"I, Mudd(TOS)"? Better than both.
Spoilers Strange New Worlds General Discussion Thread
- Thread starter NewHeavensNewEarth
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Who's talking about replacing?
If it was an actual replacement this would make sense. Since it isn't then I see no issue.
But when the prevailing product is already outright terrible, what is there to lose?
Well. DSC is mediocre much of the time but I'd never call it terrible. As for other franchises your mileage may vary.
I would in a lot of ways like a hard reboot of Trek. I had a whole thread a few years back with my ideas of how you could modernize Trek in a full reboot. There's lots of more "modern" SF stories which simply can't be done in the Trekverse, for example, because the universe almost totally avoids transhumanist/posthumanist themes.
That said it has to be noted that when other IPs are rebooted, this is often due to the appeal of the core characters. On a fundamental level, I don't think Kirk (or anyone else) has that sort of transferrable cache that Captain America, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, etc. have. The appeal of Trek is built into it being a good framework for exploring the human condition through a SF lens, and it can use any characters to do so. There's a strong argument to be made for this reason that if you mess with continuity a bit too much it raises the question why you didn't just create an entirely new IP.
That said it has to be noted that when other IPs are rebooted, this is often due to the appeal of the core characters. On a fundamental level, I don't think Kirk (or anyone else) has that sort of transferrable cache that Captain America, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, etc. have. The appeal of Trek is built into it being a good framework for exploring the human condition through a SF lens, and it can use any characters to do so. There's a strong argument to be made for this reason that if you mess with continuity a bit too much it raises the question why you didn't just create an entirely new IP.
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Stories don't "replace" other stories. They are additional stories.
You seriously believe that people who write the best Sherlock Holmes story that they can write have as their intention doing a better job of it than Conan Doyle did? No, that is not generally the reason that people write follow-ons or variations of existing stories.
I doubt Peter Hyams thought he could do a better job of directing 2010 than Stanley Kubrick did on 2001 but he stayed focused on telling the best story he could with a largely different crew and ended up giving us a worthy sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made. You don't have to be Kubrick, Roddenberry, Gene Coon or Ira Steven Behr to produce good sci-fi and fantasy. Just focus on creating good, coherent product and if the audience is there the rest will fall into place.
Maybe? I mean, the Kelvin films did flame out pretty goddamned quickly in the grand scheme of things.
In a seven year period they produced three films with a total box office of about 1.2 billion dollars. Pretty much leaves the rest of Trek in the dust.
A lot of trekkies didn't like them. Whoop.
Only got as many movies as The Dark Knight trilogy...
A planned trilogy vs. a franchise that had it's planned 4th movie cancelled a couple of times because the 3rd one did worse than the second one. OK. But why not just compare it to the first 3 Star Wars so we can expect a prequel series in 8 years or so?
I'm sorry, I know that some folks really, really want the Abrams movies to have been failures, but it didn't happen that way.
CBS's problem with theatrical Trek movies is - again, sorry - the brand itself does not have a cachet strong enough to carry the kind of big-budget franchise films which are the studios' bread-and-butter over the last couple of decades. It is old-fashioned, appeals primarily to an older audience, and the media environment is always saturated with cheap or essentially free Star Trek content.
That's the problem the studio must solve in order to make the theatrical franchise worthwhile. Abrams was one approach. Tarantino was another potential approach. We shall see what they come up with next, but it will not be TMP Revisited or TWOK Part II or TNG: Return of The Borg Queen versus The Post-DS9 Alpha Quadrant (NOW WITH MORE SISKO!) or anything resembling the products of those eras.
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Yeah, I think one of them is one of the worst movies in the franchise but there's no way they weren't successful. In raw dollar amounts one of them was THE highest-grossing film in the entire franchise in the U.S. to date.
They mopped up at the box office.
They mopped up at the box office.
When considered as individual movies, they did well at the box office - even BEY. But when considered as a revival of the franchise as a whole, they seem to be a failed experiment in retrospect. CBS might have ultimately turned to Kurtzman to guide TV trek, but the Kelvinverse itself has been abandoned as an ongoing thing. I think it's totally unfair to try and compare anything to the MCU, because Disney/Marvel pulled off something there which is completely unparalleled, but considering the TOS cast got six movies, and the TNG crew got four, the three Kelvinverse movies don't look that successful as a new franchise tentpole in retrospect.
I think a large issue is due to the slowly-unwinding implosion of theaters, there simply isn't a huge market for mid-budget movies in general any longer - particularly mid-budget SF which will still need a lot of VFX shots. If you're gonna do SF, the studios aim for a blockbuster, which really constrains what can be accomplished. I mean, something like TVH being made these days - a low-budget lighthearted family comedy with no central villain - would be next-to-impossible, because it completely bucks the desired format.
I think a large issue is due to the slowly-unwinding implosion of theaters, there simply isn't a huge market for mid-budget movies in general any longer - particularly mid-budget SF which will still need a lot of VFX shots. If you're gonna do SF, the studios aim for a blockbuster, which really constrains what can be accomplished. I mean, something like TVH being made these days - a low-budget lighthearted family comedy with no central villain - would be next-to-impossible, because it completely bucks the desired format.
That's a fannish POV. Yes, they revitalized the Star Trek movie franchise and made the owners a huge amount of money which is the only reason CBS is looking to make further Star Trek movies. The rickety old franchise had deteriorated and then run aground.
They'll base further installments on trying to leverage what Abrams and company accomplished, which is why every time the subject comes up in the news the conversation comes eventually back around to the fate of the Pine/Hemsworth project, etc.
If they don't have some actors that the non-trekkie public wants to see, preferably in roles that the public associates with Star Trek and that will therefore elevate the brand recognition a little, they don't have a movie.
Otherwise, they can just keep grinding out the streaming stuff.
That works for me. I have heard the anti-continuity argument for decades. Trek shouldn't stay in it's lane. Reboot it whenever you like, who cares about some episode from 50 years ago. Well that's fine, Marvel certainly has no problem doing that. Even Star Wars for a time, though they've now been moved back into a structured continuity. However, idk, blame the Okuda's for publishing such terrific books for years, or what not, but a large % of Trek fans enjoy having a single continuity. Does it hamstrung production, of course it does? Maybe Trek should go full Marvel? I don't know; however my point remains existing continuity has room for SNW. Again, this series isn't going to be produced for 10 years, not how streaming works.
Neither of those are good comparisons to rebooting Trek. The original Sherlock Holmes canon ended with the death of the author. It's over you can't add to it. All subsequent works have to be their own thing by definition. No one made a conscious decision to end Doyle's stories and start their own reboot.
2010 is in the same continuity as 2001, so its not an ejection and remake of Kubricks vision.
Trek's original story continuity is still alive after 50 years, even if Discovery's visual reworking makes it bumpier than in the past. That's something special to be preserved. Even the Abrams movies refused to do a true reboot and devoted considerable story time to splitting the timeline.
^^^ By this logic, Star Trek's canonical age ended when Roddenberry died and anything that came after is, by definition, apocryphal. Sorry, but nobody believes that.
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