I have added 87 captures of Chris from his visit to The Today Show this morning to promote the latest installment in the rebooted Star Trek franchise, Into Darkness. In addition, I have also added 13 stills of Chris’s visit as well.

As always, a big thank you to my good friend Pedro for the HQ video!

Gallery Links:
– Guest Appearances > 05/09/2013 – The Today Show
– 2013 > 05/09/13 – Visiting The Today Show

Be sure to check out Chris’s entire interview over at COMICBOOKMOVIE.COM

SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: Has this four year gap between films felt that long to you?

CHRIS PINE: It HAS felt like a long time. But it was fun getting back into it – it was pretty easy to fall back into the relationships, and all the bonds that we built in the first one were there.

SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: This is the first time you’ve reprised a role. Is that strange at all?

CHRIS PINE: It’s actually very strange. You want to make sure there’s a continuity between the character that you established and trying to remember little things, so that I don’t go off in a completely different direction. You don’t have the blank slate like you did in the first one.

SCIFI MEDIA ZONE: On a personal and professional level, what impact has Star Trek had on you?

CHRIS PINE: Well, it’s given me a lot more opportunities for the business I’m in, for different parts, different scripts, and people knowing who I am is a huge bonus. It puts you in the spotlight very fast, and I think anybody, no matter what they do, enjoys a challenge, and I was terrified by the prospect of doing this, and being terrified knew that that’s what I need to be doing. I need to take this head on, because there’s no fun doing something you think is easy. Personally, your anonymity gets chipped away and people start coming up to you a bit more often, and want their pictures taken, and autographs, and paparazzi here and there, but for the most part I’ve been really lucky in that regard – I mean, it’s been a pretty smooth ride. I think it took a while to get used to the whole world of A) you’re making a big, huge movie and B) it’s Star Trek and that comes with its own huge responsibility with the fan base and the community. But it’s been a good run – I’ve been happy to be able to share this experience with a lot of people; I have a whole crew of people to talk to about it, and it’s a good support group.

Continue reading over at MIRROR.CO.UK

It can’t be just a “gig”, surely, when you’re portraying one of most iconic, muchloved characters in science fiction?
Actually, I didn’t know much about Star Trek previous to the first movie and I learned a lot about it while doing it.

I think the way I deal with it is that I never even think about it. If I fixate on it, I start to have real panic attacks [laughs]… no seriously, I get all choked up around my neck. It happens!

So what can we expect from Star Trek Into Darkness?
If you liked the first, you’re going to go head-over-insane for what JJ has done this time around. It is out of the world.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t even seen the final cut yet, just bits and pieces, but it looks truly insane.

And we’ve got some new blood in Alice Eve and Benedict Cumberbatch, who both bring such an amazing energy.

Benedict, particularly, has some really tough, tough scenes to go through. I was so impressed with his prowess.

Continue reading over at GETSURREY.CO.UK

If the first film was an origins story, how would you describe Into Darkness?
We had to spend a lot of our time in the first film establishing these characters in their relationships and where they might go. And in the second film we have more license and freedom to get into the nitty-gritty of these people and where they go. The first one was almost a collective experience of all these people and it was about a family that was about to embark on this journey whereas this one is about individuals going on their own separate journeys.

Spock has his story to tell, I have mine, and Benedict’s character, John Harrison, is really the instigator and it’s like going down this weird psychological rabbit hole that’s like Dante’s Inferno for all of these characters.

What does that mean for Kirk?
Kirk has to face his own demons on this journey. In the first story we established Kirk as a confident, brash, young man whose greatest gift was his gut instinct, his heart and his ability to fight with everything he has, not only for himself but for others, for what he believes is right. But all the confidence that he has in the first film is flipped around and Benedict’s (Cumberbatch) character shows all the cracks in his armour that seemed so secure.

And very soon Kirk is brought to his knees and faced with his own self-doubt: am I worthy of being a leader

Continue reading over at STARTREK.COM

What elements of this story resonated most with you?
PINE: What I was most excited about was that, for someone like who Kirk, for someone who you’d expect to be a strong and confident leader, and who, certainly from the first film had that self-assuredness, in this one I got to explore the flip side of that. The flip side is self-doubt and fallibility and this kind of existential crisis about whether or not he’s meant for the captain’s chair and whether or not he’s good enough. To begin a film and to carry the hero, or one of the heroes, from such a place of weakness, I thought that was an interesting challenge and one I looked forward.

Kirk and John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) have a lot of scenes together. Were you at all surprised by just how many scenes the characters shared?
PINE: I guess I wasn’t at all that surprised because I knew how important John Harrison was to this story and, at least selfishly, to development of Kirk in this story. Kirk is unhinged. Kirk is filled with self-doubt. Kirk is the little dog barking all too loudly. And you needed to see that. The only way you could see that, really, is when has his fingers put to the fire. That’s in verbal combat with Benedict’s character. We’re separated in a lot of our scenes by a glass partition, and it just goes to show you how powerful his character is, that he can wield the strings like a puppet master over poor Jim Kirk with nothing but a batting of the eye and the inflection of a word.