Star Trek into Darkness Co-writer Damon Lindelof explained that there is a logical reason for keeping quiet about the villain of the movie.
After the success of Star Trek, the pressure is on to produce a good movie. “If anything, we’ve become more terrified [this time],” said Lindelof. “We kind of got it right the first time; ‘Let’s really not screw it up this time.’ You really have to honor the forty-plus years of canon and legacy that this amazing franchise had before we put pen to paper.”
Lindelof explained why information on John Harrison is so scarce, and it’s not just because Abrams is secretive about his projects. “The audience needs to have the same experience that the crew is having,” he said. “You’re Kirk; you’re Spock; you’re McCoy; so if they don’t know who the bad guy is going to be in the movie, then you shouldn’t know. It’s not just keeping the secret for secrecy’s sake. It’s not giving the audience information that the characters don’t have.”
“I’m working on a bunch of different projects, and I even have to keep secrets about one project from the people I’m working with on the other project,” said Lindelof. “They’ll say, ‘So, seriously, who’s Benedict playing?’ I’ll say, ‘Do you really want to know?’ Then they go, ‘No, no, no, I don’t.’
“They know that if I said it to them, they would have a five-second rush of exhilaration followed by four months of being completely and totally bummed out that they can’t tell anybody else and that when it gets revealed in the movie, it will have been spoiled for them. That’s why they’re called ‘spoilers,’ they’re not called ‘awesomes.'”
Source: The Los Angeles Times
