Abrams did reshoots on Into Darkness, which he felt "helped a little bit here and there." But his problems with the final movie come back to its plot, which, he said, "was not anyone's fault but mine, or, frankly, anyone's problem but mine."
"I felt like, in a weird way, it was a little bit of a collection of scenes that were written by my friends — brilliantly talented writers — who I somehow misled in trying to do certain things. And yet, I found myself frustrated by my choices, and unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story," Abrams said. "So then I found myself on that movie basically tap-dancing as well as I could to try and make the sequences as entertaining as possible. Thank god I had the cast that we have, who are so unbelievably fun to watch. And an incredible new villain in Benedict Cumberbatch."
"I would never say that I don't think that the movie ended up working," Abrams said. "But I feel like it didn't work as well as it could have had I made some better decisions before we started shooting."