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News Pegg: Star Trek Beyond Marketing Was Bad

It was a fun movie with little substance. A popcorn flick. I enjoyed it more than the other two but that's just me. Into Darkness deserves to be erased from history for messing with Wrath Of Khan. Star Trek 2009 was okay. Better than the previous two TNG movies anyway.
 
I don't want to repeat what I said in the other thread so I'll just summarize my thoughts by saying that I agree and disagree with him. For one, while marketing was bad, it still reflected the movie they have created and they also were, as a team, the first to promote the movie in a way that was reductive, bland and boring. They gave very little to the media to use in order to create buzz around the movie.

Second, blaming it all on marketing may suggest he isn't able to honestly look at the whole picture and thus what might be the issues in the movie itself and therefore why the audience who loved the first two didn't all come back and make beyond successful too. Blaming marketing only seems to be a way to not take any responsibility.




If his intention was criticizing the first two and pretending his movie is more trek(tm), I'd not only have to disagree with him but I'd have to find the intention/opinion very lame too.

The first two, that are more successful than his movie, were trek too and they were loved by both non-trek fans and old fans.
Beyond placating fans with nostalgia by doing stuff like giving Mccoy and Scotty more screentime, and bring back the old trio dynamic at the expense of the new dynamics jj&co had made the face of this trek, doesn't make the movie more 'trek' than the first two. It just makes it more nostalgia but there is absolutely nothing inherently more 'trek' in beyond's plot than the first two. If anything, certain aspects like trying to restore the original trio and sidelining Uhura (and Sulu) to focus on the white guys more (and make Karl third lead instead of Zoe, like it was for JJ) may make the movie go backwards on the very 'trek ideals' Pegg himself and other fans like to preach about.
Tos may be beloved, but it wasn't flawless and it often contradicted (or didn't do enough) those Gene's ideals that fans like to preach about because it still was a thing made in the 60s that inevitably looks outdated nowadays. So no, making a tos episode isn't necessarily a good thing especially if limited to bringing back the less contemporary and progressive aspects of tos.

Anyway trek =/= tos homages and/or listening to those who want to 'make it like tos'.
There would be nothing bad in wanting more nostalgia and homage but fans trying to always pass it as another thing is pretentious and self-contradictory because, again, there is nothing here making the other movies less 'trek'.


To be fair, I don't really think Beyond flopped because they brought back the old trio as the main focus. I don't think if the movie focused on kirk, spock and uhura anything would have changed, Beyond floped because the..... star trek does not have mass appeal in movies problem came back with a bang, after star wars returned and the mixed bag that was star trek into darkness. This franchise was already on little decline after star trek into darkness that made less than it predecessor in the first film and although made more worldwide, the first film was still more profitable.
 
To be fair, I don't really think Beyond flopped because they brought back the old trio as the main focus. I don't think if the movie focused on kirk, spock and uhura anything would have changed, Beyond floped because the..... star trek does not have mass appeal in movies problem came back with a bang, after star wars returned and the mixed bag that was star trek into darkness. This franchise was already on little decline after star trek into darkness that made less than it predecessor in the first film and although made more worldwide, the first film was still more profitable.
.. a Federation/Klingon war movie with the Borg coming in half way might've got people interested enough so SW didn't completely blow Beyond out of the stars..
 
Even still, Beyond is a much, much, much better-crafted film than any of the three Star Wars movies.
even as someone who prefers star trek to star wars, me:
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There was nothing original about Beyond. It was just same old, same old. A villain trying to destroy the Federation and earth... We never had that before.
 
Honestly, the first movie, and what JJ did to reboot the franchise had been more successful than what anyone had expected trek to be in our time..and I think that it did inspire other franchises too and, from its team's own admission, Discovery too. It did have potential. So I don't accept the excuse that trek can't be as successful as other movies are because JJ already proved these people wrong with that first movie, but Paramount&co apparently chose to ignore it or forgot about it.
Beyond wasn't just 'unlucky', there is just no excuse I can use to justify some of the creative teams choices and them completely wasting the potential of this trek when it was served to them on a silver plate. They didn't do enough with what they already had. And im sorry, but nostalgia is a problem I won't pretend that doesn't exist especially if it makes it so that trek apparently is the one franchise that goes backwards. Celebrating what it was has became just a way to avoid developing what it could be and use what jj&Co had created. And frankly, this is stupid.
 
To me, the absolute worst part of the marketing was the trailer that gave away the whole twist of Krall's identity.

Kor
 
Maybe the marketing guys were frustrated by the fact they hired someone like Elba, but covered him in make up so they couldn't use his face to create hype like they used Benedict's popularity for stid.

The big reveal is both interesting and terribly lame. I'd prefer he was playing the character with both faces from the start, or really that he truly was a new alien species with a philosophy completely alien and opposite of starfleet for crazy yet valid reasons. Instead, he was merely a human messing up with things. My headcanon is that he was insane because other than that, his story didn't make much sense. The alien technology he used was the most interesting thing, but they didn't expand on it and tell us more about Altamid and the natives who originally created what Krall was using. I'm more about the mystery of it all than the villain conveniently finding an advanced technology like that and an army of droids to rule.
All the movies have convenient plot devices (see the way kirk and spock prime meet. Like really) but this movie was particularly pretentious and generic lame in the excuses found for almost everything..from spock's too-late-conflict to kirk's conflict and the villain. .or Sulu choosing to marry and have a kid he can hardly see when, idk, he could've waited for when the mission ended. The way spock and mccoy are stuck being a team at any cost was too convenient too, and there is like a whole part of the story that seems missing such as what Uhura and Sulu and the rest of the crew were doing at the base and whether they discovered something interesting about the planet.

Nero is my fav villain. He created another reality, he destroyed Vulcan and forever changed that race in this reality creating endless potential. That's one badass villain. And his story was crazy yet I understand. He felt betrayed and lost his mind because he lost everything..I almost felt bad for him too because he was a former good dude that the system made bad because they didn't protect his loved ones. And he was funny ('hi Christopher, I'm Nero' )
 
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There hasn't been a good movie villain since the Borg Queen. They've all sucked and are generic plot devices. All of the Kelvin villains might as well be the same character they're so paper thin.

They should dispense with a main villain next time or at the very least do something fresh with the idea.
 
There hasn't been a good movie villain since the Borg Queen. They've all sucked and are generic plot devices. All of the Kelvin villains might as well be the same character they're so paper thin.

They should dispense with a main villain next time or at the very least do something fresh with the idea.
Nero was great, he was a real threat, did serious damage to the fabric of reality and he made Spock cry hard.
 
Nero is my fav villain. He created another reality, he destroyed Vulcan and forever changed that race in this reality creating endless potential. That's one badass villain. And his story was crazy yet I understand. He felt betrayed and lost his mind because he lost everything..I almost felt bad for him too because he was a former good dude that the system made bad because they didn't protect his loved ones. And he was funny ('hi Christopher, I'm Nero' )
Nero is one of my recent favorite Trek Villains, hands down, right next to Chang and Paxton, among others.
 
there is just no excuse I can use to justify some of the creative teams choices and them completely wasting the potential of this trek when it was served to them on a silver plate. They didn't do enough with what they already had. And im sorry, but nostalgia is a problem I won't pretend that doesn't exist especially if it makes it so that trek apparently is the one franchise that goes backwards. Celebrating what it was has became just a way to avoid developing what it could be and use what jj&Co had created. And frankly, this is stupid.
Thing is, the first two movies would have been ignored anyway, as Orci's plan for the third movie was to have Shatner return to restore the Prime Universe. Which, IMO seems a greater disservice to those movies. And it's still nostalgia-driven and stupid.
 
Thing is, the first two movies would have been ignored anyway, as Orci's plan for the third movie was to have Shatner return to restore the Prime Universe. Which, IMO seems a greater disservice to those movies. And it's still nostalgia-driven and stupid.

I have a feeling that Orci alone, without JJ's guidance and boldness as a non-trek fan director, would lose track and yes, probably fall into nostalgia and fan pandering too (which is even worse for him because he had always acted 'superior' with reboot haters, had always insisted he wasn't there to placate them and old school fans so it would be a bit pathetic if he eventually ended up giving to these people who attacked him so much importance)

That said, and to be fair, we don't really know what his story was about and from the little he said, I don't think he'd restore the prime timeline but rather put Spock and Kirk in a scenario were they were tempted to change their own past in order to save their parents but they wouldn't do that because it was morally wrong and because they'd maybe realize that sacrificing their own life as it is wouldn't be worth it .
It is possible his story teased those who wanted him to restore the prime timeline, but actually only show the reasons why it was a bad idea.

And I mean, anything is possible including the possibility Orci had lost his mind. .but restoring the prime timeline is impossible according to the rules of his trek..in fact, he had said much before. You can't restore it because, well, it does still exist parallel to the kelvin timeline. It is a quantum reality. In a way, if they went back in time to save George Kirk or Amanda, they'd get the same result Nero got which is accessing to yet another alternate reality. It would be really lame and pathetic for any of them to essentially ignore the 'science' of this trek and thus do something that so fundamentally contradicts its core.
 
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