Since the summer of 2008, when Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight became one of the most massively successful films of all time, "dark and gritty" has become the big Hollywood buzz phrase. But as more and more projects announced that they would be going for said tone, the more the mass audience has groaned. Fortunately, when writer Damon Lindelof compared the next Star Trek film to The Dark Knight, it wasn't the tone that he had in mind.
E! caught up with the co-creator of Lost, who is currently working with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman on the sequel to J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot, and while he compared the film to Nolan's second Batman adventure, it was in the sense that it went beyond the genre it was trapped in.
"We're looking at a movie like The Dark Knight, which went one step beyond Batman Begins. It was really about something, and at the same time it was a superhero movie. We don't want to abandon all the things that made the first movie work and have it be fun and emotional, but we also really want the movie to thematically resonate."
While he does hit on the "dark and gritty" a little bit, the big thing to take away from Lindelof's comments is that the sequel will not simply plant itself in the sci-fi genre, instead trying to reach further. It wasn't so much the tone of The Dark Knight that made it so successful, but rather that it was a comic book movie that can also be viewed as part of the crime genre. Lindelof seems to understand that, and Star Trek fans are going to benefit.
