LOS ANGELES -- The primary-coloured cheerfulness of Star Trek is light years from the nuke-and-robot-ravaged cynicism of The Terminator.

But they are both on hallowed ground.

Just ask Anton Yelchin, who treads happily on the two beloved and now-rewritten franchises this month.

First, as "Wussian" brain Pavel Chekov in Star Trek, currently in theatres.

Then in next week's Terminator Salvation as a teenaged version of Michael Biehn's war-hardened Kyle Reese.

The duelling mega-budget productions represent the apex of current Hollywood recycling: rebooting pre-existing properties by marrying familiar characters to young, largely unknown actors. Sequels and spin-offs?

They're so 20th century.

Not that you can blame the 20-year-old Yelchin -- who up until now has been best known from smaller films such as Alpha Dog and Charlie Bartlett -- for signing on to not one, but two, potential blockbusters.

If all goes well, he should be booked until at least his 30th birthday.

"They're both really incredible to be a part of and experience, and to be on the sets is just insane," says the Russian-born actor.

"It was pretty wonderful to go from one universe into a totally different universe. Even though they're both science fiction, these two movies couldn't be more different in tone and their understanding of the world they describe."

To put a political spin on it, Trek's future is Obama-fied while Terminator's grimness is perfectly Cheney-esque.

What they do share in common, however, is a place in pop-culture lore, one that Yelchin was mindful of as he approached following Biehn and Walter Koenig's performances.

"For me, there's a whole set of guidelines, in my mind, that I want to follow, and I take those guidelines from the character that was created by the original actor," he explains.

"And so you start off with A, B, C and D that you want to have and you see, 'How can I incorporate those things into this idea?' ... In a way, it's a lot of fun. You're given something to work with and you're told, 'You need to take this toothpick and this piece of clay and these marbles and make something out of it' -- so you do something with it."

Yelchin was born in 1989, five years after 1984's The Terminator but nevertheless he was "a huge fan" of the Arnold Schwarzenegger-led series.

"I think I saw them way too early. T2 came out in '91 or '92. I probably saw it on TV a couple of years after that, so I was four or five when I saw it. I was so into it. I was obsessed with it. I saw T1 shortly after. I made my parents rent it.

"I was so obsessed.

"I even re-enacted the final scene from T1 in elementary school. I tried to get this girl to say, like, 'Die f---ing robot!" or whatever. I was like, 'It's Terminator. You've got to do it. You can't mess around with the movie!' I had all the action figures and I had a Terminator factory that made gelatin Terminators ... So, yeah, I really loved it."

Which presumably made it easier -- somewhat -- to endure the sequel's gruelling action during an exhausting shoot characterized by explosions, bullets and high-velocity car crashes.

"(Our special-effects co-ordinator) Mike Meinardus was basically the guy from Tropic Thunder that blows everything up. I'm pretty sure everyone got hurt. I fell off of a truck that we were shooting on ... You think it's safe, but it's not safe to run around with things exploding around you or to run around on a moving vehicle ... (But) you know, it's a Terminator movie," Yelchin reasons. "S--- like that should be happening."

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