We're some four months into production on J.J. Abrams' Star Trek 2 (not the official title) - and outside of a few set pics revealing a fight between the film's mystery villain (Benedict Cumberbatch), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana), the filmmaker has proven as successful at keeping his sci-fi project under wraps as he did throughout pre-production. Christopher Nolan is probably feeling pretty envious right now, after all the images that leaked while he was shooting The Dark Knight Rises last year.

But we digress.

Today, we have another (vague) image taken from the Star Trek sequel's set, which comes with the following description from On Location News, via MTV (sidenote: apparently, OLN has no idea how to spell Spock).

Zachary Quinto as [Spock] filming an action scene for the Untitled Star Trek 2 Sequel. After first rehearsing the scene with a [Spock] Stunt Double Actor Zachary Quinto was then rigged to a wire in front of a large green screen and lifted to a height of 10 stories high then dropped at a high rate of speed as if he was falling. In the scene [Spock] is wearing a "Volcano Suit" and carrying an unknown piece of equipment with the Starfleet Emblem. A Volcano is somehow involved in this scene. The crew had a real fire burning off camera to catch the fire reflections on [Spock's] "Volcano Suit".

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Admittedly, there's not a whole lot to take away from this image, other than:

  1. The Star Trek sequel should offer at least one memorable CGI set piece - something which Abrams has already demonstrated he excels at producing as a director (see: the freight train crash in Super 8, the drill platform battle in Star Trek, etc.).
  2. At some point in Star Trek 2, the crew of the Enterprise find themselves on a semi-volcanic world - or, perhaps, the "jungle planet" that Abrams reportedly considered modeling after the undeveloped portions of Hawaii (and its volcanoes?).

Whatever the exact circumstances are that require Spock to don his "Volcano Suit," they should look pretty impressive in complete digital form (and, possibly, shot in IMAX) - as opposed to the somewhat goofy production still of Zachary Quinto working against green screens on the Star Trek 2 set, wearing what kind of looks like fan-made space armor (in raw form, of course).

Star Trek 2 remains scheduled for theatrical release in the U.S. on May 17th, 2013.

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Source: MTV