It was galling to Trekkies at the time, but Abrams was openly not a fan of “Star Trek.” Not that a filmmaker needs to be a fan of what they’re remaking, but it would have helped if he wasn’t also an enormous “Star Wars” fan. What Abrams did was bring a militant, action-forward mindset to the ordinarily more cerebral “Star Trek.” As such, Abrams sought to make his “Star Trek” film give young audiences the same action-packed thrill that “Star Wars” gave to him as a youth. He said:
“My whole take on it was that I needed a way in. I was challenged by and excited about giving people who had no idea of what ‘Star Trek’ was or had seen it and felt a little bit like I did, that it was for them and not for me. To give them a way in. To make Kirk and Spock and the other characters as relatable and as unformed or in process as possible. For example, and I’ve said this a lot, ‘Star Wars’ was, for me, a ride that was undeniable.”
As such, the director said that he wanted Kirk and/or Spock to take on Luke Skywalker qualities. He felt that Luke (Mark Hamill) was relatable. According to Abrams, kids loved that character “because Luke Skywalker was you. Luke was this kid who didn’t know where he was going to go, didn’t know what his life was going to be. He was an average farm boy who gets this insane call to adventure.” For Abrams, Kirk and Spock needed a similar Joseph Campbell-adjacent call to adventure. Hence, the odd sense of fatalism in his 2009 “Star Trek” film.