First Star Trek Teaser Asks More Questions Than It Answers

Well, J.J. Abrams is certainly swinging for the fences.  Either that, or he's pulling an INCREDIBLE bait and switch.

Possibly both.

Above is today's "Announcement Teaser" for Star Trek Into Darkness, which is really just "announcing" that there will be a longer teaser in theaters next weekend, not to mention the nine minute preview in front of IMAX screenings of The Hobbit.  This is essentially the same logic behind splitting up the last Twilight/Harry Potter/Hunger Games books into two separate movies each, which really just boils down to, "Why do something once, when we can do it twice and get twice the money/attention!"

I'll just say it: that's some fine looking footage.  Lots of action, a glimpse at some huge moments, (is that the Enterprise rising up out of the ocean?  THAT'S certainly a new trick.) and an overall sense that Abrams is really going for broke.  With that in mind, I have a saying when it comes to movie trailers: teasers are easy.  All you need are a few finished effects shots, some dramatic closeups, an explosion or two and a menacing voiceover.  As you'll recall, the teaser for X-Men 3 looked incredible.  As did all the Transformer teasers.  And Prometheus.

We all know how they turned out.

And when it comes to the maddeningly secret identity of Benedict Cumberbatch's villain, it certainly feels like Abrams has gone out of his way to make us all think it's Khan.  The voiceover line, "For I have returned...to have my vengeance" is fairly on the nose.  And then there's this Japanese version of the teaser, with just a tad more footage stuck onto the end...but man is that one image a doozy:



Every Star Trek fan knows exactly what those two hands on the glass means, and it's SUCH a distinct and iconic moment in Trek history that it has most people convinced that it must be a misdirect.  Surely Abrams doesn't have the balls to try and recreate that scene...right?  While J.J. certainly loves to keep us all guessing, I also wouldn't put it past him to really shoot the moon and just go for it...meaning it's actually a misdirect of a misdirect...

...my head hurts.

I expect we'll get more answers with the cavalcade of footage being released next weekend.  Honestly, I'd love it if we were ALL off base and Cumberbatch turned out to be another Trek character that came completely out of left field...but I doubt it.

Star Trek Sequel Villain (Maybe) Revealed (Probably Not)

One thing is certain, right now J.J. Abrams is either tremendously pissed off, or cackling with maniacal glee.

Karl Urban, overseas promoting his upcoming Judge Dredd remake, let slip the following nugget to SFX magazine when asked about working with Benedict Cumberbatch.

“He’s awesome, he’s a great addition, and I think his Gary Mitchell is going to be exemplary.”

No one seems to know what to make of that sentence, least of all me.

Firstly, you've got to consider the infamous Abrams Mystery Machine.  Everything is a close hold with his people and any actor who's ever worked with him is intimately aware of that fact.  Hell, when they shot the first Star Trek, they wouldn't even let the extras walk off the stage without wearing a black cloak because they didn't want outsiders to see what the uniforms look like, despite the fact that EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT THE UNIFORMS LOOK LIKE.  (It'd be one thing if they made some dramatic change to the uniforms, but they didn't.  They looked virtually identical to the TV show.)  So, in that light, it seems unlikely that Karl Urban would, intentionally or not, wander so far off the reservation as to casually announce the single most sought-after piece of information about the film, especially not on his second tour of duty aboard the Enterprise.

The alternative explanation is that Karl Urban is essentially screwing with us.  After all, a mere two weeks prior screenwriter Bob Orci tweeted a list of characters that would not be appearing in the new film, including Gary Mitchell.  Not only that, but IDW has been printing a line of comics that are considered to be "in canon" with the new film, and they've already used Gary Mitchell in their latest issue, with Abrams blessing.  (A quick glance at the cover reveals that Sherlock is nowhere to be seen.)  It's plausible that Abrams is looking to drum up a bit of buzz heading into Comic Con; frankly, after Simon Pegg came out and said that Cumberbatch definitely wasn't playing Khan, it felt largely like the internet gave up on guessing and decided to just sit on its collective hands until Paramount releases a trailer.

But here's the biggest problem with that theory: Gary Mitchell could actually make for a great villain to revisit because he's got great potential as a character (Mitchell was an old Academy friend of Kirk's who gained god-like powers after an encounter with the Galactic Barrier) and, unlike Ricardo Montalban's Khan, the audience wouldn't be forced to draw nostalgic comparisons to the character's original incarnation.  Essentially, Cumberbatch could really do his own thing, without having to worry about how the role was played 30 years prior.  However, that same reasoning is exactly why Mitchell makes for a bad red herring: he's not the kind of character that inspires excitement.  Hell, I wouldn't even blame casual Trek fans for having to look him up, as he appeared only in the show's (second) pilot before many of the show's signature elements had really come together.  On top of all that, Urban feels like an odd choice to play the patsy.

So I guess I don't really have a good answer here.  Was Urban speaking the truth out of turn, or is he just the latest player in Abrams' marketing shell game?

Flip a coin.