News Pegg: Star Trek Beyond Marketing Was Bad

[pst]

pegg elaborated on his comments and i still think he's right:

“I’ve gotten into…it’s not hot water at all, but it’s gotten picked up a lot because I’d mentioned that I wasn’t happy with the way the film was marketed. It was a big year for Star Trek and it felt like that was not ever embraced. I think sometimes people get scared of the Star Trek fanbase as being a kind of closed shop and if we were to mention Star Trek in some way it would somehow turn all the other people who hadn’t seen Star Trek off. I dunno, it just felt like an odd thing to do. I think the person responsible for that [campaign] is not there anymore.”

 

[Smellmet]

Some of the posters didn't even have the name Star Trek on just Beyond. It's like they were embarrassed with the trek brand. On it's biggest anniversary. Says it all really

 

[pst]

Some of the posters didn't even have the name Star Trek on just Beyond. It's like they were embarrassed with the trek brand. On it's biggest anniversary. Says it all really

man i'm so split about my feelings about that poster because i really love it.

my read on it at the time was that the marketing was taking the same path as harry potter and the half blood prince, which used posters that allowed the familiar potter logo to be obscured or disappear out of frame, confident that people knew what they were advertising from the iconography alone. the enterprise is such an iconic, identifiable image, it seemed like paramount was doing the same.

but then they walked away from that beautiful teaser poster entirely (with or without the name star trek on it), and went with character posters that 1. were a little garish and 2. had nothing in common with the teaser poster, creating a bizarre lack of uniformity in the marketing.

on the other hand, it can also just be interpreted as the studio running away from the name.

 

[ISS Enterprise]

Let's see.....

A not well received initial trailer that made a person excited for the next chapter like me scratching his head.....
Crickets for most part until May????
A very good 2nd trailer
No tie in with 50th anniversary
Giving the entire plot away heading into the opening. ....

A text book example of how NOT to market, shocked that person isn't there any longer lol

Was set up for failure with only 6 months to produce a script, still rewritting n changing as production began

Still enjoyed n enjoy it, but didn't take Franchise further IMO anyways

 

[BigDaveX]

looks like Orcis back on TM.com

I really don't get why so many people are claiming that Orci's version would have been much more successful, considering we know so little about it. Yeah, maybe it was intended to be fan-friendly... but so was "These Are The Voyages...", and look how that turned out!

 

[Malaika]

Some of these arguments are weird. I mean, if true there seems to be a bipolarity of some sort in Paramount&co making a movie that caters to old tos fans mainly and alienates reboot fans (not mutually exclusive with trek fans in general), but then on the flip side doesn't want to promote it as a trek movie with its marketing. It doesn't make sense because the movie doesn't reflect this idea they were distancing themselves from 'trek'

 

[pst]

Some of these arguments are weird. I mean, if true there seems to be a bipolarity of some sort in Paramount&co making a movie that caters to old tos fans mainly and alienates reboot fans (not mutually exclusive with trek fans in general), but then on the flip side doesn't want to promote it as a trek movie with its marketing. It doesn't make sense because the movie doesn't reflect this idea they were distancing themselves from 'trek'

true.

and this is all mostly speculation. but the intent of the producers isn't always (rarely) reflected by the way the studio chooses to market a film.

 

[Lexx Shrapnel]

he's right.

and it was trek's 50th anniversary that year. paramount missed a great opportunity to celebrate the franchise as a whole and push their new movie. they paid for the mistake. so did we.

I doubt Trek fans only could have helped much and general audiences don't care.

 

[Smellmet]

man i'm so split about my feelings about that poster because i really love it.

my read on it at the time was that the marketing was taking the same path as harry potter and the half blood prince, which used posters that allowed the familiar potter logo to be obscured or disappear out of frame, confident that people knew what they were advertising from the iconography alone. the enterprise is such an iconic, identifiable image, it seemed like paramount was doing the same.

but then they walked away from that beautiful teaser poster entirely (with or without the name star trek on it), and went with character posters that 1. were a little garish and 2. had nothing in common with the teaser poster, creating a bizarre lack of uniformity in the marketing.

on the other hand, it can also just be interpreted as the studio running away from the name.

Don't get me wrong - I loved the poster from an artwork point of view, but this was supposed to be the 50th anniversary, a celebration of our beloved franchise and it was like they were ashamed of putting the words 'Star Trek' on there. It just didn't sit right with me at all.

 

[Malaika]

I didn't like the international poster (the pinkish one) because it honestly seems amateur photoshop work. I don't know, it wasn't really bad but it wasn't super great either. The Asian posters with all the group were BADASS instead. Loved them.

 

[Smellmet]

I didn't like the international poster (the pinkish one) because it honestly seems amateur photoshop work. I don't know, it wasn't really bad but it wasn't super great either. The Asian posters with all the group were BADASS instead. Loved them.

I didn't mind the international poster, but it was probably the weakest of them all, I thought the layout of it was really good, but the colours looked off and the title font looked wrong, making the whole thing look a bit fan-made to me. Even the individual character posters were way better.

The asian posters however were absolutely awesome, they just looked so much more professional looking and impactful, especially the one with the crashed saucer in the background. I can't for the life of me me understand why they weren't used more widespread. I'd love to get hold of some copies of them, with English text on.

 

[Vger23]

Those talking about Paramount being "ashamed/afraid" to market Star Trek as...well..."Star Trek" have hit the nail right on the head. Because, they take the same philosophy with the writing and producing as well. They try to walk this line of making it different, having mass-appeal, and making absolutely sure that everyone alive knows that you don't need to understand Trek to enjoy it while still catering to the fanbase. It's madness.

The results have been lukewarm. If they just focused on making a great movie instead of shitting themselves by overthinking..they'd be able to realize more of the potential that exists.

Unfortunately I truly believe that ship has sailed. 3 movies which have been progressively less interesting and 3-4 years between them each with absolutely inept and shitty marketing is virtually unrecoverable.

 

[Smellmet]

If they just focused on making a great movie instead of shitting themselves by overthinking..they'd be able to realize more of the potential that exists.

Exactly. There was all this nonsense in the run up to the release that they wanted the film to ape 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (which is hardly the most original thing going in the first place) that was the point when alarm bells started ringing for me, I mean for god's sake, let Trek be Trek, not a copy of a copy, then that dreadful first trailer dropped and I feared the worst...

...yet the film turned out to be mostly excellent in my eyes. If that's not poor marketing I don't know what is.

 

[Anwar]

Nero was great, he was a real threat, did serious damage to the fabric of reality and he made Spock cry hard.

He was dull as dishwater and succeeded due to random dumb luck more than anything else.

As for Beyond, Pegg is just making excuses.

 

[fireproof78]

He was dull as dishwater and succeeded due to random dumb luck more than anything else.

 

[Smellmet]

He was dull as dishwater and succeeded due to random dumb luck more than anything else.

As for Beyond, Pegg is just making excuses.

I wouldn't say he was dull, he was a pretty charismatic villain played well by Bana, it was the writing of the story that was the problem for me.

 

[lawman]

Could it be the reason why JJ Abrams' films were successful because it wasn't what general audiences thought of Star Trek? You know, more like TMP. TSFS, TFF, and all of TNG films; these overblown thought out preachy movies.

Not following you here. I can see why "overblown" and "preachy" are negatives (although I don't necessarily agree that past Trek movies qualify for them), but since when is "thought out" a bad thing?...

...most of my friends, who are not Trekfans to say the least, couldn't say a bad thing about "Star Trek" and "Into Darkness" were saying, "Meh" on Beyond.

Still not following you. If you're a Trek fan, why would you place a premium on the opinions of people who were not Trek fans?...

(And you really don't have to be a Trek fan to find bad things to say about ST09 and STID. Those movies were excruciatingly badly written by any standard.)

I remember the complaints of lack adverts at the time and how I thought people making them must be living on another planet because I was seeing ads everywhere. Every prime-time show on every network I watched had at least one ad per show and some, more. And billboard, bus adverts abounded.

I don't watch broadcast television, and I don't commute on a freeway, so my exposure to these kinds of ads is limited. I'm honestly in no position to know the quantity of marketing that STBeyond got.

The quality of it was another matter, though, from what I saw. That first trailer, in particular, with the song, was absolutely godawful, and conveyed a (thankfully) completely misleading impression of what the movie would be like.

Marketing guys, contrary to the director and writers, also tried to make people think the big 3 of this trek was still kirk-uhura-spock because they know it worked (not to mention her image is more useful than Urban's or Pegg's), but people aren't stupid and it was made obvious by the creative team (and then watching the movie itself), and the clips they had released, that they had pushed Uhura aside to try to restore the old trio and give more screentime to both Urban and Pegg. The image the movie was getting essentially was one of 'let's placate the ones who were complaining that uhura replaced mccoy'...

This intrigues me. The relationship between Uhura and Spock in ST09 was implausible and out of character (and the way it was treated in STID was simply juvenile), but despite that, it was nice to see Uhura get a more profile role in those films, and in Beyond as well, and Saldana did a nice job with the role. That said, it never even occurred to me that Abrams or anyone else was trying to substitute her for McCoy and reshape Trek's central triad. The Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic has always been a central aspect of Trek; it's part of what makes it work so well, and there's no replacing it. Moreover, Urban was arguably the best casting choice in the new films; he practically channels DeForest Kelly, and it would be silly not to take advantage of that on screen. You have something against McCoy as a character?...

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.

I can't fathom how you can talk down storytelling that plays to nostalgia and then praise J.J. Abrams in the same breath. Have you seen what he did with Star Wars? It practically wallows in nostalgia for the original.

 

[fireproof78]

Still not following you. If you're a Trek fan, why would you place a premium on the opinions of people who were not Trek fans?...

(And you really don't have to be a Trek fan to find bad things to say about ST09 and STID. Those movies were excruciatingly badly written by any standard.)

No, not really. 09 was a good movie, as well as a good Star Trek movie. If my wife, a non Star Trek, non scifi fan, can enjoy it, and my dad, a Star Trek fan, can enjoy it, yes, it was a good film.

I respect nonfan opinions more because I'm often blinded by my own bias.

 

[lawman]

Hey, my then-girlfriend (not a Trek fan) and a couple of other friends we saw ST09 with at the time (longtime fans) also liked it. What can I say? They were wrong.

(In all honesty, after we'd discussed it at length over beers, they came to understand a lot of my issues with the film. The most they could say at the end of the day was that it was a serviceably entertaining action-oriented "popcorn flick" if you were willing to suspend critical thinking, with decent acting and effects, but that didn't make it a good Trek story.)

 

[fireproof78]

(In all honesty, after we'd discussed it at length over beers, they came to understand a lot of my issues with the film. The most they could say at the end of the day was that it was a serviceably entertaining action-oriented "popcorn flick" if you were willing to suspend critical thinking, with decent acting and effects, but that didn't make it a good Trek story.)

I'll continue to be wrong, then. It was a perfectly fine Trek story, by many measures for me.