'Star Trek Into Darkness' behind the scenes video

Leave it to J.J. Abrams to release a behind-the-scenes featurette of his new movie that contains basically no new footage and yet is still totally compelling.

In a just-released behind-the-scenes look at Star Trek Into Darkness, director and crew chat about the making-of the sequel in between video clips mostly pulled from the previous trailers. It has the effect of: a) showing you very little new information while also b) reminding you how nice it is to hear Abrams & Co. talk appreciatively about the Enterprise & Co. A play-by-play:

“The goal for this movie was definitely to up the ante as much as we could,” Abrams says at the video’s start. “There were a lot of characters that people were anticipating seeing.” He then proves this by listing all of them (with a shot for each character).

Zachary Quinto appears: “It was pretty magical to see what they were able to create this time. I think it’s stunningly beautiful.” And he’s right: most everything we see is alight with color.

But don’t be fooled. “What I keep coming back to is just ‘relentless,’” Chris Pine says. “One thing after another, after another, after another.” (But which things? Khan things?)

For the last bit we get to hear about how awesome IMAX is (it is) and how wonderful 3-D will be (maybe?) and how, in case anyone forgot, the Hans Zimmer Inception horns are still very much a go-to effect.

“This movie was the most fun and challenging experience,” Abrams says, as we re-see footage of Benedict Cumberbatch doing…something. (What kind of challenges, Abrams? Khan challenges?)

The director leaves us with this thought: “This is everything I’ve ever done, wrapped up in one movie” — which is only true if Benedict is a recent high school graduate who followed Chris Pine to the Starfleet Academy and Alice Eve is a spy.

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