Data selling ice cream? They've got my $15.
If Star Trek Beyond fails
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Data selling ice cream? They've got my $15.
I'm there on opening night!
I also want a sequence with Worf on a bus. But it turns out to be the wrong bus, and he has to refrain from killing everyone.
Except that everyone in the cast was an American, and the characters who were supposed to be from other parts of the world had names and minimal back stories fabricated from virtually no research or concern for verisimilitude whatever.
And I say that I do know what it means. Hipsterism has rejection of and contempt for "mainstream" (aka "the herd") as a key component of it's philosophy and aesthetic.
Hipsterism in comics leads to the deconstructionist books like Ultimates that portray heroes as barely better than the villains they fight.
Hipsterism in Trek is twofold:
1) Contempt for the "mainstream" general audience fan which is expressed by making a Trek reduced to a stereotypical set of memes to sell to the Lowest Common Denominator (aka Joe Buttinseat).
2) Contempt for the Prime/Old School Trek fans shown by the same means, rejecting the historically more sophisticated nature of Trek in favor of appealing to the Lowest Common Denominator.
No, they're into contempt for the mainstream. Hence characters that are not only "grim and gritty", but philosophically all but diametrically opposite to what a superhero is.
Ultimate's Captain America is a prime example. He isn't the exemplar of all that's good and decent in America. He's a rude, oppressive, jingoistic caricature of the heroic, iconic character.
Abrams is a Hipster auteur?
Almost the first thing he said about his "mission statement" for Trek was that it "needed to be more like Star Wars".
His creative approach consisted of aping the forms of Trek (while for the most part refusing to use people who knew how to work on Trek properly) and ignoring its essence.
I use the term I feel is most appropriate.
You want to see inappropriate use of the "broad brush", look no farther than "rabid purists" "JJ haters", or just about any use of the term "fanboy" in modern context.
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^ First, I think you have the term reversed. If a hipster writer was working on Star Trek, they would reject everything about the reboots in order to create an even more niche subset of an audience that most of us would even dream of seeing.
Second, you really don't seem to understand what was happening so I'm going to say it again. At the end of the prime run, no one was watching Star Trek. No one was seeing the movies. You create a product that only a few people care about, it becomes unprofitable. Star Trek is not an arthouse indie flick. Does it need to be the uber special effects extravaganza the last two films have been? No. But it needs a bit of a budget. And it sure as hell needs an audience. People weren't showing up for Star Trek.
Was it an oversaturation issue? Maybe.
Was it a quality issue? Maybe.
The point is no one was there! We go in circles on this and its getting old.
Second, you really don't seem to understand what was happening so I'm going to say it again. At the end of the prime run, no one was watching Star Trek. No one was seeing the movies. You create a product that only a few people care about, it becomes unprofitable. Star Trek is not an arthouse indie flick. Does it need to be the uber special effects extravaganza the last two films have been? No. But it needs a bit of a budget. And it sure as hell needs an audience. People weren't showing up for Star Trek.
Was it an oversaturation issue? Maybe.
Was it a quality issue? Maybe.
The point is no one was there! We go in circles on this and its getting old.
Correct. You win a gold star!
Incorrect. Deconstructionism is actually a well-established literary trope that implies the inversion and/or subversion of cliches. It's one of the various ways a writer can come at a familiar concept from a new angle and retell an old story in a novel way.
The "antihero" is the classic example of this; it is a deconstruction of the standard "noble hero" concept and is at least as ancient as literature itself. While a hero is considered to be a paragon of virtue and the exemplar of society's ideals, the antihero is a kind of asshole who manages to do the right thing in spite of his flaws.
Artistotle actually considered the antihero to be the more virtuous of the two. The hero, he believed, does what he does because it is in his nature to be virtuous; antiheroes manage to achieve positive behavior only through considerable effort.
That is self-contradictory: how can a film show "contempt for the mainstream" by DIRECTLY PANDERING to the mainstream?
Or maybe you're claiming that they're showing contempt for the "mainstream Star Trek fan"? The act of ignoring the expectations of a small niche with highly specific expectations isn't a hipster move either. It's actually sort of the OPPOSITE of that.
You DO know that "prime trek fandom" is not actually a mainstream trend, right?
I witnessed no contempt and they showed none. Quite the opposite, in fact, I and my entire family thought STXI was the best thing to happen to Star Trek since TNG came on the air. And this from a family where Spock was more important than Jesus and where you were courting death and/or dismemberment if you tried to change the channel during a Star Trek marathon.
... is hipster talk. Star Trek was at its best when it WASN'T pretending to be more sophisticated than it really was. That's one of the reasons I stopped watching Voyager.
That, again, the "antihero" trope. That hasn't been a "hipster" concept since at least the 1960s.
To me this pretty much ends the debate right here. Hipster is not the word you're looking for. I dislike the reboot a lot, but hipsters they are not.
This seems similar in thought to a person who is good because it is their nature and expects no reward of an afterlife is a better person than one who is good because of their fear of their deity or expectations of reward; it's harder to find good that happens for no discernible motive or purpose.
By using sarcasm that the mainstream fails to understand but with which they find literal agreement. It happens here on these forums all the time.
Philosophically, the thought was that a person who struggles to do the right thing and succeeds is superior, morally, to a person who does the right thing purely out of habit. I don't think their reason for doing so is actually factor in that.
That's still not hipsterism, though. That's just subversiveness.
If Abrams was truly a "Hipster", Star Wars , a vastly commercial product that is the epitome of mainstream science fiction, is the last thing he would be immulating or be influenced by. A movie like TMP is more Hipster than anything produced before or since under the Star Trek banner. Star Trek may be a niche product but it's not been counter culture or hip since the 70s. While not as successful as Star Wars it is and remains a commercial mainstream product. In that Abrams and Co. are very much following what came before.
I remain unconvinced that either of these exist to any significant degree.
I have noticed, however, that the deployment of the term "lowest common denominator" in discussions of this kind is quite often an indicator of contempt of another sort, and I think we would all be better off if that were checked at the door.
Here's an idea: What if... we were to carry on a discussion without employing any of those troublesome (and too often pejorative) labels? Let's give that a try.
It won't fail. 
Which doesn't change the fact that the Ultimates are a complete inversion of the character types designed to deconstruct the very idea of the superhero as hero, not jackbooted thug or agent of the evil state (both of which the Ultimates are portrayed as being).
By dumbing it down to their level, it's basically "talking down" to them.
Not "mainstream" as in General Audience fan. Mainstream as in the subgroup that are Star Trek fans.
Up until recently, Prime Trek was the mainstream of Star Trek fandom.
That is your experience. It wasn't mine, nor is it that of many many Star Trek fans.
Whose number still falls well under that of many, many, many Star Trek fans/admirers and casual movie goers that did like STXI and/or STID.
Not saying that your opinion about your dislike of ST09 or STID is invalid (you are certainly welcome to your opinion, and many, many, many Star Trek fans/admirers and casual movie goers can certainly respect it)....just that it isn't the popular opinion.
No one is discounting that experience, but was it the majority experience? Was that the intention of the creators? There is so much read in to Abrams' production team's statements that are taken as hostility towards Prime Trek that I really don't think they need to be so.
Well, all I know is that I enjoyed Abrams Trek, and my dad, who grew up with first run TOS, enjoyed it, and he has not watched any other Star Trek beyond TOS series and TOS movies.
Don't fret it too much, amigo. A lot of old school Galactica fans read too much into Ronald D. Moore's comments when the new Galactica series was about to launch, and mistook them for hostility toward the original show.
I heard no such hostility in Moore's comments, just like I heard no hostility in Abrams' and Co.'s views.
I know what will happen if Star Trek Beyond bombs Fantastic Four-style.
In another 10 years we really will get a reboot, and it will differ even more from TOS than the current ones do. Roles shall be recast, tone and focus will be changed, special effects improved, characters *gasp* reimagined!
And after the hoards of angry Trekkies have vented their spleens and retreated back to the Internet, Berman, Braga, Abrams and Orci shall creep out, look upon the bloody, half-eaten remains of that poor future creative team and think:
'Ha!'
'Ha!'
In another 10 years we really will get a reboot, and it will differ even more from TOS than the current ones do. Roles shall be recast, tone and focus will be changed, special effects improved, characters *gasp* reimagined!
And after the hoards of angry Trekkies have vented their spleens and retreated back to the Internet, Berman, Braga, Abrams and Orci shall creep out, look upon the bloody, half-eaten remains of that poor future creative team and think:
'Ha!'
'Ha!'
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSV-VtJfwRw[/yt]
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