J.J. Abrams Didn’t Like Star Trek and Thinks Space Movies Are Cool

The director of the 2009 Star Trek reboot and as-of-yet unnamed sequel recently appeared on the Nerdist Podcast and spoke on the iconic franchise.

A couple intersting things came out of the conversation including Abrams admitting he was never much of a Trekkie, though he was a fan of the Twlight Zone that had the same writers.

I was never really a fan. I never really got it. Most of my friends who loved it were, without question, smarter than I was. I couldn’t get it. It felt stilted. It is ironic because a lot tone and techniques and some of the writers were from the Twilight Zone. When you watch it there is that same kind of melodramatic vibe. You think that someone who loved the Twilight Zone as much as I did would find a kinship to [Star Trek], but I couldn’t do it. I enjoyed the movies and the early films, but I never really looked forward to them. So when I was mixing Mission: Impossible: III–I was asked if I was interested in producing a Star Trek movie. When I said yes – I had never thought of it – but what occurred to me was that there was a version of it that I could see getting interested in. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but I knew that if Star Trek were done in a certain way – with an approach that let me in more. I was being given the opportunity to attempt what I wished had existed as a kid trying to get into it, which is an emotional way in. It wasn’t about the Enterprise or Starfleet or the Prime Directive or any of that stuff, but was completely emotional. If that had existed, I would have probably found a way in. Maybe I had seen the wrong episodes, maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind as a kid. I have since watched them and actually have come to really appreciate the show.

So why then did the Abrams agree to helm Star Trek? Because space movies are cool!

The reason I wanted to direct [Star Trek], was because I thought “when in the world ever am I going to get a chance to do a space movie–that’s cool.” And I loved the script that Alex [Kurtzman] and Bob [Orci] wrote. I thought “there is a version of this movie that is surprising intimate and emotional and about these two men who are displaced and kind of orphans in a way and they find a family.” And I thought that is kind of a cool story. It happens to be called “Star Trek” and it happens to be Kirk and Spock, but it’s cool. The whole experience was kind of bizarre – working on something that I never thought in a million years I would be working on and doing it with people I would love to work with in any capacity. Getting to things that as a kid filmmaker cliché you want to do – spaceships and planets exploding. Stuff you could only dream of doing. It became a dream project.

The Star Trek sequel is due in theaters May 17th, 2013 in 3D.

Thanks to TrekMovie for the info.