In The Dark On Star Trek Into Darkness

Yesterday saw the release of the teaser trailer for J.J Abram’s ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ and the fan speculation for the plot of the film has begun.

‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ is the sequel to J.J Abrams’ 2009 reboot of the film/TV franchise which sees the crew of the Starship Enterprise come under attack from a unstoppable enemy bent on their destruction in the form of Benedict Cumberbatch’s as of yet unnamed character.

Lead by returning stars Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, the crew of the Enterprise begins a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture Cumberbatch’s character who is a one man weapon of mass destruction. An epic chess game of life and death ensues where love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

As the title of this blog post suggests, very little is known about the character being played by Cumberbatch. Many rumours have led to speculations that the character is in fact a re-imagining of Khan from ‘Star Trek : Wrath of Khan’, whilst other’s suggest a different character called Gary Mitchell from the episode ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ from the original television series.

At this moment, we are living in a “need to know now” society, demanding to know everything as soon as it is revealed. When a comic book film is announced, the fans demand to know everything about the film before its release so they can tell if their favourite comic book is being done justice. Many examples include films such as Christopher Nolan’s ‘Batman’ trilogy and Marvel’s ‘The Avengers’. Fans want to make sure that before these films are released that the source material is properly acknowledged and is done right instead of wrong, like Warner Brothers’ ‘Green Lantern’ or 20th Century Fox’s ‘DragonBall: Evolution’.

3 recent films to come under this "need to know now" society is Warner’s Brothers’ Superman reboot ‘Man of Steel, Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pacific Rim’ and J.J Abram’s ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’. We have received teaser trailers for ‘Man of Steel’ and ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’, but not for ‘Pacific Rim’, with the only known information being that it is a sci-fi film where  soldiers pilot giant robots to battle against giant monsters which have mysteriously risen from beneath the ocean. That is it. No videos have been leaked besides two, short viral videos and some concept art.

In hindsight, we can see that we are receiving very little information about the films because it is a marketing technique to get us interested in the film. By teasing us with teaser trailers and small amounts of information, we strive to want to know more about the film until we have no choice but to accept that to find out everything about the film, we have to go and see it for ourselves in the cinema.

I’m a nerd and this was my rant.