The Star Trek Beyond director says he wanted to do something bold, in a new interview with Wired.



Wired sat down with Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin to talk coming onto Trek, destroying the Enterprise, and more.

“It was like, hey, this is a rescue mission,” Lin told Wired. “It was, ‘You’ve got six months.’”

When JJ Abrams picked Lin to helm the latest iteration of the Star Trek film reboot, he was looking for a director with “command of a large cast, a great sense of action, a sense of humor,” and “an ability to tell stories that would speak to cultures all over the world.” So, Abrams asked Lin to pitch him something “bold”. That’s when Lin got the idea to destroy the Enterprise. And, he is a stickler for getting it just right. As Wired describes watching Lin at work in the editing bay:

Justin Lin points at the long slender neck of the Enterprise on a monitor. It’s spindly, that diagonal piece leading up to the saucer section, vulnerable. As a kid, he always wondered, why wouldn’t you just attack there? In a gobsmacking action sequence from Star Trek Beyond, directed by Lin, a fleet of ships attack in a swarm—shredding and slicing the Enterprise until it’s decapitated. Even though the frenzied scene is set in the vacuum of space, the action feels visceral, painful, and scary. But in the editing bay, Lin is finding all sorts of minuscule problems. He asks to see multiple iterations of the swarm ships: 10,000, 20,000. His team animates the sequence, then reanimates it, over and over, as Lin adjusts the ships’ flight paths. Then he zooms in and critiques the exact locations of tiny thrusters and running lights, the smoothness or roughness of nozzle heads. He’s relentless.

This is likely a piece of a scene we’ve already seen in the first trailer where a swarm of small ships is relentlessly attacking the Big E.

…which is also likely the same swarm of ships seen on promotional material in Cannes recently.

After a poorly received first trailer, Justin Lin will have an uphill battle showing the world that there is more to him than car chases. The trailer that debuted last year took heavy criticism for it’s action-packed style, particularly one scene of Captain Kirk jumping a motorcycle to the tune of The Beastie Boys.

Lin admits that he was hurt when some fans, including Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu (George Takei), condemned the trailer for being “Fast and Furious in space”.

“George has always handled things with class,” Lin says. “He was a huge part of my life, so for him to swing a sucker punch, that hurt.”

The film’s co-writer and co-star Simon Pegg (Scotty) has come out in defense of the trailer, reminding folks that it’s all about marketing and that it does not reflect the look and feel of the final film.

“[I’m] disappointed that Wil Wheaton, Patton Oswalt, and George Takei were slagging off the trailer,” says Pegg, “because they know a finished trailer is never a reflection of the finished film. Get a fucking clue! It’s really good fun: thrilling and heartfelt.”

Wired also brings us the latest promotional image from the film.

The piece over at Wired talks a lot about Justin Lin’s directorial style, his history in Hollywood, and even his childhood.