After the outstanding success of his Star Trek reboot, director J.J. Abrams has found himself fielding questions about the film’s sequel on a near daily basis. Who will be the villain? Does Chris Pine have as hard a time with Tribbles as William Shatner? Etc, etc. Luckily, Abrams is one of Hollywood’s more nerd friendly directors, so you can always count on him giving you a decent answer.
Recently, MTV caught up with Abrams for an exclusive interview about Star Trek 2. In the interview, Abrams discusses some possibilities for the sequel and the relative leeway the screenwriters have in bringing old characters back to the big screen. Care to guess which name brought up the most excitement? You guessed it, KHANNNNN!!!!, a.k.a Khan Noonien Singh, the genetically engineered superhuman played by Ricardo Montelban in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.
“I think one of the byproducts of doing this movie was we were able to dispel the obvious and understandable concerns—how can ‘Star Trek’ possibly exist without those original cast members? Now that we are in a parallel existence with what fans of the original series love so much, we could introduce any number of characters, settings, references and situations that the original series introduced. Dealing with Khan would certainly be a challenge, but we had an equal challenge in finding our crew of the Enterprise.”
Abrams also clarified, however, that he didn’t necessarily want to simply remake old episodes or movies.
“While I don’t want to approach the second film as a remake of episodes we’ve seen in the past… nothing is off limits in terms of what we’re discussing,” he said. “When Bob Orci and the others who know ‘Trek’ so well, the fun of working with them is they know this universe so deeply they’re the ones who are always considering what it means to deal with the stuff in the past, so it’ll be exciting.”
You can check out the full interview by heading over to MTV.
Personally, I think Khan would be an amazing character to see brought back to the big screen, especially given the excellent casting of Kirk and Spock. On the other hand, it’s becoming rarer and rarer to find a good original story in Hollywood these days, so part of me would rather they start fresh with an interesting new villain for the new look crew.
What do you think? Would you like to see Khan in a Star Trek sequel, or should the writers try something new?
Source: MTV
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