[LEFT]i notice some STID reviews started off with 'remember star trek way back in 2009? well this is the sequel..' 4 years was WAY too long for the 2nd film..(it was even sort of too long for The Dark Knight Rises but at least that was the 3rd one)... 3 years would've been the MAX gap for Trek 2...but if they could've managed it 2 years (like most trek films) also having a crazy deadline can sometimes be beneficial to the movie (otherwise stuff can be dwelled on/overthought too much) if they couldn't come up with a story in that time then maybe at a push they could've just quickly filmed COUNTDOWN as that woulde made a great prequel to ST09 (remember Temple of Doom was a prequel to Raiders) starring Nimoy, Bana, Stewart, Spiner, Burton, Dorn, (& Frakes, Sirtis, McFaddent even though they wernt in CD & the Shatner cameo that was supposed to be in ST09). directed by Frakes (as JJ would've been too busy with Super8) yes it wouldnt have featured the nucast but since its Star Trek it could probably could get away with shifts in time periods/new crews etc as everyone knows the universe is so vast. fans would've gone crazy for another TNG/TOS crossover (only a good one, with Nimoy as the lead) and the new (younger) fans would've gone as itd be the follow up to that awesome cool Star Trek movie that was out only 2 years ago..[/LEFT] [LEFT] [/LEFT] [LEFT]whatever they did (CD prequel or Into Darkness rush job) it probably wouldve made 600m ww as itd have striking while the iron was hot/building on the goodwill of the incredibly well received ST09 (like Transformers did) Then they couldve had ST3 (Into Darkness if ST2 had been CD) for summer 2013 or 2014 and ST4 summer 2016[/LEFT]
It sounds great! Such movie would have been an amazing gift to earnest fans. But it wouldn't work for casual audience, IMO. The first question in that case would be "Who are all these people?!".
Had they rushed it, Lindelof wouldn't have gotten the chance to insist on John Harrison being Khan. So yeah, they should have.
Khan was the plan all along (they almost ended '09 with a shot of the Botany Bay floating in space), so it would have been him if the movie were a rush job too. What was the competition two or three years ago? ID was squished between Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel, which are about as big as it gets. That's really all that would have made any difference.
I wonder how different ID would've been had it come summer 2011...? my guess is it wouldn't have been Cumberbatch as Khan...more likely someone more Khan like (maybe theyd have paid Bencio Del Toro what he wanted as theyd have been in a panic to get filming or even got pre Skyfall Javier Barhem. probably Barhem). and as a result maybe they wouldnt have kept Khan so under wraps. 2011 Summer http://www.boxofficemojo.com/seasonal/?chart=&season=Summer&yr=2011&view=releasedate (so ST2 in May would've gone up against Thor, HO2, Pirates 5, KF Panda2) 2012 Summer http://www.boxofficemojo.com/seasonal/?chart=&yr=2012&season=Summer&view=releasedate (May = Avengers, MIB3, Battleship, Dark Shadows)
I do not think the long time to launch the second movie was one of negative points to the disappointing box office STID. I think they were concerned in producing Star Trek 2 just like The Dark Knight. The first movie was good. It showed personal conflict, adventure, drama, humor in the right way. Chemistry Kirk x Spock was the highlight of the film. But it seemed lost in Into Darkness. I think the writers should come back to this issue Kirk X Spock x McCoy, with a new adventure, a few pinches of old characters, as a tribute to the 50th anniversary. UPCOMING MOVIES 2016: Avatar 2, Pirates of the Caribbean 5, Guardians of Galaxy 2, WarCraft, X-Men: Apocalypse, The Amazing Spider-Man 3. It will not be easy.
I think they lost about $100 million potential by waiting so long. There was a lot of word of mouth buzz after the first film. It think any interest outside of the hardcore plans + casual science fiction fans was lost with the long wait. Of course, this isn't science.
Waiting four years was a massive mistake, which I am sure most have cost them AT LEAST 100 mill, as a lot of the goodwill the 2009 hit earned them was eroded by then. They really should have rushed the sequel and had it out by 2011 - whatever flaws the proverbial "Star Trek 2" (2011) would have had, I doubt very much they would have been any more controversial than the very real flaws "Into Darkness". Besides, the movie was rushed anyway. They didn't actually develop it for those four years, they did pretty much nothing for two of them and then rushed it like there was no tomorrow. I'll never forgive JJ for wasting all that time making that unnecessary Spielberg tribute movie,k critical time he instead should have spent having a Star Trek movie ready for 2011.
Given that when a sequel to Trek XI was given the green light in 2009 the release date they were aiming for was summer 2012 I don't know why they should have been in such a hurry for a 2011 release. Three years is an average wait for sequels anyway. Really what they should have done is tried to stay focused on the 2012 release date.
It hadn't occurred to me that the delay cost them so much in terms of lost ticket sales, so I appreciate that. There's been a recent trend in franchise blockbusters to film two or three part features at once and release them over one year intervals (think Harry Potter and the Peter Jackson films at least). Given the difficulty in getting ensemble casts together, do you think this approach would solve both problems (actor availability and short release cycle)?
Honestly, that approach seems so risky to me. You have to be guaranteed the film(s) are going to be mega blockbusters otherwise you've screwed yourself into a hole. Luckily, so far most movies that have done this haven't been failures, but I don't think Star Trek is popular enough, not even after XI's box office laurels.
I agree with the sentiment that ID spent too long on the shelf and should've gotten released sooner. As a matter of fact, I remember when STAR TREK was being worked on, Abrams wanted its release date held back for reasons I forget now, but that time did not go wasted. The effects were improved, I remember that being talked about. But this time around, the wait was wasted time. General Audiences are so fickle, too ... which really shocked the shit out of me seeing ID take so long coming out. Especially in light of how these movies are specifically designed to be money makers. The thought of letting this thing lose money sitting around doing nothing is hard to reconsile with that. It may well have been the belief, too, that Khan was all that was necessary. That when people knew Khan was in it, it would capture lightning in a bottle, the second time. Well ... guess again ...
How do you know? You weren't there. How do you know that time was "wasted"? The film wasn't "locked down" until a few weeks before its first premiere, if I recall correctly. It made money. It made the money internationally that the 2009 had failed to do. So the release strategy worked.