Q: One of the big themes of Star Trek Into Darkness is terrorism, and it’s what a lot of soldiers abroad are battling right now. The villain, John Harrison, is a terrorist, but he’s not a black-and-white character. Why did you decide to take on this theme?
A: The idea was, as much as we could, to tell a story where the bad guy was not just larger than life and not just terrifying but also oddly resonant and relevant. We didn’t strategize from the outside in to depict something that was actually happening, but we felt it feels like something that is scary to us. This was something that made us uncomfortable. So, approaching this from the view of creating a bad guy that somehow connects to the life that we live was the thing that was one of our guiding principles. [Harrison] clearly has a hyper-real backstory, but the unfortunate reality is that we’re living in a time when it’s not entirely clear where the next threat will come from and where the next act of violence will take place.
Q: It’s also not as black-and-white as some think.
A: Once you get into it, you find yourself questioning not just the agenda or motivations of the person, but you find yourself questioning larger things like “What are the rules? How far should we go to prevent things like this? When do we become as dangerous as those we’re trying to stop? What happens when the rules you need to follow are immoral, or at least questionable?” There are a lot of themes that come up about loyalty, responsibility, and family in this film, and that was really interesting to me.
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It's a Bush Bash but go fund it if you wish.
I read that completely differently. Much more as commentary on the drones, which have been a pretty hot topic the last few years, with a lot of innocents killed, but also a lot of bad guys.