Star Trek Video Chat: Part Two

J.J. Abrams: One thing that the thing that appealed to me because I was not a
Star Trek fan at the beginning of this process. What appeals to me
you know really was characters and that was the thing that that for
me you know just stopped me and I realized that all of the visual
effects were fun and the spectacle was awesome but the characters
to me were the things that I had the most excitement about.

There are these two characters, Kirk and Spock who are essentially
broken. That Kirk is as aimless, talk about lost, I mean he’s lost.
He has no idea where he is. No idea what his purpose is, he’s got
sort of you know full potential but no goal. And then you’ve got
Spock who is this half-human, half-Vulcan in character, he’s in
conflict because he’s—I didn’t even realized when I started this
that Vulcans have to choose logic. It’s not just sort of this
biological imperative but this is like a decision that they make.

Well, to be half-human and to basically make a choice that gives
up that part of you, you know who you are, how do you reconcile
that and that was really interesting to me. So those two characters
you know have those issues. Then there’s Nero who has lost
everything. He’s lost the woman he loves certainly but he’s also
his home, his planet.

Eric Bana: I guess I was always drawing on a script and essentially treating
that as that kind of Bible you know and a lot of the ideas I had for
Nero emanated from you know the cracks of the story and
conversation that I had with J.J and you know his desire to make
him — you know we all knew that he was later the Romulans but
we wanted him to be at some way understandable to the audience
so that when we say hi — his villain, he’s now the villain that we
understand why he’s the villain. And how much he relates to that
Romans that were referred to I guess that’s how the equation to
answer. But you know essentially to me, the most important thing
was that we understood him and that we understood where he was
coming from.

Bruce Greenwood: I think he did seems like the crew guy but without the confines of
sort of the rigid rules that exist within Starfleet and that’s one of
the things that appeals to Kirk about it. And he says as much right.
Even the characters that have appeared for a moment in Star Trek
occupy a very distinct place in the lore right so to say, he was only
on two, three episodes.

He’s like saying he’s to diminish something that can’t be
diminished right. That you can’t go there. So I loved it what
Jeffrey Hunter down of course then I looked at all the television
series, the whole thing. And I realized that the dilemmas for
Hunter Spike and Green with Spike are different which was a gift
right. But otherwise, I mean you’ve got a —I mean you’re this
ground has been—that trail has been broken.

J.J Abrams: You’ve got these three characters that I feel like, you know two of
them you know are going to come together because we’re all born
just knowing Kirk and Spock work together. But in this film,
they’re really at odds when they first meet. And then you’ve got
Nero who essentially has become someone who’s going to avenge
the lost of his planet. And he wasn’t born to be a villain that wasn’t
his destiny, his goal. And all of a sudden this thing happens that—
you know so I feel like you’ve got to see the evolution of these two
characters Kirk and Spock, at how fuse this it’s been a crazy
venture they come together and the evolution of this character who
again, starts off as an average worker. He’s a blue collar worker
and he gets you know sort of sucked into literally, something to
change his destiny and ends ups you know being a story of how
they all kind of going up against each other.