PLAYBOY: But as a lifelong Star Wars fan, surely you have broad ideas about what needs to happen going forward. Three quarters of planet Earth came down on George Lucas for practically ruining Star Wars in Episode I. The Star Wars universe revolted.

ABRAMS: Here?s the thing. I try to approach a project from what it?s asking. What does it need to be? What is it demanding? With Star Wars, one has to take into account what has preceded it, what worked, what didn?t. There are cautionary tales for anything you take on that has a legacy?things you look at and think, I want to avoid this or that, or I want to do more of something. But even that feels like an outside-in approach, and it?s not how I work. For me, the key is when you have a script; it?s telling you what it wants to be.

PLAYBOY: Star Wars needs to look different from Star Trek, certainly.

ABRAMS: As with anything, because these are very different worlds, they shouldn?t feel the same aesthetically. They can?t. You?re right. But again, I don?t apply aesthetics first and fit a movie into that aesthetic. If I had come into Star Trek with those eyes, I would probably have been paralyzed. The advantage here is that we still have George Lucas with us to go to and ask questions and get his feedback on things, which I certainly will do. With Star Trek it was harder because I wasn?t a Star Trek fan; I didn?t have the same emotional feeling, and I didn?t have Gene Roddenberry to go to. But I came to understand the world of Star Trek, and I appreciated what fans felt and believed about this universe and this franchise.