Why is Star Trek not that popular in younger people?

[BillJ]

By the way, software - what I do - is an art where much creativity, invention and originality can be involved, but it's also a product that can be managed and structured under a deadline into a product. I don't think movies are much different.

But there is no underlying language or formula for a successful movie. Bad code can sink a software product regardless of what else it has going for it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

So it's the number of words that make a film "good"? Did not know that. I'd better start adding words to my latest screenplay. It's gonna be great, now that I've cracked the code!

No where did I say that.

I think its obviously implied "oh no" "watch out now" etc don't even count as actual dialogue.

Dialogue are those memorable conversations between characters that add depth and nuance to a story.

Just look at a film like the godfather, in no way is it trying to be some high brow intellectual films.

Yet tonnes of people can remember scenes word by word, where dialogue was presented with a heavy context with deep characterizations of the primary cast.

There is a difference between dialog and memorable dialog. But in the end it's all dialog. One "Oh no!" delivered the right way at the right time in a film can have more impact than ten minute speech.

 

[BillJ]

There is a difference between dialog and memorable dialog. But in the end it's all dialog. One "Oh no!" delivered the right way at the right time in a film can have more impact than ten minute speech.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp9HDlZEWvU[/yt]

 

[scotpens]

There's almost no meaningful dialogue in gravity.

With interstellar being dialogue heavy.

If you make something for people that don't speak a word of english your content will suffer.

Film is a visual medium. For the first quarter-century of commercial motion pictures, movies did just fine with no dialogue except for occasional brief intertitles (and sometimes not even those).

 

[JWPlatt]

By the way, software - what I do - is an art where much creativity, invention and originality can be involved, but it's also a product that can be managed and structured under a deadline into a product. I don't think movies are much different.

But there is no underlying language or formula for a successful movie. Bad code can sink a software product regardless of what else it has going for it.

Sure there is. See "Save the cat!" which many a movie has used as a template - some beat for beat - much like object inheritance in software. Bad writing in a script can sink a movie, which is a decent but inexact analogy of the code in software. Interpretive programs are actually called "scripts." "Bugs" in a movie are production errors (continuity, etc). And don't get me started on how the movie industry co-opted "reboot."

 

[Autistoid]

There is a difference between dialog and memorable dialog. But in the end it's all dialog. One "Oh no!" delivered the right way at the right time in a film can have more impact than ten minute speech.

You have to be shucksing me, are you fluffing serious.

I can't believe this sugar. That has to be one of the worst let downs in the history of fluffing movies.

For fluffs sakes, thats the kind of shucks that cased the series to go off the air.

A great dramatic moment and it's so bloody shallow.

There was a alot of great memorable dialogue in that film, but that has to be one of the primest examples of when trek went to shucks.


Seriously I think I just shucks my fluffing pants.

 

[Autistoid]

There's almost no meaningful dialogue in gravity.

With interstellar being dialogue heavy.

If you make something for people that don't speak a word of english your content will suffer.

Film is a visual medium. For the first quarter-century of commercial motion pictures, movies did just fine with no dialogue except for occasional brief intertitles (and sometimes not even those).

You ever wonder why no one watches them now????????????????????

You can argue tastes and all that jazz, the reality is the acting is all about dialogue, tone of voice, body language etc.

Acting and developing characters seems to be a pretty big part of film, some might argue that's why there is a thing called the academy awards who knows.

Maybe all the neuroscientists and acting professionals are clueless.

 

[JWPlatt]

A great dramatic moment and it's so bloody shallow.

Whenever I see an example of "that sucks!" I instantly want to see an example of "that's awesome!" from the POV of the complainant so that I know where they are coming from and get a better sense of their tastes. And vice versa...

So...

How about an example of a similar scene which you believe was handled in an exceptional way (in any movie - not just Star Trek)?

 

[Kal]

I have an uncle a few short years older than me; so he enjoyed close to the same television I did. A few years ago he had a child. He shows this child trek repeats, not cos he is fan, but because him and his missus agreed, best learning show around. Better than faff and nonsence aimed at kids.

That kid will grow up smarter than any kid raised on spongebob, I'm sure of it. So this is once case where the Trek shall be popular with the younger people.

 

[Shazam!]

That really leaves ST2009 and STID. Both made a lot of money, but I don't think one can say either made much of a cultural impact.

Movies come so fast and there are so many of them anymore, I don't think any of them make a cultural impact like we saw Star Trek and Star Wars make back in the 1970's.

I think the Marvel movies make an impact, but as parts of a whole as opposed to individual pieces of cinema.

Regarding young people not watching Trek, I think there are. The only problem is they're only watching the instantly forgettable movies released X years apart.

Personally, I think going the movie route was a mistake. Doctor Who has shown how you can successfully relaunch and rebrand a stale and stuffy franchise and go on to be arguably more popular than ever.

I would have taken the 2009 movie, used it as a pilot for a new TV series and gone from there.

 

[Nerys Myk]

There's almost no meaningful dialogue in gravity.

With interstellar being dialogue heavy.

If you make something for people that don't speak a word of english your content will suffer.

Film is a visual medium. For the first quarter-century of commercial motion pictures, movies did just fine with no dialogue except for occasional brief intertitles (and sometimes not even those).

You ever wonder why no one watches them now????????????????????

You can argue tastes and all that jazz, the reality is the acting is all about dialogue, tone of voice, body language etc.

Acting and developing characters seems to be a pretty big part of film, some might argue that's why there is a thing called the academy awards who knows.

Maybe all the neuroscientists and acting professionals are clueless.

But it is not, as you mentioned, not just about dialog. Body language is nonverbal. Facial expression is nonverbal. There is more to Spock than his dialog, Nimoy's body language helps sell the character. Lifting an eyebrow says as much as the line "fascinating". Silent actors were the masters at acting without words.

By bringing body language into this discussion, you've pretty much sunk your point about dialog.

 

[Granola Gwen]

It's more of a nostalgic pleasure to the people who grew up with either or series. I enjoyed TNG as a kid, since it just attracts my interests in space, biology, a better future and etc. Heck, I'm not that old and only half a year ago I started to watch the franchise again. I guess because kids prefer newer and simpler programs. Star Wars, Marvel or DC tend to be action packed which attracts them. Sadly, I never knew anyone my age who watched it in real life.

One more thing to add, I think if they replayed TNG or any of the series other than BBCA here, it could attract new fans.

 

[Mudd]

What made it terrible, exactly? And why, after one hundred years of cinema, and millennia of story-telling, have producers, writers, directors and actors still not learned how to get it more consistently right for their audience?

Because art, even popular art, is not a product. It's not like finding a mac-and-cheese recipe.

It's not like the studios don't try - there's only one plot/script structure they'll sign off on.

"Save the cat!," your mac-and-cheese recipe, suggests that it is a product. I guess that's actually an example of a learned formula where the audience begins to see a pattern, predictable plots, and lack of originality. So the answer to my question might be that if audiences always want new and original, there will be mistakes made on things that have never been tried before.

By the way, software - what I do - is an art where much creativity, invention and originality can be involved, but it's also a product that can be managed and structured under a deadline into a product. I don't think movies are much different.

It suggests that they'd like to reduce it to a product. If automobile designs failed as spectacularly as studio plans still do no one would get into a car before making out their last will and testament.

 

[scotpens]

Film is a visual medium. For the first quarter-century of commercial motion pictures, movies did just fine with no dialogue except for occasional brief intertitles (and sometimes not even those).

You ever wonder why no one watches them now????????????????????

I do.

 

[Lance]

Film is a visual medium. For the first quarter-century of commercial motion pictures, movies did just fine with no dialogue except for occasional brief intertitles (and sometimes not even those).

You ever wonder why no one watches them now????????????????????

You can argue tastes and all that jazz, the reality is the acting is all about dialogue, tone of voice, body language etc.

Acting and developing characters seems to be a pretty big part of film, some might argue that's why there is a thing called the academy awards who knows.

Maybe all the neuroscientists and acting professionals are clueless.

But it is not, as you mentioned, not just about dialog. Body language is nonverbal. Facial expression is nonverbal. There is more to Spock than his dialog, Nimoy's body language helps sell the character. Lifting an eyebrow says as much as the line "fascinating". Silent actors were the masters at acting without words.

By bringing body language into this discussion, you've pretty much sunk your point about dialog.

Absolutely.

80% of all human communication is non-verbal. That's a fact, and it's also why the early users of the internet quickly developed emoticons, because they discovered that people communicating in real-time using solely words on a screen were more likely to mis-read and mis-construe other people's intentions if what they wrote was not being accompanied by some kind of visual 'emotional' indicator. Prior to the internet, the same was true on telephones, where even a person's voice could be mis-read by the person on the other end of the line. There's nothing to beat genuine face-to-face contact, because it is through these kinds of subtle gestures that we are able to convey our intended meaning, when the words themselves are ambiguous.

As to the idea proposed that we are somehow unable to build character development without dialogue, and that early silent movies are deficient in this area, then I can only assume that people who make this claim have not actually watched a lot of silent movies, or taken the time to actually absorb into them. Somebody like Mabel Nourmand, for example, was an expert in conveying the emotions by the subtle use of pantomime: with a look at the wedding ring on her finger, a sideways glance at her character's husband, and a rolling of the eyes, she could show us a woman who has endured many trials from her husband over the years; and with not a shred of dialogue required to show that this is a character with a history. If a viewer is unable to decipher a message this simple without the aid of dialogue, then the addition of spoken dialogue to the scene is hardly going to make a substantive difference to that comprehension.

Even in this day and age, in the 'talkie' era, the basic art of being an actor has not changed: fundamental to their craft is the ability to translate the emotion behind the words into an understandable form, through the use of gestures and expressions; or for a director to do the same with the scene as a whole. Film/TV/Theatre is inherently a visual medium.

 

[TolkienOtaku]

I think I know why the younger crowd isn't all that into Star Trek. Nothing to do with attentions spans. Everything to do with tastes changing.

Look at the TV shows that have been popular lately: Is Breaking Bad set in a utopia where the protagonists are always morally upright? How about The Walking Dead? Game of Thrones? Absolutely not. The morality in the most popular TV shows today is far more gray and gray than black and white because that's how the viewing public doesn't see the world that way, and thus a squeaky clean utopia seems more unrealistic. Morally upright characters aren't gone (see Captain America), but the worlds they are put into are no longer clearly divided between good and evil as they once were.

 

[BillJ]

I think I know why the younger crowd isn't all that into Star Trek. Nothing to do with attentions spans. Everything to do with tastes changing.

Look at the TV shows that have been popular lately: Is Breaking Bad set in a utopia where the protagonists are always morally upright? How about The Walking Dead? Game of Thrones? Absolutely not. The morality in the most popular TV shows today is far more gray and gray than black and white because that's how the viewing public doesn't see the world that way, and thus a squeaky clean utopia seems more unrealistic. Morally upright characters aren't gone (see Captain America), but the worlds they are put into are no longer clearly divided between good and evil as they once were.

I'd argue the original Star Trek and Deep Space Nine took place in worlds with shades of gray.

I think it's tough to sell the idea of human space exploration to people who now occupy the world of continuous NASA budget cuts and a continuing decline of human space flight.

 

[JWPlatt]

80% of all human communication is non-verbal. That's a fact, ...

Not that it matters much, and five or ten points plus or minus isn't going to change the argument, but I have to call "Source?!" on this "fact."

 

[JWPlatt]

I think it's tough to sell the idea of human space exploration to people who now occupy the world of continuous NASA budget cuts and a continuing decline of human space flight.

That's the optimistic part, and escapism has in the past been the reaction and desire to an unsatisfying world, but I understand the point.

 

[Nightdiamond]

I think I know why the younger crowd isn't all that into Star Trek. Nothing to do with attentions spans. Everything to do with tastes changing.

Look at the TV shows that have been popular lately: Is Breaking Bad set in a utopia where the protagonists are always morally upright? How about The Walking Dead? Game of Thrones? Absolutely not. The morality in the most popular TV shows today is far more gray and gray than black and white because that's how the viewing public doesn't see the world that way, and thus a squeaky clean utopia seems more unrealistic. Morally upright characters aren't gone (see Captain America), but the worlds they are put into are no longer clearly divided between good and evil as they once were.

I agree with some of this.

One time I was netflixing a number of TNG episodes. I noticed the dialog and intereactions just seemed kind of flat, where I never really thought that way before.

Not all of the episodes, but just the basic interactions.

And the funny thing is TOS and DS9's dialog DO seem much more meaty and interesting by comparison.

The downside is this means (if it's true) that people aren't exposed much to the optimistic future that Trek preached.

GOT Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, dialog , content , and suspense wise, keeps people glued to the set.

The characters say and do things we've always been thinking in our heads and it shocks us.

This is a lot different than "character always does the right thing and everything works out at the end of the episode. And now on to next week's episode".

It's messed up, I know, but maybe it's true.

My theory to fix some of this is that maybe Trek shows need to return to TV again, its been practically non existent on television, so few people get exposed to it nowadays.