J.J. Abrams Shares A Very, Very Brief Clip Of Star Trek Into Darkness

Boldly going for one eighth of a second.

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

J.J. Abrams had a little surprise in store when he went on Conan the other night. He brought a clip from his super-secret Star Trek sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. That’s pretty exciting, right? Here’s the kicker, it’s a short clip. A very short clip. A three-frame clip to be exact.

So if we’re going by the standard that 24 frames equals one second of screen time, that means we’re about to see one-eighth of a second of footage from Into Darkness. Can you contain your excitement? Watch the clip from the show for yourselves, and we’ll discuss things further down the page.

Notice how excited Conan gets when Abrams says he has a clip to show. He has to contain a little bit of nerdy glee to keep up appearances, but there’s definitely a spark of interest. It’s also funny that we’re doing exactly what Conan mockingly says we would, looking at these three frames and trying to analyze them for any possible shreds of information.

The actual footage flashes by in .125 seconds, but the image is of Spock (Zachary Quinto), in a volcano, wearing what Abrams calls a “crazy suit” (an environmental, or EV suit). It looks like he’s running, surrounded by fire, being chased by an even bigger ball of flame. Could be fun, but we already knew we were going to see Spock in a suit, in a flaming volcano.

It’s an obvious stunt, one that’s mildly amusing, but I have to knock Abrams for his lack of originality. Karl Urban, who plays Bones, pulled a similar gag on Trek fans at Comic Con back in July, when he promised to unveil footage from the movie. What he delivered was a video of himself surfing, with a few behind-the-scenes frames thrown in at the end. The two events just seem similar to me, that’s my only point.

And the film is still called Star Trek Into Darkness, which I’m less than enthused about.

Here’s a screen grab of Spock so you examine it further at your convenience.