Kurtzman gets 5 1/2 year deal with 3 new shows in the works

[Jeyl]

That actions have consequences.

We open the film with Kirk in command, we end the film with Kirk in command. Consequences are usually things that stick for the long haul and affect things move forward. The consequences of Star Trek Into Darkness are so minuscule that you could skip over 'Into Darkness' entirely and go straight into 'Beyond' without missing anything.

You can't go from Star Trek: The Motion Picture into Star Trek III without missing a TON of important moments, just as you can't go from Star Trek II into Star Trek IV without missing all the important moments (Well, unless you watch the UK version). There is nothing that happens in Into Darkness of importance that audiences would need to know in order to better understand Beyond.

 

[fireproof78]

100% disagree.

 

[Jeyl]

100% disagree.

I guess if the enjoyment of Star Trek lies solely on the size of the Enterprise's engines changing than yes, I guess some would find more enjoyment out of 'Beyond' knowing that the impulse engine got bigger at the end to 'Into Darkness'. But if that's the case, they're still going to wonder why we haven't seen the ship's aft nacelle yet.

 

[Tuskin38]

I don't think Into Darkness is a good movie at all. I only like 09 and Beyond.

 

[fireproof78]

I guess if the enjoyment of Star Trek lies solely on the size of the Enterprise's engines changing than yes, I guess some would find more enjoyment out of 'Beyond' knowing that the impulse engine got bigger at the end to 'Into Darkness'. But if that's the case, they're still going to wonder why we haven't seen the ship's aft nacelle yet.

I have no doubt that some derive enjoyment from that.

And, again, still disagree. But, what do I know? I think Kirk's emotional journey across the three Kelvin films are fascinating, extremely identifiable for me, and I love watching him grow across each film and the trilogy as a whole.

Mileage will vary. But, I'll take Kelvin films over a lot of other Trek.

 

[Precious Tritium]

I don't think Into Darkness is a good movie at all. I only like 09 and Beyond.

It's definitely not great. This is actually the most time I've ever spent debating it ever, but I do find the character work one of the film's few saving graces. Overall, it's entertaining in short bursts, and certainly propulsive, but a complete mess once the Khan reveal happens.

 

[fireproof78]

It's definitely not great. This is actually the most time I've ever spent debating it ever, but I do find the character work one of the film's few saving graces. Overall, it's entertaining in short bursts, and certainly propulsive, but a complete mess once the Khan reveal happens.

I like the film well enough, but it definitely works well in beats, rather than a fully complete narrative. And, that is largely owing to the Khan reveal. But, both Kirk and Spock's character work is top notch, flows nicely from 09 and ID and in to Beyond. The emotional beats are very strong and I love both of their arcs.

 

[Jeyl]

And, again, still disagree. But, what do I know? I think Kirk's emotional journey across the three Kelvin films are fascinating - Mileage will vary.

I have a feeling that Kirk's frat boy behavior is definitely going to vary people's milage moving forward, especially if they have been keeping up to date on what's been happening with Acitvion/Blizzard. For a studio that took the robot from JJ Abrams' 'Bad Robot' logo and put it in the game as a love letter to his work, yeah. I'm thinking that some very bad people from the studio loved seeing Kirk be all "hello ladies!".

 

[fireproof78]

I have a feeling that Kirk's frat boy behavior is definitely going to vary people's milage moving forward, especially if they have been keeping up to date on what's been happening with Acitvion/Blizzard. For a studio that took the robot from JJ Abrams' 'Bad Robot' logo and put it in the game as a love letter to his work, yeah. I'm thinking that some very bad people from the studio loved seeing Kirk be all "hello ladies!".

I can't stand frat boy behavior. Find it stereotypical, rude, crude and largely stupid. Kirk doesn't stay there and I appreciate that in his journey. Even his overall attitude towards Carol Marcus shifts throughout the film, from oogling her, to checking to make sure she is OK after beamed back to the Enterprise bridge, to welcoming her onboard at the end.

And I have no idea about Blizzard/Activision. Video games have largely fallen out of favor for me and I just don't keep up with that world anymore.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'nos]

And I have no idea about Blizzard/Activision. Video games have largely fallen out of favor for me and I just don't keep up with that world anymore.

Long story short...is that the company is run by frat boys. NERD frat boys. Literally the worst kind.

 

[fireproof78]

Long story short...is that the company is run by frat boys. NERD frat boys. Literally the worst kind.

I stand by my initial statement of frat boys being stupid. Not that I needed any confirmation.

 

[Jeyl]

I can't stand frat boy behavior. Find it stereotypical, rude, crude and largely stupid. Kirk doesn't stay there and I appreciate that in his journey. Even his overall attitude towards Carol Marcus shifts throughout the film, from oogling her, to checking to make sure she is OK after beamed back to the Enterprise bridge, to welcoming her onboard at the end.

Thing is, he goes through the same thing with Uhura in Trek09. From hitting on her, ogling her while she undresses and respecting(?) her in the end. You'd think his frat boy behavior would stop there, but for some reason 'Into Darkness' decided to dial it up by having Kirk wake up with two alien women in his bed and the film immediately cutting to him hitting on two more women on his way to meet Pike.

He will respect women he knows, but there was no indication in 'Into Darkness' that his constant hitting on women en mass is something he's ever going to stop doing. Beyond didn't feature any of that because the writers thankfully didn't put Kirk in that kind of position.

And yeah. I would have liked it if Carol stuck around. But sadly, if you're not Uhura, all women in NuTrek are one shots. Which is sad because that applies to Jaylah as well. At least Beyond remembered that Kirk has a living mother.

 

[fireproof78]

Thing is, he goes through the same thing with Uhura in Trek09. From hitting on her, ogling her while she undresses and respecting(?) her in the end. You'd think his frat boy behavior would stop there, but for some reason 'Into Darkness' decided to dial it up by having Kirk wake up with two alien women in his bed and the film immediately cutting to him hitting on two more women on his way to meet Pike.

He will respect women he knows, but there was no indication in 'Into Darkness' that his constant hitting on women en mass is something he's ever going to stop doing. Beyond didn't feature any of that because the writers thankfully didn't put Kirk in that kind of position.

And yeah. I would have liked it if Carol stuck around. But sadly, if you're not Uhura, all women in NuTrek are one shots. Which is sad because that applies to Jaylah as well. At least Beyond remembered that Kirk has a living mother.

I would not expect the behavior to just stop. That would be rather convenient, if tropish idea of just bad behavior=sudden stop. That said, I think there is a gradual shift from 09, with Uhura, to ID, to with Carol, where it is more than just "Hey, I respect you" to more of a mutual understanding. I think Beyond showcased a small window of insight that what Kirk was doing, and what tracks along psychologically, was trying to fill a measure of emptiness, with the loss of his dad and Pike. And Beyond is another step in that growth where instead of him being after women, he is trying to do his duty, and he sees his crew struggling, and a reflection of his past struggles.

What I think often times gets overlooked in these films is there is subtext. Now, the films don't give a lot of time for these to breathe, sadly, but they are there. That's why Kirk's frat boy behavior doesn't bother me quite as much because I know he can become better. There are snippets of it woven throughout the films.

 

[Amasov]

No he isn't. He's going back to what the franchise has already done and is retroactively changing why those events happened in the first place. When you take designs, characters and situations that have prospered and endeared for over half a century and say "That's not how it looked, that's not how it worked and that's not what it meant", that's not a new direction. It's revisionism.

Yeah, I completely disagree with every single thing you say here. A little less demonizing, please.

 

[dinzy]

To play devil's advocate, we don't actually know if Kurtzman Trek is succeeding, only that it's doing better than anything else on Paramount Plus.

It might be a net loss, but less of a net loss than anything else they are doing. I mean, CBS only started its own streaming service because it saw the writing on the wall that it would just become a production studio for the other streamers if it didn't act. And even Netflix loses tons of money every year which they hide via creative accounting practices.

Netflix is a publicly traded company that reported a positive income for at least the last 4 quarters. They must follow SEC accounting rules and hence cannot use "creative accounting" to present false information. Their last quarter had 7.3 B in revenue which was 1.3 B income. You might be thinking of years ago when they were still growing much faster than now. Companies in rapid growth phases tend to spend more on internal investment than they are bringing in because that investment will increase their income in the future. Whatever they did back then it worked well enough that they increased income by nearly 90% Y/Y.

I find it hard to believe that CBS would keep dumping more and more money into Trek if it was not leading to growth. They leveraged Netflix and Amazon contracts to heavily subsidize the shows. Devil's advocate would have to explain why Netflix continued to pay for more seasons if they weren't seeing some decent numbers from it. It's really hard to find any glimmer of truth in the hater BS and this is just further evidence that it is all insane.

 

[mswood]

Kurtzman's Star Trek doesn't feature a better Humanity. In fact, Kurtzman's depiction of Humanity in Star Trek is rather uninspired and downright vile most of the time. And everyone involved with the franchise now is happy to keep it that way.

Seriously, I can't think of anything done (I will freely admit that I don't include either animated shows) in Current era Trek that you can't find an example in TOS or Berman era Trek, that is exceedingly similar. Really the only real difference I see is language that's more colorful, and violence that is more graphic, but both of those have been occurring every new era with Trek.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

3. I don't expect everything I see onscreen in Trek to be the literal "this is how it happened" in the Trekverse. It's a show, not a documentary.

Absolutely this.

I assume a lot of fans that do want to treat it as a documentary do so because they want to believe in a universe like Star Trek's that could be as real as our own reality. Because Kurtzman dared to update the look of the TOS era, that "broke" it for those fans. Worse, they perceive his change as deliberately "insulting" TOS's original look. But then again I've noticed TOS has always had fans ready to defend its production values because it's been derided as looking "cheap" for many years now. This is why there were fans who hated how "advanced" the NX-01 looked because it had more animated LCD monitors compared to Kirk's bridge featuring static images on monitors. Because deep down inside, they know TOS no longer looks like "our" future. It's deeply embedded in its 1960sness.

And that's okay for me. Because all movies and television are a product of our time, they're not meant to be documentaries.

 

[Amasov]

The whole "Kirk is a rebel cowboy who disobeys Starfleet commands and does what he thinks is right, damn the consequences" was largely a movie invention. Aside from Amok Time, I'm hard-pressed to think of a time in TOS he actually went against orders - and many times he followed orders despite his own displeasure.

Much like they made Picard into an action hero in the TNG movies because it's what Stewart wanted, despite it not working within continuity at all.

The way he ignores regulations with Commodore Decker in Doomsday Machine could be another example. Of course, Decker wasn’t totally in his right mind. The line, “Blast regulations!” just stands out.

 

[eschaton]

Absolutely this.

I assume a lot of fans that do want to treat it as a documentary do so because they want to believe in a universe like Star Trek's that could be as real as our own reality. Because Kurtzman dared to update the look of the TOS era, that "broke" it for those fans. Worse, they perceive his change as deliberately "insulting" TOS's original look. But then again I've noticed TOS has always had fans ready to defend its production values because it's been derided as looking "cheap" for many years now. This is why there were fans who hated how "advanced" the NX-01 looked because it had more animated LCD monitors compared to Kirk's bridge featuring static images on monitors. Because deep down inside, they know TOS no longer looks like "our" future. It's deeply embedded in its 1960sness.

And that's okay for me. Because all movies and television are a product of our time, they're not meant to be documentaries.

I mean, there are lots of examples of how we can't take Trek literally:

• Characters are recast - are we supposed to believe they had plastic surgery between appearances?
• The universal translator (except a handful of times in the Kelvin movies) not only translates speech, but also makes lips move as if everyone is speaking English. Are we to believe that it generates tiny holograms over peoples' mouths?
• While you could arguably claim that music is not internal to the show, lighting is - and often episodes have lighting which would be totally unrealistic (and unhelpful) for any work environment.

 

[F. King Daniel]

We open the film with Kirk in command, we end the film with Kirk in command. Consequences are usually things that stick for the long haul and affect things move forward. The consequences of Star Trek Into Darkness are so minuscule that you could skip over 'Into Darkness' entirely and go straight into 'Beyond' without missing anything.

You can't go from Star Trek: The Motion Picture into Star Trek III without missing a TON of important moments, just as you can't go from Star Trek II into Star Trek IV without missing all the important moments (Well, unless you watch the UK version). There is nothing that happens in Into Darkness of importance that audiences would need to know in order to better understand Beyond.

Classic movies III and IV are a massive reset button. By V, Spock is back, the Enterprise is back, everyone's doing their old jobs... back to status quo established at the end of TMP. You can go from I to V and the only thing you'll wonder about is the "A" painted on the hull