Watching DISCO on CBS is how we decided to get the streaming service.
News WB/Paramount merger talks
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Yes, yet it's leveraging TNG, a show that was created - designed by, written by, and aimed at - Boomers who were the original Trekkies and who were in their thirties and forties when it premiered.
You know, the age at which they had kids who are now in their forties.
There is a huge "blackout zone" shared across big pop culture franchises regarding Millennials, and it consists of this: they're selling to you guys, but almost all of what they're selling was created for the tastes of Boomers and Gen Xers.
Seriously.
Created to sell to Millennials: Harry Potter.
Created to sell to Gen Xers: Star Wars. G.I. Joe. Transformers. He-Man (such as that one is). Ghostbusters. Fucking Mario Bros, for God's sake.
Created to sell to Boomers: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the whole "Silver Age" DC Universe, the "classic" Marvel Universe (X-Men really caught on with Xers) including Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man, etc. Star Trek. James Bond. And so on and so forth. Mission Impossible. Planet of The Apes. Indiana Jones. BARBIE!
You can quibble with how I sort them, and a few I listed were actually created for the parents of Boomers (like Bond). But the range and financial value of IPs that predate the Millennial generation dwarf the creations first introduced for them during their childhood. And Millennials have so learned to consume their parents' and older siblings cast-off playthings that they rarely seem to notice the relative dearth of new creations aimed at them.
The relative success or failure of these things has depended upon how artfully the owners have been able to recontextualize them for sale to people in their thirties, forties and younger. The Marvel Universe would be the big success, there. Star Wars...sorta kinda. Indiana Jones never really has made the cut - kids love the older ones, I guess, but don't seem to think much of the current product. And DC, as a whole? Not so much.
You can throw Star Trek into the box with DC. Maybe the bottom of that box.
Is there a major exception to this lack of new product created for the under-forty crowd, other than the aforementioned Harry Potter? Yeah, possibly, and of course Disney owns it: their modern run of successful animated cartoon characters, mostly Disney princesses starting with Ariel the mermaid and the Pixar characters. And I guess they're nothing to sneeze at, really.
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Paramount really dropped the ball with how they handled the Kelvin movies if they wanted to get young people into Star Trek. Trek XI did manage to bring a lot of young people to the theatre. I was 24 when the movie came out, and many at the theatre were approximately my age or definitely younger. And that's before you factor in other younger people I know went to see it in theatres, including my sister and her friends (who were in their early twenties at the time) and my cousins kids (the youngest was twelve). Now compare that to the other two movies. I was 28 when STID came out, and I don't think there was anyone younger than me at that theatre, though the average age of everyone else in that theatre was probably about ten years older than me. Though when I saw Beyond in theatres, at 31 I was definitely the youngest in that theatre and everyone else there were literal senior citizens. Paramount had the chance to bring in a new generation of fans even partially succeeded with Trek XI but squandered that with how they handled the sequels.
Superman is due to enter the public domain in 2034 (with Batman, Joker, and Wonder Woman following behind in short succession).
Do you see now why DC and Marvel are cranking out the likes of Cassandra Cain, Jason Todd, Nightwing, and Miles Morales? It's as much about restarting the copyright clock as it is about appealing to younger, more diverse audiences.
If you thought people were going insane over Mickey Mouse entering the public domain ... you ain't seen NOTHIN' yet!
Batgirl has entered the chat ...
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I think the first ten minutes of Star Trek 2009 may have been a real "wow" moment for some younger moviegoers who thought they knew Trek's limits from what they saw in reruns. But after that...it boldly failed to go anywhere, yeah.
Still makes me sad. It was a golden opportunity.
Getting good ratings for that sort of things requires a big advertising push, which they didn't do. they were aiming solely for trekkies who hadn't decided if they wanted to get P+ yet, not general audiences.
There is also Lord of the Rings. The Star Wars Prequels (and Clone Wars show) are also Millennial specific.
Created and/or co-opted by the US to sell to Millennials or younger: Pokemon, Dragon Ball (as far as the USA is concerned), Grand Theft Auto, Fast & Furious, John Wick, the Jason Bourne films, Rick & Morty, Spongebob Square Pants, Halo, Frozen. Probably other things that aren't immediately jumping to mind. All this stuff is a mix of things that were either aimed at kids or was heavily targeted towards teens and young adults. They probably geared Game of Thrones towards Millennials specifically, and it seems like they want to get in on the Franchise Game too. Frozen is really a Zoomer thing, but it jumped to mind while I was typing this.
I can't say I'm a fan of most of these franchises, but I've at least heard of them.
I'd have included The Matrix (which I am a fan of) but I think it didn't have staying power as a franchise (unfortunately) and I think it was aimed as much towards Generation X as it was towards Millennials.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is another one that's on the Gen X/Millennial border, and it's made several comebacks (including right now). More recently, Stranger Things is something that I think is aimed towards both groups at the same time (despite taking place in the '80s) and has really taken off.
I can't say I'm a fan of most of these franchises, but I've at least heard of them.
I'd have included The Matrix (which I am a fan of) but I think it didn't have staying power as a franchise (unfortunately) and I think it was aimed as much towards Generation X as it was towards Millennials.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is another one that's on the Gen X/Millennial border, and it's made several comebacks (including right now). More recently, Stranger Things is something that I think is aimed towards both groups at the same time (despite taking place in the '80s) and has really taken off.
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I have five years on you, but my experience was similar. I wouldn't go quite so far with Beyond to say everyone else in the theater was a senior citizen but, at 36, I did feel like I was almost one of the youngest people there.
Like I keep saying, they lost the younger audience by having such large gaps between films. They hadn't built up enough good will with them to be able to coast like that.
You're not factoring in the role of Gen X in Trek fandom. We were the kids who grew up watching it in afternoon syndication in the '70s, bought the Mego figures, etc. And we were in that "Male, 18-39" demographic that TNG was commanding in its heyday.
Now if you were to say that Trek will die with Gen X, I'd tend to agree.
One could even argue that Trek was more of a Gen X thing than a Boomer thing. It only reached the height of its popularity when Gen X was on board.
Lord of The Rings is a Boomer thing; to some degree it belongs to the parents of Boomers, though it broke through in American popular culture in the 1960s.
Star Wars was invented for Boomers. The fact that Millennials consume and make current successes mainly of IP that was created for and attained mass success as products for their parents and grandparents is the point. The prequels and cartoons are current product that is part of a nearly fifty-year-old franchise.
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Not really. I observed that we can quibble about which box I sorted some of these things into, without altering the point that widely popular IP original to the Millennial generation is mostly a great desert.
Gen-Xers play a huge role in Trek fandom - but they're aging folks themselves, and the thing they're fans of was created for their parents and first broke through culturally at that time.
Part of it, I think, is due to the fracturing of mass media and the multiplication of distribution channels. There are a lot more niche fandoms now that are economically viable. It's possible for a product to be more financially successful than many well-known movie franchises and even to generate its own media spin-offs without leaving much of a cultural footprint or entering the zone of popular awareness for most of the population. Halo is an example, as are a number of other video games and contemporary comic book properties.
It'll be interesting to see if the Zoomers bring about some kind of popular creative Renaissance. It doesn't seem intuitive that they'll keep on consuming and regurgitating fifty-year or century-old entertainment product forever - and, again, they're not being bequeathed much that's more recent.
Although...you know know my grandkids are all about right now? Godzilla. Which tracks back to the 1950s, for fuck's sake...
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Oooh, now that's war, buddy!
Those kids who were annoying you in the theater? That was us.
Alright, you may have me on that one.Oooh, now that's war, buddy!
Those kids who were annoying you in the theater? That was us.
Although...the Boomer generation is considered by the census bureau to run though 1964. Quite a few were kids, if older kids, in 1977.
Still...not Millennials, not even nearly.
I don't guess the mechanics of this are all that complicated. Hollywood in particular may cater to youthful tastes, but more than that they follow the money. And, as we're forever being told, there's a real trough there.
Let me add that Lucas made most of his money on merchandising. Who was responsible for those Kenner toys flying off the shelves? It wasn't adult collectors.
Almost half of Gen X are still in the adults 18-49 demo. And they buy a lot of the Star Trek merch as well.
Again, the point is "who was this stuff invented to entertain?" not "who has it made the most money off of?" I agree with the point that SW is a Gen-Xer (not Millennial) product rather only Boomer. After all, it's in the nature of the markets that the most current products of a successful IP will generate the greatest revenue. God knows, the MU movies must have made more cash several times over than anything else in the almost seventy-year history of Marvel. Still Boomer/GenX IP.
And it's not about some unequal distribution of talent across generations of creators, either. The phenomenon is pretty specific to these big narrative-based, corporate-owned cross-media IP. It doesn't apply to music, or performers of any kind; the most successful singers/songwriters and most in-demand actors of an era are, of course, always of their era. People may still kind of enjoy 80s music, but Taylor Swift owns everything.
On the subject of performers, and bringing this back to Star Trek for a moment - the fact that such a big chunk of fannish energy is invested in demands to extend the life of a Trek property focused on septugenarian and middle-aged actors tells you most of what you need to know about the viability of the franchise.
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Wait, so the bottom line is Star Trek will die out?
I can’t see it being gone. On the other hand, Trek shows, novels, games, merch and conventions are dying off quickly now…
I was hoping for a big convention in Bozeman for First Contact when the big day comes round. That’s gonna be my first US visit.
I can’t see it being gone. On the other hand, Trek shows, novels, games, merch and conventions are dying off quickly now…
I was hoping for a big convention in Bozeman for First Contact when the big day comes round. That’s gonna be my first US visit.
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