Voices From Krypton: Simon Pegg Talks TREK And The IMF
Transcript
I'm Ed Gross and this is Voices from Krypton. Simon Pegg is someone who finds himself in the unique position of being a part of not one but two franchises on the verge of celebrating their 50th anniversary. In Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, which opens in theaters on July 30th, he makes his third appearance as Agent Benji Dunn.
Next summer on July 8th, 2016, to be precise, he reprises the role of Montgomery Scott, better known as Scotty, in Star Trek Beyond, which he's co-writing with Doug Young. For a performer it's a pretty unique position to be in and I wanted to get his feeling about the fact that both franchises are thriving half a century after their debuts. Yeah, it's extraordinary.
Aside from my involvement in them, the very fact that they're still here and they're still a story to be told is a testament to their strength as just ideas. Because at the heart of both those shows and subsequently films, you have quite a simple idea when one is the kind of secret agents and one is space explorers. They're just classic fantasies for people.
The idea of being in space and exploring unknown space or being a spy and all the kind of exotic and adventurous stuff that goes along with that. Those two ideas are at the very heart of these stories and it's what's kind of powered them all this time. Yeah, here we are 50 years later and it's still going on but it's a testament also to
its both stories' ability to evolve. The real question of course is why both have endured. Isn't I offered the core concept behind each of them? It starts with that I think and then you bring in charismatic actors and well written characters and certainly with Mission Impossible, the birth of Ethan Hunt, that was with the first
movie in 96. With Star Trek obviously those characters are now being, they went through their life and it started again for those characters. It's fantastic to be writing that movie and have that palette to draw from of these characters that people pre-know.
It's a combination of things. It's the simplicity of the idea and it's the skill of the execution. As we'll be speaking more in depth on Rogue Nation with Simon later this week, we wanted to take this opportunity to get his feelings about the seemingly effortless way in which he and his co-stars have inhabited the crew of the starship Enterprise.
Yeah, we were very lucky to have had those characters say for us before by extraordinary actors who just bought them to life. So to kind of put those characters on it was like slipping into a pair of pre-broken and you know we're very lucky. We asked the audience to say okay now we'll be these people and they seem to have for
the large part gone along with them. So it's the same with writing it. You have this set of characters that you understand them. There's no getting to know them. You know how they speak and you know how they think and you're able to sort of work with
them. It's sort of easy than a blank page. Wrapping things up, the question raised is what Star Trek means to 2016 and what if anything from the original can still be incorporated into Star Trek Beyond. I definitely feel like from the off it was apparent to Doug and I, Doug Young and I'm
rising up that we would, you know, the crew would be out on the mission that made the show popular. They were out on a deep space mission for five years and you know with the first two films we spent kind of prior to that really with them getting to know each other and having you know in the case of the last film having an adventure which stayed within our own solar
system. Now I feel like Doug and I feel like let's get them out there now and get onto that wagon train in space and start bolting going where no one's gone before and you know like you say the Star Trek of 2016 it has to be different as a commercial prospect. It has to be different.
We can't make those kind of small thoughtful little kind of plays like the episodes used to be now in terms of in a cinematic sense because the studios just wouldn't bankroll it. It's not what the larger audiences who are going to go and see Star Trek who have as much right to it as the fans do.
It's not, you know, we have to make something that people are going to come in so we can keep making it but it doesn't mean we can't keep what made the show special and try and invigorate what you know what the Star Trek 2016 means with what 1966 meant as well. I'm Ed Gross. Thanks for joining us on Voices from Krypton.
Scottie Beame here.
