If you’ve seen any of the photos or trailers for J.J. Abrams upcoming Star Trek, you’ve seen many images of the new, sleeker, sexier starship Enterprise. Of course, when Abrams needed a team to help him refresh the franchise and provide all the cutting-edge visual effects for his new film, he turned to the men and women at Industrial Light and Magic. Now, thanks to an article over at Sci-Fi Wire, some of the team at ILM can let us in on how they took the venerable Enterprise and completely reinvented it for Abram’s film.
According to model maker John Goodson in the article, Abrams wanted: “. . . a hot-rod type of vehicle, but they also wanted to preserve the Enterprise kind of look.” He also kept saying, according to ILM creative director David Nakabayashi, to “Make it a bigger movie. Make it a bigger shot.” “I think that’s one thing you see in this film, at least. The stuff I’ve seen is just everything is big,” he added.
Even though I’m a huge fan of the original Star Trek and most of the subsequent series (yes, even Enterprise had its moments) and I was a bit skeptical about this movie when I first started hearing about it, the more I see lately, the more I want to see it. Right. Now.
Star Trek opens May 8th.
