You're making generalizations based on the fact that you and your posse didn't enjoy the new movie.
No. just because a number of people are not stating their opinions, does not mean they don't exist. I have spoken with them, and a lot of people who hated this film do not chime in on forums like this.
And really, the concept of introducing Star Trek to new people/ generations is accurate.
Okay let's not beat around the bush anymore. I am a generation Y'er.
And as such I have, in the course of my life, taken notice of how demographics don't really matter with this generation as it did with previous ones, primarily because you are dealing with a multitude of mediums for one, and secondly with a tendency for a lot of people of my generation to go out and see just about anything, as long as it is hyped, action packed and filled with colorful bombast. And you would be surprised at how many of these people want nothing to do with star trek. They do not recognize this as a star trek movie, they recognize it as a summer blockbuster in the same basic category as transformers and other films of a similar ilk. THAT is why this film 'did well'. But in the abstract it failed miserably.
Because the vast majority of people who saw this film didn't have anything substantial to say about it after they saw it. There was no analysis of it, no dialectical exchanges between scholars on it, no observation of character analysis (because the characters sucked). And this is actually unprecedented in star trek history. Never before this has a star trek film generated so much 'omg that was colorful, loud and wow, btw who's coming with me to see transformers next weekend?' than this one did. Most of the reviews praising this pile of junk do not explain what they are actually praising. It is pathetic.
Did you see how successful the new movie was? Do you really believe that the current group of Trekkies pulled that off
It was film goers who mainly care about summer block busters. It had nothing to do with star trek and everything to do with consumption of pop corn and soda by the increasingly fat masses.
I mean, Trekkies couldn't even get Nemesis up to $50M. How is the new Trek getting almost $258M is it wasn't getting lots and lots of new people interested?
This is not a discussion of financial success, it is a discussion of what constitutes real trek. Justin bieber makes a lot of money too, does that make him the most talented musician ever? Hardly anywhere close to it.
The simple fact of the matter is that there are two breeds of people, those who need to be catered to, and have things handed to them in a colorful, loud bombastic package, or else they reach boredom very quickly (I.E those with pathetically short attention spans) and those who do not see numbers as indicative of anything, but more the abstract philosophical principles as being the heart of a movement.
Star trek has always been a niche market. A fringe development. Transforming it into something that will please the masses is just ripping its essence away from it and sequestering it to generic science fiction filmdom. It doesn't mean anything when it is a mass market development to the degree the latest film was. Which is not to say that it did not have some degree of mass appeal before, but it was always a amalgam of attracting the fringe and the masses in fairly equal numbers. Star trek 2009 attracted mainly the summer blockbuster going masses, primarily because it was not star trek, but starship troopers with the star trek moniker.