We all know that JJ Abrams is the king of secrecy. He wants his audiences to have the purest possible experience before going in to a movie. But he has just admitted there’s one secret he shouldn’t have kept, and that’s the villain’s identity in Star Trek Into Darkness.
As Abrams told the Huffington Post, “The truth is I think it probably would have been smarter just to say upfront ‘This is who it is.’ It was only trying to preserve the fun of it…It was so important to the studio that we not angle this thing for existing fans. That would have been limited. I can understand their argument to try to keep that quiet, but I do wonder if it would have seemed a little bit less like an attempt at deception if we had just come out with it.”
The Post reminds that the sites Latino Review and Vulture broke that Khan was the villain a good eighteen months before the movie came out. It wasn’t long before the public turned against the film, although not specifically for this reason.
There’s nothing wrong with hiding spoilers from the public, although it’s become practically impossible these days. Studios now release details and photos early, because if they don’t, they’ll get leaked by the geeks. Perhaps in the case of Khan, it would have been better if Abrams and Paramount came clean from the get go.
