Forbes: How ‘Star Trek’ Became Obsolete Thanks To ‘Guardians,’ Fast & Furious’ And ‘Star Wars’

[Jayson1]

If Star Trek and Star Wars became irrelevant it has more to do with the MCU and comic book movies and tv shows than anything especially the Furious movies. The Furious movies are more like a modern day version of 90's action movies. Lots of over the top action and characters with some wit and are sarcastic but also have some heart when talking about being a family. At some point Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock will likely be asked to come and reprise their "Speed" characters.

The Comic Book stuff though has taken over the entire nerd genre market with fantasy based stuff like Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Stranger Things sort of being a close second. Sci FI basically died for a little while when Battlestar Galatica and Stargate ended. If anything the new Star Trek movies and Star Wars movies have actually resurrected the genre. The Expanse and the Mandorlian and The Orville and Picard and Lost in Space, The Man in the High Castle the upcoming reboot of Battlestar Galitica would not be happening if not for those Abrams movies from both franchises.

Only thing Star Wars has ruined is basically Kathryn Kennedy's reputation of being able manage such a huge franchise because it's one scandal after another and no big plan or goal it seems as to where to go next. Still even amongst that they still created at least a few movies people like such as Force Awakens and Rogue One and of course on tv you have The Mandorlarian and The Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons. Most of the credit for those things going to Abrams, Faverau and Filoni as she continues to be the Rick Berman ,being the thorn in the real talents side which was Pillar, Ron Moore, Behr from back then.


Jason

 

[fireproof78]

I know and like star wars and I saw the last film. i just dont think any big star wars fan would have done that, for me, they should have walked away the moment they saw the script or not have written what an awful script that retcons the 6 films

That doesn't make them less of a fan.

Similarly, Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett were not Star Trek fans when they made TWOK.

Calling people not fans is gatekeeping. Again, they made movies they wanted to make. Not everyone's going to like them.

 

[Tenacity]

since I think star trek 2009 is superior to the star wars sequel trilogy

I didn't like some of the directions taken, but ST '09 was a coherant story. The sequel trilogy wasn't

 

[Harvey]

It made half of The Force Awakens, it was a flop.

You could make the argument that it underperformed, but to call it a flop? No. It made four times its budget at the box office, that’s not a flop by any useful measure.

(That doesn’t make it a very compelling movie.)

 

[BigDaveX]

It made half of The Force Awakens, it was a flop.

It made about two-thirds of what The Force Awakens did. Which was about what The Empire Strikes Back made compared to A New Hope, and what Attack of the Clones made compared to The Phantom Menace.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

2012 was the year of avengers

I'm not sure what your point is with that. Other films came out the same year and made a billion dollars as well like The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I don't know if a Star Trek sequel could have done as well as those films, but it at least shows there was room outside of The Avengers to make a hit film.

 

[TRON JA307020]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...st-and-furious-killed-star-trek/#1f26d8815bcb
cant really argue with any of that.

totally agree. Abrams made a Star Wats film using Star Trek then he made the real thing so it quashed any excitement for later Star Trek Kelvin movies. Why watch a knockoff when you can have the real thing(well after abrams Star Wars run it really wasn’t the real thing)? I think the show that has captured the true Star Trek spirit is The Orville. Maybe will get that feeling back in trek one day.

 

[fireproof78]

totally agree. Abrams made a Star Wats film using Star Trek then he made the real thing so it quashed any excitement for later Star Trek Kelvin movies. Why watch a knockoff when you can have the real thing(well after abrams Star Wars run it really wasn’t the real thing)? I think the show that has captured the true Star Trek spirit is The Orville. Maybe will get that feeling back in trek one day.

Completely unfair to Abrams. ST 09 is just as in the spirit of TOS as any other Trek.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Every time I see this title I think the Michelle Forbes has been interviewed about Star Trek's fate

 

[Khan 2.0]

hes back. hes bad. and hes mad
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/08/08/movies-box-office-star-trek-never-as-big-as-star-wars-avengers-transformers/

 

[fireproof78]

Well, I'm impressed-he said a lot of things that I already knew and could figure out back when ID was released. But, he said in in a great deal many more words that I would.

I should have had him write my grad papers.

 

[PaddyRyan1706]

Paramount really messed up with Beyond, they almost seemed embarrassed to promote the film and practically buried it. This was the 50th anniversary year of the franchise and there should have been much more fanfare than there actually was. I do think the negative fan reaction to Into Darkness also played a part, much the same way fans stayed away from Solo after The Last Jedi.

 

[plynch]

"before Star Trek Beyond bombed ($338 million on a $185 million budget)"

I know studio accounting can be weird. But -
They invested 185, got that back PLUS 153. 83% return on investment, right?

If I bought a stock at $185 and in a couple years later it had gone up 83% to $338. . . I'd be super happy.

Granted my next door neighbor, JJ, did even better. But still -- that's a nice profit. There must be a rule of acquisition about this.

"Even if it's less than the other guy's, profit is still profit."

 

[valkyrie013]

Sorry, Star Trek will Never be star wars or a mega blockbuster. It'll do well to break even most of the time. However, like Star wars, alot of money is in the Merchandising and other ancillaries.
So the most a Star Trek movie can do is to give a good story, and hopefully bring in new fans to the series. Which happened in spades with ST 09, a bunch of new fans showed up for the movie, and made Star trek cool again. So I'm happy it was made and done well.
Now the next movie should be budgeted for the expectations, and then make a movie with the widest appeal.

 

[PaddyRyan1706]

"before Star Trek Beyond bombed ($338 million on a $185 million budget)"

I know studio accounting can be weird. But -
They invested 185, got that back PLUS 133. 72% return on investment, right?

If I invested 185 in stocks and a couple years later it had gone up 72% . . . I'd be happy.

Granted my next door neighbor, JJ, did even better. But still -- that's a nice profit. There must be a rule of acquisition about this.

"Even if it's less than the other guy's, profit is still profit."

Doesn't modern Hollywood accounting mean a film needs to make at least twice its budget before any profit is counted?
There was the famous case of Return of the Jedi which made $475m against a budget of $32m and Lucasfilm claimed it never made a profit.
https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/

 

[fireproof78]

"before Star Trek Beyond bombed ($338 million on a $185 million budget)"

I know studio accounting can be weird. But -
They invested 185, got that back PLUS 153. 83% return on investment, right?

If I bought a stock at $185 and in a couple years later it had gone up 83% to $338. . . I'd be super happy.

Granted my next door neighbor, JJ, did even better. But still -- that's a nice profit. There must be a rule of acquisition about this.

"Even if it's less than the other guy's, profit is still profit."

Hollywood accounting is super weird and can make anything not make a profit.

 

[The Wormhole]

Doesn't modern Hollywood accounting mean a film needs to make at least twice its budget before any profit is counted?

It's actually three times the budget, meaning Beyond would have needed to make 555 million in order to be considered profitable.

 

[Visitor1982]

"before Star Trek Beyond bombed ($338 million on a $185 million budget)"

I know studio accounting can be weird. But -
They invested 185, got that back PLUS 153. 83% return on investment, right?

If I bought a stock at $185 and in a couple years later it had gone up 83% to $338. . . I'd be super happy.

Granted my next door neighbor, JJ, did even better. But still -- that's a nice profit. There must be a rule of acquisition about this.

"Even if it's less than the other guy's, profit is still profit."

185 million dollars is not counting all the millions spend on distribution, promotion etc. Beyond lost money. It was a bomb.

 

[Qonundrum]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...st-and-furious-killed-star-trek/#1f26d8815bcb
cant really argue with any of that.

I wish I still had their magazines from 15 years ago.

But the article pretty much says "The Abrams Star Trek movies copied Star Wars style", which has been said by quite a few people since, well, 2009...

Big screen movies are more about the spectacle in the first place. The odd thing is, TMP is the one that comes closest to feeling "big screen epic" via a sense of scale sci-fi has very rarely done Star Wars does the rabidly paced pew pew stuff, always has, and the TNG movies also copped the same look because Trek on TV is such a different beast. Even the 80s Trek movies, as good as they are, don't have the comparative depth of the TV show from which they stemmed.

Big screen movies are for epic big adventure. It's a fluke when Trek gets it right but its best days have always been on "the small screen".

That and "Beyond" was easily the best of the three 21st century Trek films in feel.

The Marvel movies also found the spark and were not seen as "nostalgic ride/reboot", which helps.

Abrams (and Johnson) did get the feel of the sequel trilogy right. Disney didn't kill Trek, though. Why he's saying one can argue that...

The article had me laughing at one point, since resorting to rumor mill pablum such as "(presumably) decent ratings" turns a news article into a rumor mill article and the article is not under the "opinion" section.

But, yeah, (a) Marvel's movies of misfits do feel new and fresh, versus (b) a reboot of an old franchise -- which of those two sounds novel? Not (b). And the sad part is, Marvel's movies are based on characters older than Trek's. And from a different genre's, one that's easier to put on the big screen as EPIC escapades. CGI makes that easier and less expensive to do.

 

[Phily B]

It's not so much obsolete, just completely mismanaged, as Trek has historically been.

People on this very forum were questioning how wise it was to wait when there was no news about a sequel even a year after Trek 09. Four years was just way too long between movies, ridiculously long in fact. Beyond was fantastic, but it was more fantastic because of the character interactions and strong script rather than the special effects. You could have cut that whole shoot out on the destroyed Enterprise, the bike stuff and saved tens of millions for example. My point being, I think the time for the tent pole Trek movie has passed and passed when STID was two years too late and didn't even get close to a billion. However, I would really like to see a more grounded Star Trek. Interstellar had a 150m budget, the newer Alien movies had about a 100m budget and I think those types of smaller stories which still allow for impressive set pieces are where the future should lie.