Future of Paramount includes Star Trek tentpole

This. Although I am glad the Star Trek movies haven't just been variations of the same plot again and again and again (and I say this as a fan of the M:I movies)

 

Pegg is..an unreliable narrator of himself. He says a then b.
Eg he attacked stid haters and defended orci&Co, but then when he became the writer he passively aggressively started to say that he had "issues" with the previous movies (thus understood the haters) and his movie would fix them and be "better". Coincidentally, beyond also ignores most of the plot points that were explored in stid.
He said the kirk/spock bromance was perfect, but then he said it was essentially forced and they needed to move away from it. I take what he says with a grain of salt.

His ego (eg giving his character more screentime) is a problem for me but not as important as the fact that, in general, I don't think he gets this trek and what people liked about it, and he's too biased about bromance and the male characters, and everything tos nostalgia for the white dudes status quo. While jj would talk in depth about Uhura, for example, pegg&Lin completely ignored her and her dynamics in spite of those being important to this trek (and, consequently, a lot of its fans including critics) no less than the "bros being bros" stuff.

For me, both Uhura and Jaylah are a textbook example of what fanboys, of the kind who mostly care only about male characters and their dynamics, do while checking the "white feminism" boxes to hide their bias, or their inability to write women as humans. For example this new trend of writing women who are "badass" and stereotypically "strong women", which would be fine if it isn't done while essentially dehumanizing them by denying them a human connection and interpersonal dynamics too that, of course, male characters are allowed to have instead. (Eg. Uhura's feelings in regards to Spock and her relationship were completely ignored in beyond as she's never allowed to express them and truly be the character of her own dynamic. She had more agency in stid but some, of course, will call her a nagging girlfriend for everything they give Kirk and Mccoy a pass for or even praise them for. Coincidentally, the uhura/sulu pair also was the only duo that got no real development as one)

Never was surprising for me because Pegg admitted his limits with the female characters and his bias for male ones, as well his essentially sidelining their dynamics (with women) making male ones stronger (eg. he commented that in one of his movies the "real romance" ended up being the dudebro stuff between his character and male friend instead of his girlfriend because he didn't want to write her as a "nag" so he sidelined her in the relationship, basically)

But I digress, I don't even think he was THE problem nor that he had all this power.
I blame first foremost paramount&Co and the people who gave the job to Lin&Co and who, while being there from the beginning, still let the reboot lose track and kind of die
It's frustrating when those in power are the first that seem to not really appreciate what they have and invest more into it.

 

i disagree with much of your assessment but it's cool.

i'm more curious about what plot points from star trek into darkness you feel are so egregiously abandoned by star trek beyond. we were all bummed carol was ditched (pegg explained why), i was sad both darwin and 0718 were gone too. but was it the impending war with the klingons? i feel like that's really the only thread into darkness left dangling, but even then it was sort of implicitly handled in that film without necessarily needing to be reconciled in beyond.

 

My main criticism of Beyond was that despite having Pegg writing it, it was still stylistically indistinguishable from the previous two.

Badly flawed as the plot was (and I still don't like many of the casting choices either), the first JJ was definitely the best and they've declined steadily...

 

Starfleet invaded Klingon territory. Starfleet, in concert with Section 31 and the Augments, committed an act of terrorism on Earth soil. The Augments themselves represented a huge dangling plot thread, unless one believes they are just going to be ice cubes for all eternity.

Not to mention, how despicable an act is it to keep humans frozen as some kind of punishment.

There was a lot of good material from Into Darkness to build a follow-up on.

 

Get the Klingon home world invaded point, BUT chalk that up to weak script

Khan and his people needed to be moved on from period. They are kept frozen until Star fleet figures wth to do with them. You really want 72 "super humans" awake and collaborating while Star fleet figures it out?!?! Has poor outcome written all over it. Not despicable smart.....

 

yeah but that weak script even made it a point to have them "invade" an abandoned section of the klingon home world in a non-starfleet ship, like it was deliberately giving the film an out from having to deal with the ramifications of what went on there.

i think the augments were wrapped up well enough, even if it was cruel and unusual punishment putting khan back in the freezer.

i wouldn't mind if the hoped-for 4th film settles the klingon problem, but i didn't find it an ingredient that was lacking in beyond.

 

We never really got a real aftermath to what happened to vulcan, and how it might dramatically change relations in the federation, as well as the vulcan survivors themselves. It's like I'm still waiting for a (real) sequel, tbh. It doesn't feel like a real trilogy, in a sense, and it's disappointing to me.

honestly, I also wish this reboot would at least end with a less inconclusive, less one step forward two steps backwards, and more hopeful ending for the characters. I don't like how they handled Spock's conflict, especially. Don't add some plot elements if you don't care to properly develop them from start to middle and to the end. Too many things happened offscreen or are only implied by a narrative that clearly, for me, prioritized tos homages, comic relief and action scenes over the characters and the "heart".
I can think about a number of things that, honestly, JJ wouldn't have sacrificed. He seems to get the perspective of the audience better because he, for example, would often ask himself if they needed to ADD some character moments to better put the audience in the condition of understanding their feelings more. Lin didn't seem to want to waste too much time for these things, and I personally felt the loss of the heart.

What makes me a bit bitter is the feeling I get that Discovery is inspired by JJ's trek (in terms of bold for canon, and "new") and encouraged by its success, and will probably do a lot of the stuff the reboot wasn't, ultimately, allowed to do in spite of being the thing that firstly started to reinvent trek, in a sense, for a modern audience.
It makes me a tad sad sometimes to see that a lot of franchises can move forward and do new things, while with these iconic characters we are stuck in the past even if it's another reality and different cast.

 

A lot of these franchises really aren't moving "forward" though. They are simply changing the names and are largely the same thing over and over (copying Trek's 90's playbook).

I do think, that to a large degree, "Star Trek" is Kirk and Spock.

 

ST09 was epic in scope and STID was epic in scope. Both featured hugely iconic and emotional scenes, some of which pissed off a small group of fans, but which really engaged a wide range of people. Here are some examples:
1. The enterprise emerging from Titan.
2. Kirk on his bike gazing at the Enterprise under construction.
3. Spock rejecting the science academy.
4. Old and nu-Spock meet.
5. The space jump.
6. Big red monster.
7. Spock vs the volcanoe!
8. Beautiful dissolve from the primitives to the Big-E
9. My name is Khan.
10. That scene with Carol Marcus in the shuttle (sexist or not).
11. George Kirks sacrifice (people were crying in the cinema, something that I've not seen in a Trek film since TWOK)
12. The Enterprise emerging from the sea.

There are lots more. Now, compare those epic and emotional scenes to those in Beyond, which has:
1. The best bit of the whole movie, where Spock looks at the 'family photo'
2. The initial view of the Yorktown.
3. The saucer crash.

Beyond was small scale and mediocre and it cost waaaay to much to make. So far, it's either broken even or it's still in the red. There's no secondary revenue streams from merchandise to speak of, which could've come to aid it. Paramount are in deep trouble after a string of flops.

As others have said, they need to drastically chop the budget. The awesome 'Arrival' cost under $50 million to make and took just over 200 million worldwide. That's a 4X multiplier and excludes DVD's, blu-ray and the rest. Compare that to Beyond, which cost $185 and took $343 million and you get a meagre 1.85 multiplier. It means the film lost money during it's theatrical run. I absolutely know which film I would've wanted to have invested in. And this matters because investors will look at past performance before committing to another film.

Historically, Star Trek movies have been mid budget films and have delivered mid budget returns. The film franchise was never massively popular and I cant see it breaking out into Guardians of the Galaxy style success.

 

Which is a damn shame, because I think you could make a Trek enjoyable like GOTG, if the general populace would get past the "Trek is for nerds" mind set.

 

A good chunk.of STB budget was left over cost from Orchi's failed script I believe someone noted approx 40-50 million

So back that out and Beyond was much cheaper to make

 

what GOTG and the first JJ's trek movie have in common, perhaps, is the fact they both started with some kind of disadvantage in that a lot of people sorta took for granted that, one way or another and for different reasons, both would fail.. yet, they both became a big success and proved those people completely wrong.
For trek the prejudice was that you couldn't do anything new and fresh with trek and these specific characters, there was nothing to reinvent - to some - for a modern audience. For gotg I think it was perceived as the 'silly' thing of the marvel franchise.. some sort of spin off of the 'real stuff' that the other movies represent.. and yet, it proved to be the most refreshing precisely for having everything the other movies they produce in the verse don't have and was embraced by the general audience for those elements.
What I truly envy from the GOTG franchise is the sense I get that James Gunn has a 'plan' and he's truly allowed to have his trilogy while with the reboot, after the first movie, each 'sequel' gets more and more 'standalone' and less a real sequel of the first one. There isn't a sense of a real plan. You could say that gotg is like that because they, unlike us, got the same creative team for (now) all 3 movies at least while trek didn't. And yet, the new star wars trilogy has a creative team that also isn't exactly the same either but they still have a plan for that trilogy, they know what they want to do.. each movie will reveal a puzzle piece and element to that story. For me this is where the reboot failed (and it doesn't help that they made the audience wait for too long before getting another movie so people might have lost interest too)

 

Also STB had only 6 months to write a script due to Orchi's failure and they were still finalizing it during shooting

Script definitely needed to be fleshed out a couple more times

Lin himself noted Beyond was like an expanded episode of TOS on ourpose for the 50th anniversary which was fine by me anyways

Felt like TOS to me. Again ST09 fantastic script had some issues - cadet to Captain of Flagship of Star Fleet, etc.

STID 4 years after 09 and not great IMO

 

Roberto Orci.

I think Into Darkness is the second-best Trek film made.

 

STID pretty consistently rated as one if worst Treks, but that's what makes art great - 1 person's meh is another's precious

4 years in between movies was bad, killed all mojo of 09

Yeah Orci oops......

 

Oh and GOTG 1 good movie.

GOTG 2 not so much

 

I'm sorry but that's just not true.

 

Couldn't agree more myself

Indeed. Here's the evidence for that:
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/every-star-trek-movie-ranked-from-worst-to-best/
As you can see here, adjusted for inflation, STID massively outperforms something like Nemesis or STV, Insurrection or Generations.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=startrek.htm

 

$40-50 million for a script and maybe some location scouting! Seems pretty steep to me.

But just for fun, lets do that. Lets say the film cost $185 million minus $40 million = $145 million dollars to make. That's a 2.3x multiplier. Still a long way from Arrivals 4x multiplier. But it does put the film in break even territory, rather than loss making during its theatrical release.

It could have been worse, just for fun, lets look at some of the other movies:
Nemesis - 1.12X multiplier
Beyond: 1.85X multiplier
Insurrection- 1.93X multiplier
ST:TMP: 2.34X multiplier
STID: 2.46X multiplier
ST09: 2.57X multiplier
Generations: 3.37X multiplier
ST:TWOK: 6.96X multiplier!!!!

Interesting isn't it - Generations and TWOK were produced on tiny budgets, just look at the ROI ! And sweet mother of mercy, take a look at Nemesis, it's no wonder that it destroyed the film franchise. That's not just a flop, that is a true disaster.

We can also see that the ROI for Beyond is the worst of the bunch - aside from Nemesis*.

*NOTE: this is all calculated from the figures on Box office mojo and I simply divide the worldwide take by the budget. I couldn't do First Contact, VI, V, TSFS because the budget figure isn't quoted.

EDIT: I just found this fantastic resource, which gives a profitability gross. Fascinating. You can see that at 185%, Beyond is only ahead of Nemesis at 112%. Even more fascinating is that the TOS films made much more profit on average (427% - largely aided by the TWOK outlier) than the TNG movies (224% avg - massively helped by the Generations outlier) and the Nu-Trek films (227% avg)

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek_films

The whole article makes for a very interesting read. And for anyone still doubting that Beyond has failed to make a profit, we have yet another source:

"Applying an average multiplier of 2.5 to the above listed figures, or achieving 250% of the production budget in box-office takes, reveal that two of the Star Trek movies have barely broke even (unsurprisingly including The Final Frontier, but surprisingly the 2009 blockbuster outing as well), whereas the last two Next Generation movies, as well as Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond have actually lost the studio money."

although...

"It should concurrently be noted that additional revenues, derived from later merchandise, television rights and home media sales, are traditionally discounted by Hollywood studios in their public performance assessments for a movie, meaning that even loss generating productions have the potential to turn net profitable in the long run."