STAR TREK BEYOND's Jaylah is Named After Jennifer Lawrence, and Other Fun Facts From The Press Junket
Last week, I attended Paramount's Star Trek Beyond junket in Beverly Hills. I'll have a one on one interview with star and co-writer Simon Pegg coming up on the site later today, so keep your eyes peeled for that, but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of what went down at the press conference. Chris Pine, Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, John Cho, director Justin Lin, co-writer Doug Jung, producer J.J. Abrams, producer Lindsey Weber, and Pegg were all present, and over the course of two panels and about an hour and fifteen minutes, they answered questions from the assembled press. Here are some of the best moments:
On the approach of writing this movie:
Pegg: We wanted to try and create a hybrid of an episode of the original series with a spectacular cinematic event. These Star Trek movies have always been event films. With a TV series, you get time to spend with the characters, it’s a longer game. With a film, you kind of have to hit it, it has to be very self-contained, it has to be memorable. So that was the thing. It’s trying to make sure that everybody that’s been here for fifty years gets what they deserve in terms of a good Star Trek film. To the people who have never seen it before, they’re welcome too. This is an inclusive universe in every way, not just fictionally but factually.
About Leonard Nimoy, who died in February 2015, and whose death is a factor in this film:
Quinto: I think if Leonard was well enough to be a part of this film, I’m sure he would have been. I know we had early conversations with him about that possibility, which true to himself, he knew himself well enough to know that wouldn’t be possible at a certain point. And then I think it became important for all of us to figure out a way to honor his legacy, and I thought Simon and Doug did a beautiful job of incorporating him into the narrative of the film. We all carried him with us through this production, for sure, and it was definitely a different kind of feeling to make this movie without him, for me in particular, but I think he was very much a part of it in spirit and certainly in the film now and will be a part of anything we do moving forward for sure.
Pegg: We wanted to make it part of Zach’s Spock’s arc and not just a reference to Spock Prime or what we did eventually, which of course was to dedicate the film to him. But we wanted to have his passing be something which inspired our Spock to move on as well, so it became an integral part of the story, not just to nod in Leonard’s direction. That felt more right to us.
On destroying the Enterprise (again), which was one of the main beats Lin wanted incorporated into the story:
Pegg: I hated the idea at first. I was shouting [Lin] down: ‘You can’t do that! You can’t destroy the Enterprise!’ My problem was that if you think it’s something new, we’ve seen it before. It happened in Search For Spock, it happened in Generations. But Justin was very, very determined and as we spoke about it, I realized what he was doing, brilliantly, he was not only taking out a main character, but he was moving the physical connective tissue between the crew to see what happens when you take away the thing that physically bonds them together. If you take away that thing that necessitates their being a unit, do they dissipate, or do they come back together? That was the genius of that thing. You take it away very violently and dramatically, and you wait and see if they come back together to be this family, which is essentially what they are. And of course they do, and I backed down immediately and said, ‘You’re right.’
On Sulu's sexuality:
Cho: It’s kind of news now, but if you rewatch the movie in ten years, you won’t think anything of it. It’ll just go right by you. That’s the best thing about it. There’s no music cue, there’s no close-up.
Saldana: The one thing that’s taken a secondary position is that it wasn’t just that we revealed that he’s gay, we revealed that he’s a father. None of our characters have a family that we ever talk about. So I actually feel quite puzzled that in 2016, we’re having a bit of a fit over who he fathered a baby with.
Pegg: By the way, the whole thing with George [Takei]: people like to make things into a spat. George and I e-mail all the time, we’ve had big, long, lovely discussions about it, and we’re on great terms. We were never shouting at each other or anything like that, and it’s a great discussion to have, so I’m really happy with the way it’s been talked about and responded to and I’m still a huge fan of ‘GT.’
What Simon Pegg's character Tim from Spaced would think about Star Trek Beyond:
Pegg: For those of you who don’t know, I started out on a sitcom in the UK called Spaced and it was about a nerdy guy — [jokingly] I didn’t know what he was talking about, he was nothing like me at all — but there was a line in Spaced where Tim says, ‘Sure as x is x, sure as day follows night, sure as every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is shit.’ And I wrote that in 1998, I think, and here we are in 2016 and I’ve written an odd-numbered Star Trek movie. I’m happy to say that Tim was wrong. It’s an incredible thing to look back on the circularity of that, having grown up a fan of Star Trek and science fiction and now to be participating in it in such an active way. I tried to make the kind of Star Trek movie Tim Bisley would like, that’s what Doug and I did, and when I say Tim Bisley, I mean the kind of people who have been with Star Trek the whole time. Because Star Trek must have been doing something right because it’s been around for fifty years. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So we wanted to embody the original show, instill it with what made the original show great, but also frame it in a big movie way, which is a luxury they never had back in the day. That’s why the series turned into such a great thing. Necessity was the mother of invention with that show, and they had to make these wonderful little teleplays, they couldn’t rely on special effects. Now, we can do both. It felt like I was always thinking, ‘What would Tim Bisley think?’
On the film's updated costumes:
Urban: Sanja [Milkovic Hays] did an extraordinary job, our costume designer. Unlike the previous two films that we got to do with J.J., for whatever reason — I don’t know the reason — but the women in Starfleet uniforms in Star Trek Beyond have ranks on the uniforms which I think is a fantastic thing. A fan pointed that out to me. I was shocked that wasn’t the case [earlier]. One of the first things I did when I got to Vancouver was going to go and talk to Sanja about that, and she said, ‘Oh, don’t you worry, women will have ranks.’ It was a ‘60s throwback to the costumes, but also making them slightly new. I had massive envy for Chris Pine’s survival suit.
On how long the Trek franchise can last:
Pegg: The galaxy, let alone the universe, is a boundless place and there are so many adventures to be had. As long as we have this idea that, ‘You know what? We might not all kill ourselves and die in a big fire. We might actually become slightly more enlightened, slightly more tolerant beings and go out into space,’ that is a lovely idea and I think secretly, the vast majority of us want to achieve. Star Trek will live forever.
On Sofia Boutella, who plays the kick-ass Jaylah in the film:
Pegg: Sofia’s incredible because she’s a dancer, so she’s, physically, so adept. So she was very up for physicality of it. It’s funny, when Doug and Justin and I were in the writing room, we wanted to create this very independent female, very resourceful character on the Altamede surface, and we didn’t have a name for her. So we used to call her ‘Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone.’ That was a long name, so it was like, ‘Scotty lands there, and then suddenly Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone jumps out and fights these guys.’ And it started to get tiring, always saying ‘Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone,’ it’s a long name, so then we started calling her J-Law, and then she became Jaylah. So the character is basically named after Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone. There aren’t enough girls in Star Trek. Zoe has enough on her shoulders as you know, so we wanted to increase that. We all love Sofia, she’s a nutcase and a gold addition to this group. She’s awesome.
On Lin's unknown, unintentional shout-out to Star Wars in his Trek movie:
Lin: Since I work all the time, the only excuse I get [to hang out with his seven-year-old son Oqwe] is to bring him on set, and we shot a huge shot with him. On the Fast movies, he’s always the little kid that’s looking at cars and stuff. I was doing this one, and he really wanted to be an alien. I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ And he was so adamant. He knew exactly what he wanted. And [makeup designer] Joel Harlow came, we had meetings, he was talking about how he wanted to be green and have ears, and this and that. So we shot it, and later on I was talking to him, and he finally said he wanted to be Yoda. [laughs] So when you see the film, it’s a young Yoda.
On the toughest aspect of making the movie:
Lin: Going from idea to production in six months, that was the challenge. But having a group of people that really are trying to be respectful and build things the right way, I feel very fortunate to have the support. It was never easy, but filmmaking is not supposed to be easy. We were just in London, and I remember looking at Simon, and thinking the four of us were just in this room in SoHo and had nothing, and this is the end of January! We were going to be shooting in June, and we had a whole crew waiting. So to really have a group of people try to do it right, that’s very rare, but at the same time, I’m very thankful.
Star Trek Beyond hits theaters this Friday.