Star Trek Beyond In Prime Universe

It's just recasting. No big deal.

 

Thing is, there are certain loose rules for recasting in fictional universes: If the continuity stays the same but an actor changes, it's "just recasting" - the role is supposed to be "the same character". If it's a reboot, the new cast is usually accepted as this universes "real" version, aka a new interpretation. If it's a parallel universe, it's again slightly different, in that it can be either the "original" character (but different), or an actual "new" character, that's an alternate version of the "old" character.

Since this movie couldn't really decide wether it wanted to be a prequel/sequel or an actual reboot, their actor/character relationships are muddied as well.

As was hopefully clear from my original post: This is only a very minor issue, and for the enjoyment of the movie itself it's in all fairness pretty meaningless. But it is an issue when trying to put this movie in the larger continuity and context of the Star Trek universe, because it makes it's position in there very ambigious as well, and not in a good way. Some parts are supposed to be accepted one way (oldSpock), others definitely different (PeggScotty).

Still - just a very minor issue.
But hell, what else are supposed to talk about a ten year old movie at this point after everything else had already been said multiple times...?

 

Continuity is irrelevant in this case. Recasting is recasting, regardless of whether time travel is involved.

I mean, Kirk was obviously going to be recast anyway, so what's the problem?

 

Yet Old Spock recognized Young Kirk and Scotty.

Plus Kirk hardly spent any time with Spock at that point.

 

Actually we don't know when Kirk Prime became captain, only the years he commanded the Enterprise (and even then, no fixed start point). And Spock knows history has been rewritten.

 

He knows the crazy Romulan from his present was already waiting for him in the past and blew up Vulcan.

Unless Nero told him the exact date, it's unlikely he knew until he began his mind meld with Kirk.

 

Well, he is emotionally compromised.

 

Unrelated, but I've often wondered if this was a blunder by the producers. It feels like the whole 'make it a part of regular Trek as well as being a reboot' halfway house approach was absolutely a result of someone being scared that rebooting this crew would scare away the fan base so Nimoy and the plot twist were thrown in as a safety net, even though it makes very little difference, and they might as well have just rebooted the thing. Its the same Movie-Executive-Think that makes one shoehorn Shatner into TNG's first movie even though he's basically irrelevant to the movie at large, and the film would probably have been stronger on its own merits without him.

 

As much as I appreciate this point of view I also find it telling that Nimoy said yes to the script when he had said no to Generations. The cynic in me certainly tends towards feeling it as a blunder but there is a part of me would like to think that there is something more to the 09 script that Nimoy appreciated.

 

I thought the premise of 09 was a genius move to be honest, very clever and fresh, while still keeping the link to the older stuff. I loved it, and I think it's the strongest aspect of the movie, which I think is part of why the sequels struggled - they were 'just another star trek movie' whereas 09 felt like a major event.

 

Tbh I can't really fault that analysis Trek '09 at least feels like a movie revelling in the chance to give a shot in the arm to both the franchise and to these particular characters; despite the choice to tie it to old Trek through Nimoy as Spock, this is presented as a contrast to the rest of the movie, enjoying the freedom of exploring these characters in new ways they'd previously not been able to. STID and BEY, however, follow that initial promise with a story about the most obvious villain they could've chosen and yet another evil rogue Admiral that must be stopped at all costs (yawn), and one that was in many ways a conscious love letter to 50 years of Star Trek on screens big and small. Neither of them had the ambition of the 2009 movie. Neither lived up to the promise, although they weren't bad Star Trek movies. They didn't need to be set in an alternative universe, both sequels could've been stories from practically any Star Trek.

 

Into Darkness felt like another big "event" movie to me, and presumably others too since it has Trek's all-time highest gross.

Beyond was fun, but really just another franchise movie in a world spammed with them.

 

Beyond would've felt more an event if theyd used the Orci script

 

'Let it go, let it go...'

 

Beyond would've been laughed out of the cinema if they'd used the orci script.

 

Absolutely! I'm wondering if we have to thank J-J- Abrams for that, tough. "Force Awakens" seem to suffer from the same indicisiveness - it couldn't decide wether it wanted to be essentially a reboot of the original Star Wars, a "next generation"-type of movie, or a continuation for the old crew. It started so strong with the words "Luke Skywalker has vanished" - only to completely sideline that interesting concept up until the very last minute of the movie, and swap over to a beat-for-beat remake.

Well, as a critic of the Kelvin-timeline movies let me say: ST09 is a vastly superiour movie to Generations, in every aspect.

Also, the writers of ST09 did the clever thing to lure Nimoy in, and give him lots and lots of interesting material. Sure, he was also the "oldguy exposition machine", like every senior actor in every franchise movie. But they essentially threw all the emotional scenes at him as well, he essentially had more meat to act than in any Trek movie before. That can to wonders to persuade actors.

Wheras on Generations, they wanted him as essentially a glorified extra, basically just standing there while someone else does something, only so they can say he's in the movie. I totally get why he would reject that.