Justin Lin Talks Star Trek Beyond Plot, Idris Elba, and How the Movie Will Address Into Darkness

In an interview with Birth Movies Death, Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin gave some more clues as to what fans can expect from his first foray into the Star Trek universe, and revealed that the movie will be set several years after the end of Into Darkness:

We pick the crew up about two and a half years after Into Darkness. There were many iterations where we did go and explore [Carol Marcus], but we figured it was two and a half years… It was something we talked about and worked on, but in the presentation of this film it didn’t quite fit in. It’s there with the transporter and everything [laughs].

He also addressed how his vision will differ from J.J. Abrams’ while still respecting the previous films:

[Co-writers] Simon [Pegg] and Doug [Jung] and I have spent some time on that. [laughs] Star Trek has been around for 50 years, and every filmmaker that comes on has a different point of view, and it’s a universe that can support many points of view and journeys and adventures. I embraced what JJ has brought — without him this whole group wouldn’t be together — so I’m definitely very appreciative of him. At the same time, do we address it? No, but we don’t discount it. We don’t sit there and say it doesn’t exist, it’s part of this universe now.

In a separate interview with /Film, Lin also spoke up about working with Idris Elba, and what fans can expect from Elba’s character, Krall:

Krall appears briefly in the Star Trek Beyond trailer, and delivers the line “This is where it begins, Captain. This is where the frontier pushes back!”

According to Lin,

[Krall is] a character that has a very distinct philosophy that’s very different. I think it’s great to be a fan and I watch utopian San Francisco and go, oh wow, when you’re building this movie you think, they don’t have money, how do they live? How do they compete? And those are things that his character, in a way, has a very distinct and valid point of view.

Although I really wish that Elba was recognizable in his role (Lin says the actor spent four hours in makeup every time he needed to transform into Krall, and that the character is a “new species that we discover in this chapter”), I’m interested to see more of Lin has in store for us.

Thoughts, gang?

(via Polygon)

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