Trek to Episode IX: What J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek tells us about The Rise of Skywalker

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek films feature bold imagery that expands what we may immediately think in-universe technology should be capable of.  Fans were surprised in the 2009 film to see the Starship Enterprise under construction on Earth, specifically in Kirk’s hometown of Riverside, Iowa.

The assumption for years by fans had been starships were unable to operate in an atmosphere (though plenty of canon evidence argues otherwise). J.J. doubles down in Star Trek Into Darkness when we not only see the Enterprise operating in the atmosphere of the planet Nibiru when saving the planet’s population, but hiding the massive starship under the ocean!

Later in the film, we also get dramatic footage of the USS Vengeance crashing into the city of San Francisco, and the Enterprise plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere.

Abrams has already applied some of this principle to Star Wars in The Force Awakens. Striking imagery from the trailer showed crashed Imperial Star Destroyers on the surface of Jakku. Later the Millennium Falcon flies through an entire graveyard of massive ships chased by TIE Fighters.

Already in the trailer for TROS we have seen what would appear to be a large section of one of the Death Stars from the original trilogy in an ocean.

Expect Abrams to give the audience a very good look at this structure’s massive scale , just as we saw Khan escaping the wreckage of the Vengeance to the streets of San Francisco in Into Darkness.