Director J.J. Abrams did a fantastic job with "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," and fans are surely going to rave about the film for many more years to come.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of his work in "Star Trek: Into Darkness" despite its stellar cast. The film's co-writer Damond Lindelof told Slash Film that one big issue was Benedict Cumberbatch's character Khan, which they tried to keep a secret but failed to do so. He was actually glad that Abrams did not make the same mistake in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."
"When we did Star Trek Into Darkness for example, we decided that we weren't going to tell people that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Khan. And that was a mistake, because the audience was like, 'We know he's playing Khan.' That was why it was a mistake," he said. "But J.J. (Abrams) is telling us nothing about the new Star Wars movie and we love it. I've not come across a single person who's like, 'I wish I knew a little bit more.' We are like, 'Thank God he's protecting us from all the things that will be revealed in the movie theater.'"
In a different interview with Buzzfeed, Abrams reflected on Lindelof's comments and shared his opinion what went wrong with the "Star Trek" film.
"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," he explained. "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."
Abrams admitted that he was frustrated by his own choices and he was "unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story."
He is simply grateful that he had a wonderful cast to work with, and he said that they are all "unbelievably fun to watch."
"I would never say that I don't think that the movie ended up working. But I feel like it didn't work as well as it could have had I made some better decisions before we started shooting," he said.
