Chris Pine, the newest Star Trek captain

MANILA, Philippines - Chris Pine (photo) is the newest Capt. James Tiberius Kirk in the new version of Star Trek. Below, Chris shares his insights on the movie and his role:

What did you bring to Star Trek because J.J. Abrams has been marveling about the character relationship in the movie?

I think what’s new about this particular version of Star Trek and what J.J. and Bob (Roberto Orci) and Alex (Kurtzman) were able to bring to it, that’s new and really exciting is an incredible amount of humanity to the roles for a project that could be so... you know there’s a lot of spectacle to it, there are explosions and graphics and computer graphics and yet it’s really character driven and you really get to see why Kirk is Kirk, why Spock is Spock, how this crew got together.

Did you try in any way to emulate William Shatner?

I think what J.J. set forth in the beginning of the whole thing was to pay tribute to what was done before and to respect what these men had already given us in terms of creating their characters and then to bring our own unique take on it and I think that opened up just a myriad possibilities. I never felt particularly... I don’t know about Zack but I’m sure he would say the same thing. I never felt encumbered.

I only felt thank God we were given such a great foundation for these characters because I don’t really have to do that much different from what they’ve given us and then J.J. being the kind of wonderful, positive creative force that he is kind of let us do whatever we wanted. What Mr. Shatner did was very specific and very unique to him and all I did was try to do justice to what he did and what was done before, but to try to do (emulate) Shatner would not have been smart.

Was the Enterprise set incredible?

The set was incredible. Frankly, the production design will blow people away. I think it pays tribute to that ‘60s look but it’s very of the now and the gadgets are incredibly cool. The production design is cool, too. Really what’s incredible when you’re doing a movie like that is you know that everybody involved with this is the very best at what they do.

It must have been amazing to walk on that bridge.

It’s spine tingling for sure.

Did you get any green girls?

(Laughs) Oh man, you’ll have to wait and see.

Star Trek opens May 8 in theaters nationwide.