Hollywood producers have all kinds of clever strategies for making sequels to hit movies. Sometimes they cash in with a fast and almost identical follow-up – think The Hangover 2.
Often it’s an adventure in a new location with a twist, as in the father-son teaming in A Good Day to Die Hard. Then there are the instalments that build into a saga, like Star Wars, Harry Potter and The Hobbit.
But to follow up the 2009 hit Star Trek, the Bad Robot Productions team led by director JJ Abrams had a unique strategy. They wanted to make a Star Trek movie for people who don’t like Star Trek.
Producer Bryan Burk, who is touring the world showing more than 30 minutes of footage from Star Trek Into Darkness before it opens next month, says he never understood the early movies in the cult series.
“There are those who like Star Trek and those who think people who like Star Trek are insane,” he says. “I was one of them… So it was important for us to make a film that allowed people who had never seen Star Trek to jump in.”
After numerous TV variations and 10 movies since Gene Roddenberry launched the Starship Enterprise into the outer galaxies in 1966, Abrams rebooted the franchise beyond a dedicated cult audience for the first time when Star Trek grossed a handsome US$385 million around the world four years ago.
Burk, who will produce the next Star Wars movie with Abrams directing, says the next challenge was taking the 12th Star Trek to an even wider audience in the way that the cult comic book character Iron Man has gone mainstream. As well as “more drama, more action, more emotion, more impossible obstacles”, they added to the spectacle by shooting scenes in large-screen IMAX format and 3D.
The footage screened in Sydney’s IMAX cinema this week had a pulsating opening with Spock (Zachary Quinto) trapped inside a volcano about to erupt on an alien planet, kicking off an adventure that has Kirk (Chris Pine) losing command of the Enterprise as a new villain (Benedict Cumberbatch) emerges on Earth.
“The last film was more about bringing back 40 years of Star Trek fans – some had been there all along, some who had come and gone – and saying “OK everybody, we’re all going to get on the same boat and hopefully you guys will be speaking to us,'” Burk says.
“This film I feel like, because it was embraced by those Star Trek fans, allows us to keep making it for them obviously but now open it up for everybody else. We’ve now cleared the runway. This one is more accessible than the last one.
“It’s one of those films that people who’ve avidly avoided Star Trek will be pleasantly surprised that this isn’t what they were expecting.”
Burk says showing scenes from Into Darkness around the world, he keeps hearing that people don’t like science fiction.
“But I keep saying ‘OK, what science fiction don’t they like’ And you realise you can’t really put your finger on anything because everything is science fiction. Transformers is science fiction – they’re big robots from outer space that come to Earth. The Avengers is science fiction – it’s all these superheroes flying around and doing things.
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“You realise that when people think science fiction they think of things that are too dense to understand and are dismissed. Or too wordy or too talky. That’s why I had the perception that the ultimate version of science fiction is Star Trek.
“Of all these projects that I’m mentioning, the least science fiction is Star Trek. Star Trek isn’t science fiction at all. It’s science fact. It’s our future.”
Burk holds up his mobile phone as evidence.
“I remember seeing a documentary where the guy who invented the cell phone said he was inspired by Star Trek. If you need more proof that Star Trek is 100 per cent real, Richard Branson and Elon Musk with Virgin Galactic and SpaceX respectively, are about to take normal people – normal albeit yet ridiculously wealthy people – into outer space.
“So when 15-year-old boys and girls watch this movie, the question is not if they will go into outer space, the question is when. A hundred per cent they’re going make those decisions in the same way that you and I decide we’re going to go on vacation and hop on a plane, they’re going to go ‘maybe I’ll go to the space hotel this year.'”
Even so, instantly beaming humans across the universe hasn’t quite arrived.
“That’s true,” says Burk, “but I promise you there are people working on that right now. That’s the thing that’s amazing about Star Trek: it doesn’t take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Kirk is from Earth, he’s from a farm, and Spock, I discovered working on it, is half-human. They’re us.
“The hobbit and dragons and superheroes, that’s science fiction. Star Trek isn’t science fiction at all. It just happens to be a window into our world.”
With Abrams, Burke has also produced the TV series Alias, Lost, Fringe and Person of Interest, as well as the movies Cloverfield, Super 8 and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. Since taking on Star Wars: Episode VII, it seems they have moved into the business of rebooting sci-fi franchises.
“I don’t feel like anyone is thinking that Star Wars needs to be rebooted,” Burk says. “There were the first three films and then there were the prequel films and they continue, so it feels like it’s a bigger part of moving forward.”
Burk would not comment on reports that Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher would return for the next Star Wars as Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia respectively.
“When I read these things in the newspaper, it’s often the first time I’ve heard about it,” he says. “We’re so early in the process and our focus has been primarily on just finishing Star Trek, particularly since it’s been a four-year endeavour.”
– Sydney Morning Herald
