J.J. Abrams Regrets "Star Trek Into Darkness" Twist

Despite making $467 million worldwide, "Star Trek Into Darkness" still divides the core fanbase...Thanks to the fact that Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch's baddie "John Harrison" in  J.J. Abrams’ sequel is really Khan Noonien Singh in the rebooted timeline....

In the Prime timeline Kahn is the genetically enhanced human--An American Sikh of the 1967 episode of "Star Trek" called Space Seed as well as the big screen sequel Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan played by Ricardo Montalban .

Before the pic opened I was totally against the notion of reimaging Kahn and stated my position loudly...Once I saw the film I was won over in large measure because of Cumby's magnetic portrayal ...

Personally I think the secrecy backfired on J.J. and Co. At the time I was miffed at the way the team reacted to any leaks--thus poking fans excited for the film in the eye. The film was released abroad first--With the Net--Once the film played--the big reveal is out--Did all the secrecy measures make sense?

With the benefit of time, Abrams is reflecting to MTV about the decision to redo Kahn and in turn questioned the way the reveal was handled:

"The goal was to not ruin it for anyone who wanted to go see it, but the fact is it ended up I think coming off like we were being coy and we trying to like act like more clever than we are or something. All it really was an attempt to not ruin the thing.

The reason why, when you watch the movie you know it's Khan and after one screening everyone knows whatever it is. But, the idea was that for the first hour of the movie the characters in the film don't know. It felt like if we go out with it and we have articles where it's like "KHAN!" and we make it all about him, does it take away from the story.

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, and it might have given more time to acclimate and accept that’s what the thing was.

The truth is because it was so important to the studio that we not angle this thing for existing fans. If we said it was Khan, it would feel like you’ve really got to know what 'Star Trek' is about to see this movie. That would have been limiting.

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."