enterprise itself.

I remember watching it as a kid and saying, ‘That’s a cool-looking spaceship, but it looks really lanky. Is it built for combat?’ It took me a while to realize that they’re not out there to fight. It’s an explorer’s ship, so of course it looks like that.

Growing up watching Star Trek, Lin got the chance to realize some dreams about managing these characters:

Bones is my favorite character, because I’ve always viewed him as the curmudgeonly uncle I never had. So it was fun to talk with Karl [Urban] about where McCoy is going and where he is right now. I almost feel like I’m making the biggest-budgeted fan film! We got to have Bones and Spock have the conversation I’ve always wanted them to have.

I didn’t realize how much the franchise was a part of me until we played with putting characters in these different situations.

Lastly, the director touched on the subject of Leonard Nimoy – a participant in the last two films – and how his death will affect BEYOND.

It’s something you’ll see in the film. It obviously affected everybody, because he’s been a big part of our lives. There’s an attempt to acknowledge that in some way.

You can read the full interview in our Star Trek Beyond > Magazines gallery, courtesy of @KarlUrbanInt on Twitter.

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UPDATE: Roberto Orci responded to Lin’s comments in a discussion thread at TrekMovie.com:

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