It seems like Star Trek fans aren't the only ones disappointed about the Star Trek Into Darkness movie. Director J.J. Abrams recently admitted that he too wasn't happy about some of the choices he made while working on the film.
In an interview with Buzzfeed, Abrams talks about Into Darkness and how he felt that he was the one responsible for bungling it. However, it wasn't too much of a mess, because the film did respectably in movie theaters, in spite of its many problems.
One of the largest problems fans found with the film was the way Abrams decided to reveal Khan. Although fans guessed early on that Benedict Cumberbatch would take on the iconic role, Abrams and his team refused to admit that this was the character the actor would portray, instead denying everything suggesting that such was the case.
Of course, Cumberbatch was Khan, and the consistent lying to fans about that left a bad taste in the mouth of many. Screenwriter Damon Lindelof eventually admitted that the deception "was a mistake," but Abrams still partially defends the decision.
"At the end of the day, while I agree with Damon Lindelof that withholding the Khan thing ended up seeming like we were lying to people, I was trying to preserve the fun for the audience, and not just tell them something that the characters don't learn for 45 minutes into the movie, so the audience wouldn't be so ahead of it," said Abrams.
However, that wasn't the only issue fans had with Into Darkness. There was also the lack of a tight overall plot. Usually, most writers have one big question they want to ask when writing a story. However, Abrams admitted that he skipped this step with Into Darkness, and that the film suffered because of it.
"Any movie, any story has a fundamental conversation happening during it," said Abrams. "There's a fundamental argument; there's a central question. And I didn't have it."
Although there were multiple re-shoots done on the film, at the end of the day, it just didn't work for many fans and critics. Abrams, however, laid blame on himself, rather than on the movie's writing team.
"I felt like, in a weird way, it was a little bit of a collection of scenes that were written by my friends — brilliantly talented writers — who I somehow misled in trying to do certain things," he said. "And yet, I found myself frustrated by my choices, and unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story."
Fortunately for Abrams, it seems he'll have better luck with his latest film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which arrives in theaters tomorrow.
