Spoilers Star Trek biggest problem is Alex Kurtzman

[F. King Daniel]

I don't expect any future shows beyond the reported Nick one - be they Section 31, or Pike, or Academy, or anything else - to break that mould, which would be a shame. Not exactly much to attract the, excuse the pun, next generation of young Trekkies, is there?

*picks show from menu*

This looks like fun.

*that's literally all there is to it*

Seriously, if they enjoy the characters and setting, that's it. They'll watch. More people like TOS because they liked Kirk and Spock than "Gene's Vision" or because they decided it tackled ground-breaking themes.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The film happened to make a lot of money because it has Star Trek in the title.

*cut to Star Trek Nemesis and Star Trek Beyond looking uncomfortable*

 

[fireproof78]

think you should give them something that they didn't know they wanted, like an optimistic future.

I don't see anything in current Trek that feels pessimistic.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

Dark times, maybe, but without dark times you CAN'T have bright stories. Maybe some people can't tell the difference between setting and story.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Kurtzman is the walking definition of white male privilege. He fails up. He killed two huge franchises in a row. Spider-Man for Sony and Dark Universe for Universal. So what happens? He gets the keys to Star Trek and this is where we are.

The 2017 Mummy movie should have been a career ender.

Tom Cruise was the reason the Mummy sucked. He wrested control of the film from Kurtzman with his big scientological personality and made it a vanity project. I think what we got was a much different version of the film than what Kurtzman intended.

https://variety.com/2017/film/news/the-mummy-meltdown-tom-cruise-1202465742/

The Amazing Spider-Man was suffering from it's first film. It came at a time when the MCU was in full swing and as a result peopel wanted to see Spider-Man as part of the MCU and not doing his own thing. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is an uneven film, but it's not a franchise killer.

The Star Trek Franchise is in no danger of dying under Kurtzman. CBS wouldn't be pushing forward with multiple spin-off series if he was doing a bad job.

 

[Campe]

Honestly, with Discovery, Kurtzman made the best out of a bad situation to begin with. Fuller had extremely ambitious plans that he just had no follow-through with. Flinging our characters as far into the future as the writers did at the end of season two will either be an amazing decision or absolutely terrible. Time will tell.

 

[CuriousCaitian]

Neither Discovery nor Picard are grimdark. Warhammer 40000 is by definition grimdark, and nothing in Star Trek even comes close to its relentless hopelessness.

I admit, I could have chosen a better term, but frankly it seems the only one to describe...

Spoiler

a Picard character having their eye torn out in graphic detail, then being mercy-killed by their adoptive mother,

but maybe that's just me.

*picks show from menu*

This looks like fun.

*that's literally all there is to it*

Seriously, if they enjoy the characters and setting, that's it. They'll watch. More people like TOS because they liked Kirk and Spock than "Gene's Vision" or because they decided it tackled ground-breaking themes.

I probably could have made myself clearer. When I say young, I meant the kind of age I was when I discovered Trek, 10-12. They'd have the most likely kinetic action-comedy Nick show - it's Nick - then a huge jump to the likes of Picard and Discovery, and nothing in between. They could be put off by the disconnect before they've really gotten going. That feels short-sighted to me.

Dark times, maybe, but without dark times you CAN'T have bright stories. Maybe some people can't tell the difference between setting and story.

But when the darkness is so strong and pervasive it unbalances your story, that's a problem, and to me, graphic detail is too dark. I reiterate, I mourn the loss of subtlety and nuance, since I firmly believe leaving things up to the viewer's imagination is far more effective than showing them in explicit, bloody detail.

I don't begrude anyone liking the new Trek shows, I just wish there was one I could like. Is that really such a bad thing?

 

[Winterwind]

Agreed. And the first couple of seasons of TNG are tough to watch now. There is some good stuff in there, but alot of painful junk too. Alot. ENT, VOY and DS9 too.

Since we married my wife has seen a fair amount of TOS, which she loves, all but one unnamed episode of ENT, which she also loved, and all of VOY which evoked more emotional responses than any other show we've watched together (something about the characters/actors, especially Mulgrew's work when she was on top of her game really got to her).

She's seen a fair number of random DS9 episodes too but we just started TNG (we're up to We'll Always Have Paris) and she has cringed and groaned too many times to count. There's some good in there but a couple of nights ago she said "Does it get better? Because I'd rather finish S2 of Buck Rogers than watch this".

 

[Bad Thoughts]

I admit, I could have chosen a better term, but frankly it seems the only one to describe...

So gory, bloody, horrific, or merciless don't work. Why use such a hyper-specific word ... unless it was for effect?

 

[fireproof78]

I admit, I could have chosen a better term, but frankly it seems the only one to describe...

Spoiler

a Picard character having their eye torn out in graphic detail, then being mercy-killed by their adoptive mother,

but maybe that's just me.

That's not "grim dark."

But when the darkness is so strong and pervasive it unbalances your story, that's a problem, and to me, graphic detail is too dark. I reiterate, I mourn the loss of subtlety and nuance, since I firmly believe leaving things up to the viewer's imagination is far more effective than showing them in explicit, bloody detail.

Oh, I don't. My imagination is a far worse place.

And, the other part is that the story isn't done yet. There is a lot of assumption that a story is "too dark" when we are only halfway through. I get that people are going to judge it as they go but this is pretty much the middle of Act 2, by conventional storytelling. It's going to get dark. Hell, I'll take Picard right now over TWOK and "Chain of Command." That's some unpleasantness right there.

 

[Indysolo]

Tom Cruise was the reason the Mummy sucked. He wrested control of the film from Kurtzman with his big scientological personality and made it a vanity project. I think what we got was a much different version of the film than what Kurtzman intended.

https://variety.com/2017/film/news/the-mummy-meltdown-tom-cruise-1202465742/

The Amazing Spider-Man was suffering from it's first film. It came at a time when the MCU was in full swing and as a result peopel wanted to see Spider-Man as part of the MCU and not doing his own thing. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is an uneven film, but it's not a franchise killer.

The Star Trek Franchise is in no danger of dying under Kurtzman. CBS wouldn't be pushing forward with multiple spin-off series if he was doing a bad job.

As I stated earlier, I'm reconsidering whether Kurtzman fails up. While getting control of "Star Trek" is certainly a big deal, it looks like he's been bumped back to television after his film career took a hit with multiple duds in a row.

I would say that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is a franchise killer, because, well they didn't make anymore, and a third one was planned...with Kurtzman as co-writer. It was setting up a Spider-Man universe (remember, they even showed all of the villains in a scene) but then it underperformed and that was the end of that.

And I'm certain Tom Cruise has a lot of say on all of his films, not just The Mummy. Maybe Alex was in over his head, but he's still the co-writer, co-producer and the director. And it was a disaster. And to anyone who keeps telling me the Dark Universe isn't a big deal, Variety, the industry newspaper, said, "The reboot of 'The Mummy' was supposed to be the start of a mega-franchise for Universal Pictures." The studio had high hopes for this and it crashed and burned, killing their "mega franchise" right from the start.

 

[CRM-114]

Maybe Alex was in over his head, but he's still the co-writer, co-producer and the director. And it was a disaster. And to anyone who keeps telling me the Dark Universe isn't a big deal, Variety, the industry newspaper, said, "The reboot of 'The Mummy' was supposed to be the start of a mega-franchise for Universal Pictures." The studio had high hopes for this and it crashed and burned, killing their "mega franchise" right from the start.

In Kurtzman's defense, no other studio has figured out how to duplicate the Disney/Marvel model. It took playing the long game for Marvel to have its' unparalleled success, and every other studio has tried to leapfrog those intermediate steps.

 

[Indysolo]

In Kurtzman's defense, no other studio has figured out how to duplicate the Disney/Marvel model. It took playing the long game for Marvel to have its' unparalleled success, and every other studio has tried to leapfrog those intermediate steps.

Or hired Kurtzman and hoped for the best (Spider-Man and Dark Universe).

 

[nicholasm]

I admit, I could have chosen a better term, but frankly it seems the only one to describe...

Spoiler

a Picard character having their eye torn out in graphic detail, then being mercy-killed by their adoptive mother,

If I may make an observation, it's worth pointing out that at no point in the scene do you see the act of removal.
Icheb's nose and quick cuts mask this.
This exaggeration that I've seen all over the internet regarding the gore of the scene is a testament to acting prowess of the guy who played the adult Icheb, at least from my perspective.

 

[Doom Shepherd]

I admit, I could have chosen a better term, but frankly it seems the only one to describe...

Spoiler

a Picard character having their eye torn out in graphic detail, then being mercy-killed by their adoptive mother,

but maybe that's just me.

TNG’s “Conspiracy” must have imploded you, huh?

 

[Starbreaker]

Grimdark is the new buzzword. 15 years ago it was "gritty."

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I'm learning to let go. Would you rather Trek die a dignified death of have them trot out the corpse every few years and whip it some more?

Such a selfish attitude. You don't like it so just cancel it? Who cares about the people who enjoy current trek, right?

There was nothing dignified about the way 90s trek ended

 

[SJGardner]

Such a selfish attitude. You don't like it so just cancel it? Who cares about the people who enjoy current trek, right?

There was nothing dignified about the way 90s trek ended

If anything, that "valentine to the fans" right at the end might actually count as corpse desecration.

 

[Blooded]

Why not? Let the audience rest every now and then. It's tiring to just keep beating up the audience with world ending threats and things like that.
.

There’s a week between each episode. There’s your break.

 

[Nenya]

There’s a week between each episode. There’s your break.

A break in the story. Have a side story that sort-of connects to the main story.