Star Trek 2 Details: New Characters, What Will The Title Be, First Footage

Lots of teases and hints towards JJ Abrams' mysterious Star Trek sequel.

By Matt Holmes / January 21, 2013

Roberto Orci, co-screenwriter and producer of Star Trek and the upcoming sequel, has revealed to TrekMovie that Benedict Cumberbatch's villain is not Gary Mitchell. He did however confirm that Cumberbatch is playing a "canon character", meaning he will be playing a villain that we are all familiar with from the original series but Kirk's long-time friend and crew member Mitchell is not it. Here's an excerpt from the interview...

TrekMovie.com: A couple of weeks ago you were on a radio show and you confirmed that Benedict Cumberbatch is not playing Gary Mitchell in the sequel. Then last week Karl Urban says he is playing Gary Mitchell. Both cant be true. Roberto Orci: All I can say is that when I did that radio interview I had just been doing 22 hours of press. I had just got off a flight from New Zealand TrekMovie.com: Nice callback, but are you sticking with your original comment and it isnt Gary Mitchell. Roberto Orci: I would say that I never lie. While Karl tests all those hypo spray props on himself

Orci then revealed that it is Paramount and director J.J. Abrams' wish that the identity of the villain doesn't come out until we are very close to the film's release next May, and if they had their way they won't tell us who the villain was at all. Orci then revealed that only two of the new cast members in the sequel will be portraying canon characters...

ACTORS PLAYING CANON CHARACERS: Alice Eve Benedict Cumberbatch ACTORS PLAYING NEW CHARACTERS: Noel Clarke Nanzine Contractor Peter Weller Joseph Gatt

So aside from Cumberbatch, who at this point is looking more and more likely to be Khan, the mystery then surrounds just who it is Alice Eve might be playing. Immediately I thought she would be a good fit Janice Rand, the original senior crew member of the Enterprise who surprisingly was not used by Abrams for the original movie. Instead he chose not to include her and went with the cast that would become famous in the following series', i.e. - adding Ensign Chekov to the mix. However AICN claim that Orci, who remember never lies, had told them that Rand won't be in the new movie. That has them thinking she will be portraying Dr. Carol Marcus, the former lover of Kirk and indeed mother to his child who is ravaged by Khan in the original series canon. Is she portraying Kirk's new love interest in this movie and is that the route they are going down? Other interesting points from the interview; A trailer for the film is due around the fall time. That they have worked out a shortlist for the title and that the majority of them have the word "Star Trek" in them, but they haven't settled on the specific one yet. Regarding the film's title, the other co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof told MTV over the weekend that Paramount are actually getting impatient over the wait for a title;

"There have been more conversations about what were going to call it than went into actually shooting it at this point. The normal, why cant you just call it "Star Trek 2" because there is already a Star Trek II. That was the genius of Nolan. There was Batman Begins, and now theyre just going to be the Dark Knights and not going to have 2s," Its hard to do movies without colons. Im not talking about the colon thats in my body that I use for digestionTheres no word that comes after the colon after Star Trek thats cool. Not that Star Trek: Insurrection or First Contact arent good titles, its just that everything that people are turned off about when it comes to Trek is represented by the colon."

Advertisement

"All those iterations are bouncing around. I think that we are waiting for that one. This is the hardest thing to do in filmmaking or storytelling is you push past the point where you absolutely have to make a decision and now we are in that zone where Paramount is saying the movie is coming out next May, whats it going to be?"

And finally, Star Trek actor Karl Urban promised some new footage from the Star Trek sequel would hit the web over the weekend. Unfortunately, it was barely anything to write home about (it comes right at the end of this surfing video, taken during the filming of Trek 2 that wrapped weeks ago and yet we still haven't seen any official images from);

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwD4ii-1AR8&feature=player_embedded