The trailer needs to hook all the people who went to The Matrix, the Star Wars prequels, the Lord of the Rings films, superhero movies, etc.
Its about Kirk and Spock and how they "find themselves" in the world or so I have the impressions that's the only important exploration worth dealing with in a fictional universe and so its best they don't start off all perfect and self-discovered tends to be boring that way. People is stories NEED arcs.
I'm sorry, but that's not true, at least not to the obsessive extent that seems to have become the 'norm' in
Trek fandom. But I'll address that at the end once I've gotten some of this out of my system ...
My point still remains that clip likely pulled in people who would have phased out if they first thought they were seeing a Trek Trailer. Its all about fooling the none geeks into giving this a none biased look and being there when the movie premiers.
"Looks like 'Star Trek'" = Box office failure.
... that scene NEEDED to be in the trailer, its the hook that catches the attention of those who otherwise would dismiss a standard scifi/Star Trek trailer out of hand.
EXACTLY! This is meant to get new butts in the seats.
I have been struck by how many dedicated fans have said they almost missed the trailer because IT DID NOT instantly look like Star Trek. As stated, this is what we need to get new fans hooked on Star Trek. The alternative is stagnation and death of the franchise.
Hey, I love
Star Trek as much as the next fan, if not a little bit more, but I don't
live it. I enjoy the heck out of it when it's good, and I groan when it's bad. But if it has to be something
other than
Star Trek just to survive, then let's just be honest and
call it something else! I read a lot of lines from fans who say, "Give me
Star Trek! More
Star Trek! Don't let
Star Trek languish and die - change it into something else if that's the only way it will live, but please oh please ohpleaseohpleaseohplease
call it
Star Trek! That way,
Star Trek will never be gone from my life, and change is good and IDIC is great and you can't like
Star Trek unless you accept that it's not about
Star Trek but about Paramount's goddamn bottom line so shut up and get a life." <<deep breath>>
But you know, what is so very wrong with all this is the whole notion of "let's do it for the non-fans". My opinion - if you have to throw away your product and turn it into something completely else in order to sell it, why bother trying to sell it in the first place, and not make something completely new that is "ahead of the times"?
Vulcan Soul, that's my point exactly.

Make a great movie, tell a great story, and if you have to change everything to 'get people interested,' then those people
aren't interested in Star Trek, anyway. They're interested in your movie, and calling it
Star Trek or not isn't going to change that. The bottom line at Paramount is about one thing: money. It doesn't matter to them whether they can make money with
Star Trek or
Alvin & the Chipmunks (and, no, I don't know that Paramount had anything to do with that godawful piece of crap, but I'm sure some obsessive fan will correct me just to be pedantic); it all deposits into the same bank and it's all green. Frankly, I object to the whole 'bait and switch' concept that they employ here: "We made lots of money with
Star Trek, but now we don't, and we're pretty sure that the general public doesn't give a flying f*** about
Star Trek - so let's go on the premise that we
do know what they give a flying f*** about, and
call it
Star Trek, so then we'll get people with taste and lives to pay us $10-$15 a ticket
and we'll get all those die-hard 'I'll watch
anything called
Star Trek even if it sucks' fans who, somehow, we've already determined are too insignificant to base a business model on." You know what? I don't give a damn if it's a business to them!
If the story's good, I'll be entertained, whether it has the ship or Kirk and Spock and McCoy or not. It could have
Andromeda or the
NSEA Protector or the
Nimitz in it for all I care, as long as it's a story worth telling, and it's told well. And I'll add another gripe here: I don't see a story about how Kirk and Spock got together, how they became friends, how Pike took Kirk under his wing, how McCoy came to hate transporters, how Scotty became Super Engineer or how the Federation came to be a story
worth telling when it comes to
Star Trek. And you know why? Because it's not a
Star Trek story - it's a story
about Star Trek! We already had 4 long, irritating years of that with ENT, and this strikes me as yet another fanboy pandering, more fan fiction that Paramount and J.J. are too embarrassed or simply cynical about to admit. Fans have sat around for decades "filling in the blanks" that they found in TOS, and then TNG and the rest, and then Paramount and Bermaga made it a
business model, and even
then we got bitching and moaning about "I didn't want to see all
this crap - I wanted to see the Romulan War!" Guess what!
MORE BACK STORY!!
People here tell folks like me to "get over it" when we ask, "Why can't
Star Trek actually move forward? Why is it that
every time they try to "reinvent" it now, they make up
back story for stories
we've already seen?" They say, "Why can't you accept change?" Well, my answer is, "Why can't you see that change is exactly what you're
not getting? You're getting fan fiction about characters and ships and events and
stories that have been around for
40 years." That's not change, guys.
That is the stagnation you're claiming to want to fight.
When stories were written for TOS, many of them were written by honest-to-God science fiction writers, people who created a story
first and then wrapped it up in a
Star Trek wrapper. Now, no one starts out by asking, "What's a good story?" They only seem to ask, "What else can we tell people about Kirk and Spock and the
Enterprise and Starfleet and the Federation and, oh, can we market that at Toys 'r' Us?"
And we're all expected to say, "Yessir! Thank you, sir! May I have another, sir?" Even by our fellow fans.

We're asked to lower our standards and our expectations so Paramount can make a buck, and so our fellow fans won't have to live without
something called
Star Trek. I don't hate people changing
Star Trek - I hate seeing
Star Trek whored out, and me being asked to leave $20 on the dresser on my way out.