Star Trek 4 Reportedly Shelved

Bad timing...and little or no exposure of Beyond before launch....
Dunno I think that the passing of Anton did not help either.

 

I don't think you know what I mean by "stakes". Personal stakes can be high stakes. But Beyond was mostly "conquer the bad guy of the week" sort of stakes...just like Insurrection. The threat to the space station was sort of boilerplate Michael Bay stakes. If anything it lacked personal stakes. Into Darkness had higher stakes because Kirk got knocked down to size by Pike and then Pike died, hence Kirk felt like he had something to prove. It was just the execution of the story that was lacking. In Beyond Kirk looked incompetent losing the ship and crew in the opening act. But instead of following that thread they took the spotlight off of Kirk to give more screentime to McCoy/Spock. So the balance was kind of off. Kirk just sort of muscled through in a wooden "procedural" sort of way, rather unmoved by loss of the ship and casualties which I felt was a poor reading of the character who was always so sentimental about protecting the ship and crew. The ship going up in flames in Star Trek III had immense gravitas but the loss of the ship in Beyond had almost none.

 

Paramount isn't shelving this because they don't want to do another ST movie, they're shelving it because they don't want to do a mega-budget ST movie.

I'm of the belief that Paramount will start working towards another Star Trek movie fairly soon. This isn't the end of ST movies for them, nor the beginning of a long dormancy.

The next ST film will have a budget of around 100M.

Paramount did a similar thing with Transformers. Cut the budget and started over.

 

There have been four major ships losses in the history of Star Trek:

1. The original Enterprise in STIII.
2. The Enterprise-D in STG.
3. The Defiant in DS9.
4. The nuEnterprise in STB.

1. The destruction of the original Enterprise was by far the most powerful, for a number of reasons. No one seeing the film for the first time knew it was going to happen, and the entire scene was filled with dramatic tension. It was a huge sacrifice for both Kirk and the audience, since no one knew what would happen now that the ship we've all known and loved for 20-some years at that point was gone.

2. The destruction of the Enterprise-D was hampered by the fact that the trailers showed the ship exploding, so there was no shock value at all when the audience first saw the film. Add to that, the circumstances behind its destruction were rather lame, although we did get some dramatic tension with the saucer crash. However, Picard's rather curt dismissal of the ship's destruction by handwaving it away and making some lame comment about "they'll build another one" really just showed how little the producers cared about the ship and just wanted a new one.

3. The Defiant getting destroyed might have been right up there with the original Enterprise as far as drama went, but then it was completely negated a few episodes later when they got an exact duplicate as a replacement just so they could reuse a bunch of stock footage in the finale. Quite a cop-out, IMHO. And while Kirk also got a duplicate ship in STIV, the circumstances were completely different.

4. The destruction of the nuEnt had minimal impact IMHO because the audience never really had the time to bond with that ship. Plus, Nimoy/Prime Spock's death far overshadowed the ship's loss.

 

I think Bumblebee is the model Paramount will be perusing with Star Trek.

I don't think the Bumblebee is performing as badly as some people are implying. It should do more than 2.5x its budget. It hasn't even opened in Japan yet (one of it's biggest markets), and it's theatrical run still has a few more months to go. While not a massive hit, it should still be solidly profitable for the studio, and at this point I think they'd be happy with that for an ST film also.

 

It was spoiled in the trailers. Everyone who saw a trailer for STIII saw the Enterprise destroyed.

 

I don't remember seeing that in the trailer. I only remember everyone yelling that someone was stealing the Enterprise, and the out-of-context shuffling of scenes made it look like the Klingons were the ones stealing it. But of course that was like 35 years ago, so my memory might be faulty.

 

Join us on this, the final voyage of the starship Enterprise!

 

And just like TMP, Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, The Final Frontier, Generations, First Contact, and Nemesis. First you say personal stakes are OK, then you say that threatening the station wasn't high stakes enough.

Stakes, ultimately, are meaningless. How you felt when the Enterprise was destroyed is, ultimately, meaningless. It was owerful in SfS because in TOS and the early movies, the ship was a character all its own. Just getting blasted by Khan was a powerful and emotional moment. By the time Beyond came around, the ship, in Trek lore, had been battered to hell in 2, 3, 6, Generations, First Contact, Nemesis, ST09, STID... it's old hat. It will never have the power it had in STIII again.

 

another analysis
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-4-canceled-reason-why/?

 

Neat. That Kelvin art book is out? Is it expensive? Perhaps the original script had Marcus back but maybe that was changed when Simon Pegg and Justin Lin took over.

 

That's not the trailer I remember seeing, but whatever.

 

yes its been out a while now. it is expensive £30 but I got it cheap on amazon. its ok but was expecting a lot more on STID specifically Khan stuff and maybe some stuff on Orcis proposed Shatner ST3 but theres nothing on that (and alot of the ST09 stuff was already covered in the Art of book of that movie) heres a pic of Eve in Beyond you can barely make her out in the middle:
https://www.parkablogs.com/sites/default/files/star-trek-kelvin-timeline-art-of-16.jpg
https://www.parkablogs.com/content/book-review-art-of-star-trek-kelvin-timeline

 

The thing is, when they destroy the ship in beyond it happens after a beginning of the movie that was all kinds of depressing. Specifically, you had Kirk and Spock already deciding they wanted to leave the ship. There was a sense of lack of hope.. and I felt like the other movies didn't matter or more like, they destroyed all that sense of wonder and hope the endings of the other movies created.
You don't care about the ship much because it feels like the characters themselves don't care anymore, that the story had already ended before the movie even started.

This, of course, doesn't mean it was 'the end'. I think the movie wanted, in theory, destroy them all to bring them all back together strongly. The adventure, that almost losing their beloved ones and facing death...would rekindle relationships, friendships and dreams. In part this surely is what happens to the characters in the end where they 'heal' with their ship and look at the future with new hope. But still, the movie didn't do enough so the beginning still taints it all a bit.

For me, the moments where I felt the characters and I cared for them are, coincidentally, the ones where the characters care about the ones who are held prisoner in Krall's base. Kirk wanting to save the crew, an injured Spock trying to keep his cool while being still visibly scared for Uhura when the group is discussing what are their chances to find their friends, and find them alive. Kirk and Bones letting Spock participate to the rescue mission even if he's injured because he mentions Uhura and they understand without him having to explain further or get sentimental. Mccoy also trying to do his best to help Spock but also knowing that if they don't find the crew soon, he might die.
Uhura having to see Syl die, the desperation of her and Sulu when Krall kills their crew mates.
I wish we saw more of that and also the realness of the nightmare the crew held prisoner was experiencing. I didn't want to see more people getting killed or tortured, but I wanted to see how the crew handled the situation and what they felt there while they couldn't even know if their friends were alive, if they made it to the planet, if starfleet was looking for them.

They should've built more on the emotional element and the relationships. If you hurt your characters so badly and put them in such bad circumstances, you should at least let them express their feelings and what you realistically expect the characters to feel as people.. you should make them earn the happy end. But Beyond was too fast paced, the characters reunited but barely had the time to hug each other for the relief of seeing each other alive.
Beyond doesn't have, for me, those big emotional moments that made me truly feel and care about the characters like some moments from st09 and stid did .

 

Yes, because no Starfleet vessel has ever been beat up under the command of the same captain before...

Oh wait

 

By the time he takes over in Star Trek (2009), the ship has been beat up, and he was outmatched by both the Vengeance and Edison's swarm.

 

There are so many ideas for why the franchise stalled, but here are some of the reactions I remember I had when I first saw each movie;

Trek09; I like the look of this movie; The characters are less represed and do normal things like curse, get into fights etc. It seems more modern and relatable. I like the way Kirk meets and flirts with Uhura.

The Nero character and the drill thing destroying Vulcan and the destruction of Romulus and adding prime Spock didn't work for me as much. The action and adventure with the drill and the showdown with Nero was just a blurr.

The ending with Kirk and crew being promoted to senior staff of the Enterprise-I don't know about this. It's not that big a deal, but I have a feeling this might have an effect on the series.

For ITD: The beginning with the couple and the terrorist explosion was interesting. The scenes at Starfleet command I like.

I'm not sure Spock and Uhura as a couple is working. I like Admiral Marcus as a villain. The chemistry with Carol works.

For some reason, when Sulu mentions 'get the shuttle out from the "Mudd Incident", I knew right then the series was starting to skip over too much. It might be a silly notion, but it started feeling empty at that point.

The scene where Kirk dies and then is revived gets no reaction because you knew it was going to happen. Spock screaming Khan's name doesn't have the affect because so much was missing between the these first two movies. It makes Spock looks too emotional. I know, it seems unfair and harsh but without seeing a years worth of interaction, that's how it seems.

Trek Beyond; No anticipation at this point. I didn't even know it had came out when it had already premiered about 3 or 4 months. The movie itself seems like a blurr.