Last week Star Trek director JJ Abrams conducted a Q&A at a press event promoting the upcoming Star Trek DVD and Blu-ray releases. TrekMovie posted a partial transcript, which covered what JJ said, not related to the home video releases. Video from the event is now available online, which includes poritions related to the DVD and Blu-ray releases (which was previously under media embargo). Watch it below
JJ Abrams talking Star Trek and more
Video from the event is courtesy of Latino Review, which made an iPhone recording. Here is the full video (in 6 part playlist). NOTE: You will have to raise your volume.
Highlights (not covered in previous article):
- [part 1] Home video special feature crews filmed all aspects of film starting with pre-production, including many unsung heroes of the project
- [part 1] Victor Garber (Alias) played one of the Klingons from the cut sequences
- [part 2] Deleted scene will explain coincidences like Spock Prime and Kirk meeting in cave on Delta Vega, but Abrams think it didn’t need to be explained because it was fate of a "family that nothing will keep apart"
- [part 3] JJ’s notion of the ‘mystery box‘ was applied to opening of Star Trek with the mystery of who the Romulans were and why did they attack the Federation ship
- [part 4] The home video special features Abrams is most proud of are the ones that show the "personality of the actors" and the behind the scenes work from Roger Guyett & ILM, Scott Chambliss and other aspects of the production
PREORDERS
Star Trek home video releases are coming November 17th. You can pre-order your copy or copies below.
Title | Blu-ray | DVD |
Star Trek 2009 | 3-disk set
3-disk set w/ replica 3-disk set w/ badges |
2-disk
1-disk |
Victor Garber as a Klingon?! Kewl!
First!
I really wish some of the deleted scenes were included, they could’ve just added something really short.
It sounds like JJ has omitted a lot of great scenes that would have made for a much better film. Why did he get rid of so much exposition? The film could have been so much better had these scenes been included for the sake of a few extra minutes. Nero, for example, is a pretty weak villain; these scenes could have built upon his back-story and made us understand and fear him more. And some of those huge coincidences could have been given some believability.
I don’t think anything could have been done for that engineering set, though!
Here’s hoping for a director’s edition; but I’m not holding my breath: the expense.
There’s nothing to understand about Nero, and no amount of scenes with him killing Klingons would have given us any insight into his character: he’s just an angry, angry man.
until we own the disks and watch the scenes, can we really say how much the movie would have worked or not worked if they ere added? granted it sounds cool as hell but as i was bfore the movie was released, i plan on watching the scenes before i call out the director for his creative choice. …for now, i’ll just have to dream about klingon cruisers surrounding the narada. :)
3 – I don’t think those deleted scenes would have actually made for a better film.
Too much exposition and a film becomes too slow and too long.
He wanted things to move fast, and none of the exposition was essential for the movie from what I’ve said.
– What does Kirk’s brother add to the story the story?
– How does the Klingon interrogation scene add anything important?
– Why do we need to see Spock’s birth?
Many of the extra scenes I’ve read about merely elaborate on what is already established in the movie, and would have slowed the movie down.
If they had Spock’s birth where it was originally intended, for instance, before Kirk’s, the Kelvin sequence with Kirk’s birth would not have worked as well, and Spock being borne is an interesting footnote, but would not draw us into the movie. We would have had 2 beginnings.
6, I definitely agree with you on the “2 beginnings” concept and I would not have liked to see the movie open any other way.
Judging from the still shot visuals I’ve seen of the Spock birth segment, it looked very interesting though. It’s unfortunate that not everything can be included, but that’s what deleted scenes are for, right?
The bridge and engineering are total disasters and no one associated with the movie has the moral courage to say so.
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I’ll be interested to see the scene explaining the coincidental meeting of Kirk and Spock on Delta Vega.
I loved the movie, but that one plot hole bugged the crap out of me. “Looky here! We’ll just drop Kirk out of the sky on some random planet, where he’ll just happen to land a short hike from Spock’s cave!”
It’s fate that they met? Cool. I’m good with fate. But at some point, some line should have been uttered by someone explaining that. Throw us a bone, JJ.
#10
I believe Bob Orci already said, some people are destined to meet and they wanted that element in there when Pine met Nimoy. Something along the lines of coincidence and fate. The same holds true for meeting Bones in the shuttlecraft to the academy and how Pine ends up being captain anyways or Pike in the wheelchair.
JJ Rocks, he is the man. Star Trek is in safe hands.
JJ is intelligent, passionate, and understand the fans and non fans.
Here is hoping he goes on to produce a Star Trek TV series also.
Would be cool to see Brent Spiner as Noonian Singh/Data in the next one as a special appearance from a TNG cast member.
“John from Cincinnati – October 13, 2009
The bridge and engineering are total disasters and no one associated with the movie has the moral courage to say so.”
Scott Chambliss pretty much admits so at the Art Directors panel held a few weeks ago. They had to do what they did with Engineering because they didn’t have the money for the sets as they originally intended.
I’m sure, had they known that they were going to cut out the Rura Penthe scenes and all the Klingon stuff they could have used that money to possibly build the engineering sets as originally intended, but you just don’t always have that kind of foresight at the beginning of a project of the magnitude that Trek 2009 was.
We can merely hope that they can use some of the money for the sequel to build a proper engineering set for the Enterprise for next time, among other things.
#6. OneBuckFilms: “Why do we need to see Spock’s birth?”
I don’t know. Why do we need to see Kirk crash that car?
Or better yet, why did we need Uhura?
#11. somethoughts: JJ Rocks, he is the man. Star Trek is in safe hands.
But what about the women?
As for set designs, The bridge is passable, it works and has colors and shadows, a minor flaw in the Enterprise-D bridge. But I like it better than the 2009 one. Over all the TOS one is the best, but that could be because it was the first and oldest.
Engineering was very metallic and plumbers would love it. But if I had a 3 year old with a box of lego’s, they could have done just as good a job.
The halls looked clean and shinny, almost like a semi conductor clean room, but the halls all except the NX series looked clean and kind of plain. And sometimes with like info/bulleten board wall decorations. I think Enterprise-D had the best engine room, but I never really studied the Enterprise-E engine room.
The Enterprise-E medical area seemed the best, but by scrpit writing it had plenty of gadgets behind the walls. And McCoys med. center since it had so much revolutionary tech not much was added because you were still amazed by the wireless tech it has.
Also today I finally kidnapped the Entertainment section of Sundays Denver Post from my brothers son, He’s a Star Wars junkie (still wondering if it’s LSD because to him their is no Sci-Fi before Star Wars).
In the section of the paper there is an article on Star Wars -vs- Star Trek, you can tell where the authors kids made him go. This is because all his arguments were from a 10-15 year olds angles. Any adult Star Trek fan could bet his points with both arms and legs disabled.
But that view may be a little biased due to me being a Trekkie, and teaching my self Computer programing because of the Star Trek teletype game I played in 1975. But I was the co-author of a Luke & Leia text adventure aboard the Death Star that had 10,000+ lines of code and with data was 175Meg big. We mapped almost the full death star, the falcon, tantuine, the Star Destroyers. Even had a part where Luke could make out with Leia. And this was in 1977 and you were limited to text or text pictographs that home typewriters could do. The part with Leia we had to do many things with words because the dirtiest word we could use was Damn and body parts had to have scientific labels. And we could not even remove her tunic (the bed sheet she wrapped around her)
13 …
– Uhura is a key character from TOS, and should be there for the movie to feel like Star Trek.
– Kirk driving off the cliffe establishes his perchant for getting into trouble, leaping without looking, and shows his disregard for following the rules. It says a lot about his character.
– Seeing Spock’s birth establishes particulars, but it says little about who he is and what he’s about.
– Kirk’s birth is a central plot point in the movie, and a key event upon which much of the movie builds.
There is a BIG difference between establishing/affirming something about a character, or plot point, and simply covering an event for the sake of completeness.
– The missing scene with Klingons surrounding the wounded Narada.
I suspect this was excised so that the plot could be simplified visually without an unknown audience wondering who/what they were, when they should be wondering more who or what the Narada and it’s captain was, and being caught up emotionally in George Kirk’s death.
– Klingon Prison Planet situation with Nero busting out.
While this would establish what happened to Nero in the 25 years since we saw him previous, it would have revealed too much of him, and later scenes established what happened to the Narada and Nero, making that scene redundant. we have exposition as a way to build tension rather than exposition, action then tension in 2 different segments.
– Scenes with Kirk sending the text message to enable Kobayashi Maru.
This would be a nice detain to see a couple of those mechanics, but it’s more interesting to figure out Kirk was cheating as he was cheating simultaneously with the other characters in the scene. It helps draw you in, and the specifics are not as important as the fact and it’s repercussions.
These are some of the reasons I believe scenes were removed, beyond the time/pace restrictions.
I think I might embrace the movie a little more if they released a “fan’s edition” with more of that exposition. Being asked to suspend disbelief and chalk all those coincidences up to “fate” … or “a family that nothing will keep apart” except for when it suited them anyway to leave out Number One, Gary Mitchell, Dr. Boyce, Yeomen Colt, Smith or Rand, etc.