During an interview about Star Wars, J.J. Abrams spoke about learning from past mistakes made in other films, including Super 8 and Star Trek into Darkness.
“I drew on personal experiences as cautionary tales, things that I didn’t want to do again,” he said. “For example, I didn’t want to enter into making a movie where we didn’t really own our story. I feel like I’ve done that a couple of times in my career.
“That’s not to say I’m not proud of my work, but the fact is I remember starting to shoot Super 8 and Star Trek Into Darkness and feeling like I hadn’t really solved some fundamental story problems.”
Star Trek into Darkness took some heat from fans when it was consistently denied during production that the villain would be Khan, and then the villain did turn out to be Khan. Other story elements were taken from The Wrath of Khan, which didn’t quite work, such as the death scene between Spock and Kirk.
Source: Wired
