What can Star Trek film series learn from other popular sci movie series?

Actually Star Trek: Into Darkness should have been called Wrath of Harrison.

 

Step 1: Have a plan.

Step 2: See Step 1.

Sorry. Don't mean to be facetious.

I am one of those that feels 4 years was too long between ST09 and STiD.

ST09 was so successful that Paramount gave Bad Robot too much time to tinker with their other pet projects.

I also believe both STiD and STB were over budgeted.

In terms of stories, well, take a step back.

The UFP has just lost Vulcan, a MAJOR founding member world.

Yet the only repercussions we see is Spock pondering what it's like to be a member of an endangered species and also, maybe going off to make more little Vulcans.

The geo-politics of the Federation would have completely altered.

The Klingons and Romulans would and should now be baying at the gates of the Federation.

The real crisis of identity for the federation should have been do we stand by our principles when our very existence is threatened by our enemies?

Now is the opportunity for both those empires to come together and destroy the Federation.

Not Federation officers gone nuts or out for revenge.

I'm also not against stand-alone or multi-crew movies between Nu-Trek movies.

 

1. Budget needs to be lower. $100 -150 mil tops (if you can't make a spectacular movie for $130 mil. you're doing something wrong)
2. As has been said, don't waste goodwill by waiting too long between films.
3. Write better villains. Nero and Krall were seriously underwritten.

 

As I keep saying in these discussions, the solution is very simple: promote the films and talk about them prior to release. Don't be uber-secretive about plot or casting information, and don't wait until one of the stars dies a month before release before doing any promotional work. A lot of people didn't even know Beyond had been released in theatres last year.

I know I keep posting that in every thread where this discussion comes up, but the solution really is that simple, or at least that's a good place to start. We can spin our wheels about doing more movies on a regular basis or trying to develop a shared universe or trying to emulate what Disney is doing with the MCU or Star Wars, but the simple truth is none of this matters at all if the movie isn't being promoted or talked about. Disney didn't allow Abrams to be even a quarter as secretive with TFA as he was with his Star Trek movies, indeed they even overruled a few of his requests for secrecy, like how they released the names of the new characters in the spring against his wishes (he wanted to wait until the fall). And the results speak for themselves.

 

1 - Feel there needs to be universe building like Marvel Avengers GOFG etc. ST tends to have one off movies so harder for main stream to follow. Great script for say movie B not for C maybe in movie H etc.

Each movie can be self contained adventure but building something

2 - better scripts n villians. Again you get villian B in movie but he's actually working for master villian A or setting up something bigger in next or couple movies later.
JJ is not a ST guy n it showed imo.

3 - EFFING PROMOTION Paramount has sucked bawls period. 4 years between ST09 N STID was stupid. Beyond rushed script due to craptastic Orchi script etc. Etc.

 

Thing there is we don't really know how big the Federation is at this point, a few dozen, or many thousands of members?

Vulcan being destroyed could have been a devastating blow to the Federation, or little more than a hiccup.

 

Vulcan is a founding member of the Federation, and Vulcans themselves were the first alien race humanity made official contact with. The loss of the planet is going to be a lot more than a "hiccup."

 

Maybe, depends on whether Vulcan was 10% of the Federation, or 0.05%.

 

After ST09, they missed the chance to have a continuation with an inexperienced young team. They could have used the Klingons. A Klingon villain with enough motivation to be Kirk's enemy in a strategy battle.
And another important point was the bad publicity of each film, especially the last one.

 

I don't know, Trek XI had generally positive publicity, from people who matter anyway. The general public doesn't notice or give much of a damn about internet trolls complaining about raped childhoods or incorrect registry numbers.

STID and Beyond didn't do so great with publicity, I grant you. It certainly didn't help STID when Orci began his "shitty fans" tirade.

 

I think ralph meant the publicity/advertising by the distributing studio, and not the reviews by the audience.

 

Then Trek XI still had pretty good publicity, even though in that case it was probably more accidental as a result of the movie originally having a release date five months earlier than it eventually got released.

 

Didn't Orci go off on one guy who had been trolling him for months? And wasn't the apex of his rant a direct quote from this guy:

 

Basically he asked one of the detractors to outline his issues with the movie so Orci could respond to them and the guy said that the movie was terrible and had no story (or words to that effect) and so Orci responded in kind by quoting Pegg.

 

Facts are an inconvenience when it comes to me fanrage butthurt anyway.

 

The one thing that changed Marvel forever is it learned to be inclusive instead of exclusive. In 50 years Star Trek has never done that. ST09 came close and TVH sort of did, but none the less the one phrase that's bound to be repeated in any review for any Star Trek film is "The fans will like it." That has to change.

And if I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. There's one really easy way to start. It starts with a B and ends with an dot-org.

Through in a little Alien vibe on top of War of the Worlds/ID4, with some Walking Dead in space frosting. It's so blatantly obvious that I'm still dumbfounded no one has figured it out yet.

 

if Covenant hits big (I mean 500m+) then maybe Paramount will notice and think 'hey haven't we got something like that with Trek?' also add Shatner and do a big screen JJTrek version of...'The Return!'

 

interesting bit in this article regarding the state of the JJTrek and Wolverine films

makes you realise how Beyond should really have cleaned up Logan style especially as it was the 50th

 

No.

 

Nowadays successful franchises have a diverse cast, female leads, strong ensembles. Better marketing too.
In spite of hollywood still being limited in many aspects, modern stories are becoming more and more contemporary thus more relatable to nowadays audiences. What might have worked 50 years ago might not work, or not be enough, nowadays.

So in terms of trek, the big elephant in the room to address here is that it might be a tad delusional for anyone behind trek to serioustly believe that nowadays audiences will find a story focused on 3-4 white dudes new and refreshing.
For all trek's preaching about diversity, inclusiveness, being futuristic etc etc it actually comes across as being one of the most conservative franchises that is severely held back by its past and nostalgia (in ways other franchises that also have elements of nostalgia - see star wars - aren't).
A lot of fans aren't willing to 'give that up' and they insist some things (or most, when it comes to some fans) must be like the old thing, but then play oblivious when asking themselves why trek isn't as successful as other things are being. Can't have the cake and eat it too.

case in point, JJ elevated Uhura to the original trio level and added new dynamics (and a different kind of relationship that isn't another bromance, since the bros stuff is 50 years old for this franchise as it was the only kind of interpersonal relationship they could show at the time - not counting Kirk's, at times Spock's, flings that would never survive the end of an episode/movie). It was one of the aspects that fans (and critics) of this reboot liked the most (and in fact, the marketing guys always use the kirk/uhura/spock trio formula), but Lin&co ignored that because of NOSTALGIA. As a result, Beyond went backwards in order to restore the old trio dynamic in a way that seemed an attempt to placate the nayers who lamented that Uhura had 'replaced' McCoy (she really didn't because the new 'trio', if any, didn't really have those roles. If anyone replaced McCoy, in that sense, it was aos Kirk not Uhura who had completely different dynamics than those McCoy had). They made it seems that in order to give Urban more to do and a purpose in the story they needed to sacrifice Uhura's screentime (and her dynamics), which is really stupid.
Beyond also had this whole illusion of being more about the ensemble than the first movies but it's really just that, an illusion. A trick. In the end, the narrative still obvioustly favors the same 3 (4 if you count Scotty whose actor - now writer - obvioustly gave more screentime to), and the rest interact very little with them, or don't interact with the main guys at all. 'new' dymamics such as Kirk/Chekov and Sulu/Uhura were non existent dynamics, pair the spares (especially in the case of Sulu and Uhura). Everything they kept preaching when it comes to the potential of splitting the group up and why they decided to do that, and what they wanted to archieve, doesn't coincide with what the movie ultimately did. In the movie the only dynamics that get any real development and focus are just the 'old' tos ones so separating the characters the way they did ends up coming across as just an excuse to do that, rather than truly explore possibilities tos never explored.

I think the main problem is a lack of cohesion, a lack of a general 'idea' of where they want to take this franchise to. They don't seem to have a 'plan' for this trek. Beyond feels like a 'spin off' or some sort of fanfiction of this trek made by a biased fan who didn't like some aspects of the canon and decided to change the narrative a bit according to their own preferences. As a result, the integrity of this trek wasn't much respected and neither were, frankly, the fans who had actually loved the first two movies. At this point it feels like if we get another movie it's going to be another 'spin off' that feels disconnetted from the first movies saved for few little nods of previous 'ongoing' story elements that will be either ignored or barely touched upon just for the sake of not having fans call them out for being the clichè of new creative team that ignores what the previous one had done.

yeah, copying is not a good idea. They need to offer something 'different' too.
what they can use other successful franchises for, as an example, is trying to understand what works nowadays and, in trek's case, that this fandom even more than others is a text-book example of the fact that listening to haters too much and equate their preferences to that of the whole audience is not only a terrible idea, but counterproductive.