"Star Trek Begins" - The 'Origins' Film Discussion
- Thread starter TerryTrek
- Start date
Maybe this is the story of how the Great BIrd of the Galaxy was manipulated by extraterrestrials into creating a television series about (mostly) harmonious co-existence with alien beings from all points of the galaxy in order to prepare humanity for the actual, official first contact set to take place soon?
Yup. Origin stories make for easy tentpoles.
IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!!!!!
That could make for an interesting movie, actually, but not one for the masses.
I believe that the idea is that more people could go se a reboot of a long standing franchise because they won’t be scared about not knowing about its past history.
beyond, like nemesis, underperformed, so they are wary about further movies.
Maybe, though it is notable that as of this summer it'll be eight years since Beyond, which is two years longer than the previous longest gap between movies, six between Nemesis and Trek XI. Granted, we've had copious amounts of TV productions in those eight years.
True, but the situation of the industry is very different abs we even had a pandemic in between
With the typo I heard this in Gibbs' voice.
Its a cool idea. Its a shame Paramount doesn't think outside the box more often.
Wonder what they are looking for, since BEY was not an incompetently made film. For that matter, neither was Into Darkness.
Considering all the audience would have to know about Cochrane was that he made it possible for humans to explore the galaxy with his invention, I’m not sure what makes it not acceptable for the masses.
I liked beyond a lot, but the marketing was heavily incompetent. I really entered the theatre thinking it would be awful, thanks to those horrible trailers, and was surprised to find it quite good.
well, I was thinking of a reflective, brainy movie, but the main issue is no Kirk no Spock.
Maybe this new project will provide the perspective of a civilian family taking a star trek where we see Starfleet operations on the periphery, and the two intersect in the third act. I would like to see such a film.
Thanks! But I imagine a deep-cut movie about only the Vulcans would only be of interest to the we, not a larger casual audience.
True, but audiences largely stayed away from BEY because they hadn’t been impressed by ID, which tried to re-do The Wrath of Khan — that rare Trek movie so good it actually DID work for larger audiences — and inevitably came nowhere near the mark.
Acceptable, sure, but no more than any other sf movie — most of which bomb when they aren’t called Star Wars. The deep cut (again) would draw the we, but maybe not especially moviegoers at large, especially if there’s no characters they actually recognize (like Kirk or Picard).
Personally I think this whole problem would be solved if there were a willingness to start making low-budget-but-good movies again, instead of needing everything to make 500 million or it’s a failure.
Random thought, again for an idea I’m sure they’d never do for reasons already explained, but I’d love to see it —
A few years ago, the Vulcans detected Earth’s first warp travel and landed there, making contact. But that doesn’t mean things immediately got better on Earth — there are large patches where warlords still ravage their surroundings and, in reaction to the “alien invaders”, are making things even worse.
So a few wiser heads in the remnants of both sides of the late nuclear conflict (not the UN, which is still in the process of unraveling into irrelevance, alas) start to propose some kind of joint project incorporating Cochrane’s invention. Like the historic Apollo-Soyuz or early ISS missions dialed to 100, the project — a proposal for Earth’s very first large starship of any kind — will incorporate crewmembers from both former powers, and make an unprecedented years-long warp flight to the nearest edge of the galaxy. They’ll do science, of course, but of course the whole thing is mainly propaganda for home consumption: “See, we can pull together!”
And very surprisingly, the Vulcans agree it’s a good idea. They’ll even lend a few black-box tech components to help the ship along.
20 minutes into the movie, we see the ship’s launch. Possibly we hold our main title credits for now: a montage of the ship traveling through warp, periodically stopping to recharge, traveling through warp again — and the titles end with the card “Several years later…” as the ship comes out of warp and spots a strange, unexpected thing: the weird purple-pink Barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Almost immediately, a magnetic storm pulls the ship off course, directly into the Barrier.
The rest of the film follows the brave but ultimately doomed adventure of the final days of the ship — the SS Valiant.
Probably more is involved than just what we gather from “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, in a significantly more actiony plot. In the end, the ship’s final sacrifice is portrayed as heroic: we save several local worlds, and possibly the rest of the galaxy, from the super-psionic villains several of our crew morph into.
No sequel till TOS, obviously, and presumably this is part of what makes Vulcan clamp down so hard on Earth’s technological development for the next 80 or 90 years. They’d never say it, but they feel guilty, and want to protect their new protégés!
Nevertheless, the implication is that despite disappearing into legend, the Valiant mission did in fact turn more humans’ minds to the thought that maybe joining together could accomplish something. In that sense, the seeds of what will eventually become the movement that leads to United Earth are laid.
…yeah, I know, deep-cut Trek-fans-only movie, just like everything else, so of course they’d never make it. But I had fun typing this post, so hey.
(**EDIT: Occurs to me that quite a lot of people would start a reasonable outcry when the Valiant project is announced: Why not expend those resources right here on our ravaged planet instead of zooming off to space? But here’s the thing — the invention of the warp engine also makes near-infinite (by previous Earth standards) levels of energy available… and soon, with “warp generators”, civilization in Earth starts rapidly rebuilding, and is soon able to provide abundant resources in the non-warlord areas. (It also helps knock over the power of the warlords in the long run.). This changes minds and makes Valiant very popular, if mostly after the fact.)
A few years ago, the Vulcans detected Earth’s first warp travel and landed there, making contact. But that doesn’t mean things immediately got better on Earth — there are large patches where warlords still ravage their surroundings and, in reaction to the “alien invaders”, are making things even worse.
So a few wiser heads in the remnants of both sides of the late nuclear conflict (not the UN, which is still in the process of unraveling into irrelevance, alas) start to propose some kind of joint project incorporating Cochrane’s invention. Like the historic Apollo-Soyuz or early ISS missions dialed to 100, the project — a proposal for Earth’s very first large starship of any kind — will incorporate crewmembers from both former powers, and make an unprecedented years-long warp flight to the nearest edge of the galaxy. They’ll do science, of course, but of course the whole thing is mainly propaganda for home consumption: “See, we can pull together!”
And very surprisingly, the Vulcans agree it’s a good idea. They’ll even lend a few black-box tech components to help the ship along.
20 minutes into the movie, we see the ship’s launch. Possibly we hold our main title credits for now: a montage of the ship traveling through warp, periodically stopping to recharge, traveling through warp again — and the titles end with the card “Several years later…” as the ship comes out of warp and spots a strange, unexpected thing: the weird purple-pink Barrier at the edge of the galaxy. Almost immediately, a magnetic storm pulls the ship off course, directly into the Barrier.
The rest of the film follows the brave but ultimately doomed adventure of the final days of the ship — the SS Valiant.
Probably more is involved than just what we gather from “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, in a significantly more actiony plot. In the end, the ship’s final sacrifice is portrayed as heroic: we save several local worlds, and possibly the rest of the galaxy, from the super-psionic villains several of our crew morph into.
No sequel till TOS, obviously, and presumably this is part of what makes Vulcan clamp down so hard on Earth’s technological development for the next 80 or 90 years. They’d never say it, but they feel guilty, and want to protect their new protégés!
Nevertheless, the implication is that despite disappearing into legend, the Valiant mission did in fact turn more humans’ minds to the thought that maybe joining together could accomplish something. In that sense, the seeds of what will eventually become the movement that leads to United Earth are laid.
…yeah, I know, deep-cut Trek-fans-only movie, just like everything else, so of course they’d never make it. But I had fun typing this post, so hey.
(**EDIT: Occurs to me that quite a lot of people would start a reasonable outcry when the Valiant project is announced: Why not expend those resources right here on our ravaged planet instead of zooming off to space? But here’s the thing — the invention of the warp engine also makes near-infinite (by previous Earth standards) levels of energy available… and soon, with “warp generators”, civilization in Earth starts rapidly rebuilding, and is soon able to provide abundant resources in the non-warlord areas. (It also helps knock over the power of the warlords in the long run.). This changes minds and makes Valiant very popular, if mostly after the fact.)
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Well, when you do only a couple of films a year, it's always make or break.
If that’s what’s holding them back, then we are never seeing another Star Trek film again. Since they want everyone in the film, instead of making a buddy cop comedy with Kirk and Spock and the Enterprise.
This is like refusing to make a Batman film because the producers can't get Robin and Batgirl. Of a Wolverine film because they can’t involve the rest of the X-Men.
more like not wanting to do a nightwing movie, with the difference that superhero movies are much more popular than Star Trek right now, so a nightwing movie seems more likely than a Cochrane one.
So, based on adjusted box office, the average BO domestic take for a Trek film is $220 million. The lowest box office take was $73 million for Nemesis. Beyond was able to hit that average range at $200 million.
I think it's safe to say that one should not be spending over $100-110 million to make a theatrically-released Star Trek movie. They increased the budget for Into Darkness by $40 million and made about $30 million less than the previous movie. They dropped the budget by $5 million for Beyond and lost another $70 million on box office.
Clearly, the solution is not to throw a crapton of money at a Trek movie. The solution is to keep the budget modest on focus on making a good story. Star Trek 6, for instance, was $3 million cheaper than Star Trek 5 and made $25 million more at the box office.
Star Trek is popular enough to make money. But you won't make money on it if you dump in hundreds of millions of dollars and expect $400 million plus in ticket sales. It's just not gonna happen.
Quoted for truth.
I doubt that — it always seems to come back eventually. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve seen the last of the Kelvinverse, though.
You could have easily said the same after Nemesis.
