Public perception of Star Trek?

There is definitely a stigma attached to it.

Both the Beyond and Nemesis trailers had their subtitles come up before "Star Trek" does.

I always looked at that as the studio being afraid to put that in first for fear that it may get dismissed.

 

Also, a few friends of mine who are not Star Trek fans liked '09 and Into Darkness. They were the audience the studio was looking for. However, they never took an interest in the existing material and went back to watch anything that came before.

Have any of you had experiences where those two films encouraged non-fans to go back and watch the older stuff and eventually become fans?

 

The only people outside of Trekkies who come to this site are the writers of The Big Bang Theory. We should really get some sort of writing/consulting credit.

 

Public perception is what it always was, stage hands pulling doors apart at the sound of a not entirely convincing futuristic whooshing noise, hamfisted acting from the Shat, Nimoy saying "life but not as we know it", Bones curmudgeonly reminding everyone he's a doctor and aliens about as convincing as Barney the Dinosaur is a T-rex or whatever dinosaur Barneys supposed to be. It's evocative of a more innocent era that's entirely lost and could never be again.

JJ's stuff has marched onto the globalscape and will remain somewhat prominent. But Shats, Nimoy's Trek has been singularly immortalised.

 

Haven't noticed; does it matter? I suppose Marvel would like their viewers to buy their comics but i'm not even sure of that at this point.

 

When I went to see Star Wars yesterday with some friends (wearing my Into Darkness tshirt!), I overheard a group talking about how cool the Star Trek Beyond looked and that they couldn't wait to see it - and the trailer didn't even play before our showing of the movie!

 

It seems to me that that decision had much more to do with the enormous success of streaming services than it had with the success of the movies.

CBS wants in on that market, and an exclusive series is their best bet of gathering subs.

Had netflix not exploded, I very much doubt we'd see a ST series airing on a regular network.

 

Nope.

"Hey, let's launch our original content by reviving a TV show that got cancelled because it's ratings cratered ten years ago."

Just because streaming is successful doesn't make Star Trek look like a good idea. Trek being hugely successful for Paramount makes it look like a good idea.

 

^^
A new Trek series would be an excellent strategy with or without the reboot films.
It would likely be an even bigger event had there not been any films.

The X-Files were canned 3 years prior to Star Trek, with only one pretty much unnoticed film in the interim, and the revival still caused quite a buzz. And Star Trek's brand is much stronger than The X-Files...

 

Ratings cratered ten years ago. Looking at the performance of the post-TNG shows in reruns, DVD and Blu-ray no one's gonna call that "strong" or say "let's spend more money on that. "

Which is doubtless one reason they hired a nuTrek producer to run this one.

 

You seem to have missed the booming nostalgia market and that studios are pulling far less popular things then Star Trek from the mothballs...

 

From my personal experience the new movies appeal to people I know who don't like or didn't watch the old Star Trek. They've told me they have no intention of watching the old shows and movies because they look cheesey or crap. The new movies have succeeded in bringing new fans to the franchise but the movies are intended for regular viewers who just watch a movie once and forget about it. If we're being honest that could be said for the majority of all the Star Trek movies. The new series, much like TNG, is going to be the instrument to bring in new Trekkies.

 

I don't know if that can be said for the older movies. I think many of them were given much cheaper budgets and had lower expectations. It seems to me that Paramount was aiming them for more of a niche audience, perhaps thinking they couldn't grow beyond that, and when they did, it was incidental (thinking of The Voyage Home and First Contact). With the Abrams films they are the first designed/planned Trek blockbusters with bigger budgets, splashier FX, etc.

 

Exactly so.

 

Nope. Generalizations are just wishful thinking without data. Look at the numbers - the suits do.

 

Good point. I think the Next Generation movies were trying to be both but largely failed as either. Nemesis at least looked expensive. That's all I can say for it

Trek, to me, is at home on tv. The movies happened because Phase 2 didn't work out but the appetite for the old crew was still there. The movies are a by-product of Trek being cancelled in the 60's. We'd never have gotten Trek back on tv without them but tv is where it truly belongs. For every great Star Trek movie there's a mediocre one that wouldn't look out of place in a tv episode. The new movies, in their defence, actually come across as bonafide movies and not just overly long 2 parters like most of the TNG movies. I still think Star Trek's future will be decided by this new tv show. That's where the die hard fans of the future will come aboard. Or not depending on the quality

 

My situation is unique because I'm surrounded by geeks but most of them will go see the new ST movie because it's almost a requirement. You go see whatever sci/fantasy movie that is playing. No one wants to be 'out of the loop.'

However when we have a real 'geeky' discussion almost ALL of them agree that ST works better on the small screen. I'm not sure how many of them are going to actually watch the new series though.

 

I've been thinking about my previous statements and I have to wonder now if TMP, which might have been made to capitalize off the popularity of Star Wars was a movie that Paramount thought might reach a wider audience? I mean it looked like a bigger movie than the other TOS movies that came after it.

But I agree with you about where Trek's true home is. And the Abrams films did feel like films in a way that most Trek films don't, with the possible exception of TMP. I can't say the Abrams Trek stories were actually that big to warrant two hour films, but I can't deny the scope and ambition of the Abrams films.

 

Yeah, Phase II was scrapped in favor of TMP largely because of the success of Star Wars. Suddenly, every movie company wanted their own Star Wars-esque movie:

-Paramount- a big screen Star Trek

-Universal- Battlestar Galactica

-Disney- The Black Hole (and ironically, because they weren't able to use/rent the motion control cameras that LFL invented, and were forced to make their own -A.C.E.S.-, Disney co ended up being technologically superior to LFL for a time....LOL!)

And let's not forget the b-rate sci-fi movies that tended to spill out as well:

-Star Crash (even had a friggin' lightsaber type weapon in it)

-Battle Beyond the Stars (the most heavily visually canibalized b-rate space fantasy, evaaahhhhhhh)

 

Ah, but that was just a clerical error of some sort and will have no bearing whatsoever on the finished product.