Star Trek 4 Hits A Snag

Most of that wasn't my point, but definitely agree about Beyond. Beyond still confuses the hell outta me in its blah'ness. Lin basically undid everything JJ had done to make these characters a family. It was just so weird. I only watch it for the eye candy of the Nebula/Space warp and Kirk or Spock, though I wanted to rip that wig off Quinto's head. Looked sooo fake.

 

Hope they are using the time to perfect the script.

Yeah,that’ll happen.

 

I honestly don't know how I even feel about the supposed story? It sounds like it is going to take its basic drama from "City on the Edge of Forever", with Kirk having to decide the future based on his father either living or dying during the Kelvin incident.

 

which was the same premise with the Orci ST3 only with Shatner instead of George Kirk somehow. maybe a deaged pre Generations (or resurrected) Kirk Prime would've had to sacrifice himself to maintain the Kelvin timeline? (would Kirk dying prior to Generations have much of an effect on stuff? Ent B in nexus?/Picard in nexus?.. maybe not & who could work it out anyway)

both Shatner/Hemsworth on the Edge of Forever versions sound more intriguing/'big' than Beyond anyway

 

It seals the bubble oddly though. Could write the whole pocket universe out of existence.

 

Honestly, my personal impression is that Lin didn't watch the first two movies or if he did, he didn't like them a lot. Either way, the movie is like a tos fan fiction where the main goal is paying homage to tos, and catering to a side of the tos fandom that didn't like the first two, rather than truly advancing the story of these characters and make them evolve. It isn't like it didn't have the potential to do that, but where the movie is a continuation of the first two it feels like those elements are put only to not be too obvious in its ignoring what the other creative team did (and maybe it was the influence of those few in the creative team - and the cast - who still cared about making it a continuation) . I still like the movie for the most part, but it leaves me with a depressing feeling of 'not enough'. I'd like it better as a novel or fanfiction, or a TV episode, but not a feature movie I had to wait for years and that might as well be the end of it all if we don't get more movies.
I sure hope next time, if any, it's all put in the hands of people who are a bit more inspired by this cast and version of the characters. At least, again, in my perception.

Agree about Spock's wig in the movie. Horrible.

That's the assumption..
though, again, it makes no sense with quantum mechanics because if you go back in time and prevent his death, you just access to another alternate reality where he didn't die, but you cannot change the past, present and future of the reality where these characters exist.

However, they never told us that Kirk would meet his dad from this reality. He meets his dad, but he could come from another reality, from the prime timeline, mirror verse etc etc.
He could also be a robot or fake George Kirk that a new alien race creates to test Kirk.

 

And the thing is that it seems people did go to see the movie at first- it went no.1 at the box office for the first week- then really dropped off after that. So that suggests people were interested at first, but weren't returning to the theaters to see it again.

In fact, fans say it was the best film in the series. It just didn't get any buzz. It should have. It had some groundbreaking things (for Trek) like showing it's first same sex couple, it was Trek's 50th anniversary, it had Idris Elba.

From the way it was put together from the start, I always wondered if was going to have enough gas to last 6 or 8 movies.

It was the 3rd movie and 3 years into their 5 year mission, and Kirk is already bored. We never had the same sense of them exploring many different places because everything was compressed into 2 movies and the cast were doctored into the roles from the start.

We don't see the regular bickering and chemistry between McCoy and Spock, we had to assume it happened. We only hear about the Mudd incident. Everything just seemed artificial from the start.

 

"Time to manufacture another franchise installment. "

 

This is not intended as a criticism of the three recent movies, but:

Any attempt, with any cast, to do a Kirk-and-Spock movie would have seemed artificial by comparison to the decades' worth of character development and interaction we got from the original actors. No?

Sometimes I think the first of these movies shouldn't have been an origin story at all - but rather the equivalent of a Gene Coon-produced season-2 episode, picking up in medias res, as they call it. Might have been easier to imagine that the character relationships were already of long standing.

 

True, but in this case I'm thinking more about how the cast was put together in the first film to begin with. The cast is OK, but it was the promoting the characters from cadets to senior officers and putting them on the Enterprise the way they did that might have damaged it in the long term. It just didn't seem organic and kind of forced.

So you have to try to stuff all this chemistry and experiences into 2 movies. In the first movie Sulu didn't know to get the ship into warp. In ITD he's already 3rd in command of the ship. Scotty goes from exiled mad scientist officer to chief engineer. Uhura and Spock fight and make up, but we don't see any other aspects to their relationship. Everything seemed to just be inserted into the storyline.

By the 3rd movie Kirk is already bored and questioning the meaning of his job, except we haven't seen a lot of their adventures, so we have to assume they all took place. It seems a little fast. I understand maybe after the 5th one, but this is just the 3rd.

And the Enterprise is already being replaced with a new one. Weren't we barely familiar with the original one?

All of this may not be that be that BIG of a deal, but on the other hand it might be. The movies might get a big boost at first, but without a stable background the fans can get bored with it very quick.

I tend to agree, unless they can do it without making things seem forced. It's a matter of how you put them together and what stories you tell.

 

He's not bored. He's depressed. There is a massive difference and connects with him getting older and out living his dad. It is a part of his arc.

 

'Fans say' is the problem though because we keep passing a minority of fans on the internet, most of which didn't even like this trek, as the voice of all the fans and this is, well, counterproductive (and even dangerous for the studio IF they try to write their movies around the wishes and demands of a supposed majority that doesn't even exist).

There are a lot of fans that liked the first movies just fine or more than beyond.
For me, they made true the 'prophecy' of some critics back when stid came out: the creative team trying to cater to old school fans, who can't accept change, can alienate the very side of the audience that liked the first movie so much and made it so successful.

In general, beyond had good word of mouth from 'fans', but proof is in the pudding that these people are only a minority in the audience because the buzz they created, their own promotion of the movie, didn't translate into more people wanting to watch it. And like you said, at first people did go watch it..they were interested, it's after that that it didn't replicate what happened with the first two where not only you got new people watching it, but multiple watches from those who already did. You see that with DVD sales too: tos 'fans' like it but it doesn't sell as well as the first two did. Why?
Perhaps because the fans we are referring to, the ones who like beyond but didn't like the first two, the ones who consider it more 'real trek', those fans don't even represent trek fans as a whole, let alone the whole audience.

Ironically, the fact some fans loved beyond and *how* they were presenting the movie to others, *what* they liked about it better than the first two, might have actually ended up creating 'bad production' if the rest of the audience, pre-existing or potential, of these movies didn't find those elements as interesting.
For one, I think the general impression that the movie ignored the first two (which was helped by promotional material and what the creative team was saying too, so the fans were just confirming that, in a way) hurt it. I do know people who didn't watch it *because* tos fans were saying that it was just like tos and not like the first two. People who liked the first two maybe wanted a sequel instead.

After all, if you think about it on reverse, 'fans' hating the first two movies didn't influence the general audience that much. In fact, those movies were successful. This might suggest that the stuff those fans were complaining about online not only didn't stop other people from watching the movies, but maybe they weren't perceived as issues by the rest of the audience.

Many don't want to hear it but a lot of the audience of these movies are people who like them precisely because they aren't tos, meaning they aren't like that - in their perception as people from this time - outdated, campy, TV show from the 60s.
You have a side of the audience that isn't interested in the original series, and JJ's trek is the thing that made them give trek a chance.

And, frankly, seeing the kind of trek fans who always comment articles about this trek with stuff like ' JJ ruined my childhood forever! he should die in a fire' or 'oh how dare them make Uhura a bigger character than Mccoy and put her face in the posters! eww women!' - like Beyond and say it was 'the best' wasn't, exactly, good promotion IMO.
I think that kind of 'fans' hating the movie's guts would be better promotion, lol
No kidding, non fans or casual fans have a very negative perception of the trek fandom. I know people who stared at me in shock when I told them that I love these movies AND I'm a tos fan. They didn't think it was even possible for 'real trek fans' to like JJ's trek.
That speaks volumes about how much the few on the internet can skew the perception of the many in a fandom.

 

They're popcorn flicks. Just the next installment. The general public didn't find 3 that compelling to see or see again. I think we overestimate the power of the "fans." They were more likely to attend opening weekend and skew those numbers to the good, imho.

I get the points about artificiality. The whole "Kirk-Pine is bored" was very artificial to me. You're right: he tells us they've had a lot of missions. But we haven't seen 79 of them with this crew. Or three years' worth or whatever. "I just saw an "exciting" movie with Khan. (Well, years ago, but that was the last one.) And now you're bored. Poor baby."

And . . . the movie just wasn't that compelling or special. Okay. I liked the new character. But merely ok. I'll not miss these movies. YMMV and likely does. Be well.

 

I don't think it was a good idea to use as part of the advertising campaign. It made the movie seem "old".

 

I don’t do cinema trips anymore. I do t have the time. Busy being a dad. Now...I wait for home media, where I can watch when I want in decent quality, etc etc.
It’s generally quite fast for a home release these days.
Now...people can just wait not for that, but for it to turn up on Netflix etc within a year. Or be cheap in a Digital sale on iTunes etc within six months.
It’s cheaper than cinema, cheaper and faster usually than home media, and has no particular drawbacks if that’s already how you are consuming most of your media.
If I am a fan of something, I know I am gonna buy it on home media release of some kind...a cinema visit would have to have some great benefit. And for me it no longer does. I can only imagine what it must be like for someone with a massive Dolby Atmos screen in their front room at home, as opposed to my bog standard set up. The draw just wouldn’t be there.
And I am not sure Beyond was a date movie for random viewers.

 

Adrian Pasdar might as well have been Tony Stark in Profit.



but...

Adrian Pasdar was (animated) Tony Stark in Avengers Assemble.

 

I get this criticism. I think, in a way, the first two movies promised us the five years mission and them finally becoming a crew and explorers, but beyond robbed us of that because it essentially put the characters to the 'end' of it all directly, without letting us see an ounce of what had happened in those 3 years. Without making us care about it.

We didn't really see all these missions, thus what made the characters tired and homesick. We only just saw them going into their first five years mission at the end of the previous movie and then nothing. It's hard to truly get the characters and their motives because the narrative doesn't really give them enough space and screentime to express that, and it's a pity because it does have potential.

Even them losing their ship didn't make me as emotional as they maybe expected.
Funny enough, some people were joking that the destruction of the ship symbolically came across as Lin, thus the new creative team, destroying everything JJ&Co did. .. why would anyone get that idea?

Yes, I also think their goal was to explore the fact that the characters were tired and discouraged a bit because..it happens. They dreamed about being on a spaceship when they were at the academy, but now that they are finally on it and achieved the job they wanted to have, they may start to question if it was truly worth it or what they really want to do with their life.
There is also the added stress of space.. living your life on a spaceship with no sun signaling the beginning and end of a day must be, no pun intended, alienating at one point.
Routine, doing the same things everyday and seeing the same people..you might end up forgetting, a bit, why you liked that thing so much.

With Kirk, specifically, we never saw that aspect explored, why he wants to be captain? It is to prove he's as good as his dad was, or because he truly found a purpose and inspiration as a person by working in starfleet?
The way he watches Sulu with his family. .is Kirk longing to go have that too? Or maybe just the idea of the simplicity of it. Maybe the responsibility of being the captain makes him feel alone too because he has many friends there, but at the same time he will always be their superior and someone who can send them to their death. This puts a distance between him and those he cares about, thus his family on the ship.
Having your birthday always tainted by the fact your own dad died that day, and you possibly think that it influenced your whole childhood, is real too.
In the end, he's more at peace with this fact too and he doesn't hate Mccoy too much for that surprise party with the crew ^

I think Spock probably started to feel like he had less a purpose on the ship doing what any science officer could do..and he felt guilty because it seemed like the other vulcans were doing something bigger. He kind of wanted to sacrifice his happiness because of the pressure of being alive when many weren't. And even between him and Uhura, perhaps he got insecure about her feelings because she was stressed, tired and homesick too (and maybe she wrongly felt like she was holding him back and didn't want him to stay just for her), and he maybe was subconsciously trying to find a way to shake things up and remind each other why they were together and it mattered too.
A lot of couples that are together since years go through this phase in real life before advancing their relationship with something like marriage or starting a family or some other big project together. So, again, the idea isn't far-fetched or without potential.

I think beyond did have potential. The personal crisis of the main characters isn't nonsense. We take for granted that being in starfleet must be always interesting and exciting, but the movie reminds us that they are 'human'..and it is ok.
The issue is that they didn't invest into this aspect enough. The movie itself doesn't explore those character motivations and povs nearly enough, even for the standards of this genre. Everything is, for the most part, only suggested, implied. Both issues and resolutions happen off screen.
Maybe, just maybe, this is an aspect JJ would be able to fix a bit. He kind of always puts himself from the perspective of the audience that doesn't read the script, thus cannot know any nuance and details not expressed on screen. In fact, in the previous movies he added some small moments to develop some aspects better.
With Beyond, a lot of the stuff the creative team and cast said about the characters and their arcs is too subtle in the movie, too implicit or not developed at all. And it's, again, a pity because the story had potential and there are good moments that have heart. It's just that, maybe, the director didn't care enough. Idek.

Probably, the fact they didn't have a lot of time to make the movie hurt it too. And also, I'm realistic enough to understand that what you can do in a TV show, you can't do in a movie. It is hard to squeeze everything in the constraints of a movie. And it is hard to not have expectations that the movie may not satisfy. We just want to see more of these characters and have many things explored more, but sometimes the creative team might not even have the chance.
This isn't me giving beyond, and the creative team, a pass because I still think some choices were dumb and a waste, and I still think they could do better but their own biases (and a bit of that 'new creative team insecurity') probably are to blame. I'm just saying that, in general, the movies can't satisfy every expectation fans have (and you can't please everyone, of course).

 

Think Paramount, Pegg, Lin etc just got the wrong idea and figured as there was the online fan moaning about STiD and as it was the 50th Ann then everyone(i.e. the hard core fans) would want like a big budget episode of TOS (like if TOS had had its All Good Things 2 hour finale in 1969/70 except big budget/CG and of course new actors - like the way ST09 was sort of the never seen TOS origin pilot but with a bunch of added crazy big cinematic stuff - Nimoy/timetravel/changing timeline/Vulcan/JJ etc) thats ok ...but as a result it sort of felt abit 'Insurrectiony' with the only 'big' hook being the Enterprise being destroyed (again. And it was almost in the last movie). imho the more casual Trek fans, and general movie audiences whose main trek knowledge came from catching the 2 mainstream JJ movies (and maybe a few of the previous movies prior or since and the odd TNG eps back in the 90s or on netflix) were expecting something more mainstream/bombastic inline with the prev 2 films like a Dark Knight Rises/ReturnofJedi/XMen3 finale continuing story/plot lines and maybe concluding some stuff (whilst allowing for potential further movies). with added 'big' cinematic hooks - timeline stuff (establishing that the Primeverse still exists and hasn't been wiped like BTTF etc as not all moviegoers bothered to read Countdown or TM.com), Klingons (after being teased in STiD), romulans (how did Neros actions impact them?), maybe even abit of Borg somehow (due to Neros borg'd up ship), and of course when Shatner was dangled in front of the movie back in 2014 it generated a fair bit of general media interest: https://trekmovie.com/2014/09/29/sh...rt-must-be-worthy-bill-bob-now-tweet-buddies/

 

100%. I literally don’t even remember Trek09 coming out, I rented Into Darkness after it was out and turned it off during Spock’s punching Khan fit, and was so uninterested in Beyond that I bailed on seeing it in favor of another flick, TWICE.

Then I saw it. And I enjoyed it so much that I completely rediscovered my childhood love of Star Trek, rewatched all the movies and series (including TAS), joined this forum, and tuned in every week to watch Discovery.
Beyond continues Kirks character arc and also taps into what I would call the true spirit of TOS, maybe not so much with characters, but with the plot, more so than the other two Kelvin movies did. It actually made the other two much more watchable for me.

And revisiting the MACO/Archer era with an NX warp 4 ship? Named dropping the Xindi?? Literal icing on the cake.