Karl Urban still knows nothing about Star Trek 4 as Paramount fills out summer 2019 slate.

[C.E. Evans]

That is if we think mainstream fans even know what a Kelvin Universe is? I think many of them they just thought it was a reboot or a simple alternate timeline that wiped out the old shows or since many people get confused by time travel just figure that the timeline is restored when they all become a crew like on the old show and everything has been fixed.

We could go even further that many probably thought it was just a simple recasting or remake of TOS and just wanted to be entertained, regardless if it was in an alternate timeline or not. If the new movies had already become old hat by 2016, then it becomes a case of diminishing returns unless something can motivate even non-Trekkers to the theaters.

 

[Smellmet]

And that's the problem. Getting non trek fans to put their prejudice aside and go to the theatre, which by and large the first two movies achieved. Beyond, not so much. The 'it's just another star trek movie' syndrome kicked in and that was that. We're lucky it made 343million really, it could have been worse, it's still only 40 million shy of 09's total. At least that figure suggests there's still a chunk of people outside fandom who will go and see it, just trek fans alone with the previous films couldn't pull in even Beyond's numbers, internationally at least.

 

[Khan 2.0]

still think the better bet (esp for the anniversary) would've been the DOFP Orci ST3 (even if it meant him directing Goyer Blade 3 style . at least itd be the first time a true fan would've directed a trek film.. although couldn't they have just talked him out of it..like 'cmon bob you haven't directed anything you cant expect to direct a huge movie first.. just be happy we using the script'). youd have had Shatner in a major role (would he have been a major OMG draw/event like Ford in TFA? or would it have been just been for the fans like Ford in BR2049? - probably somewhere inbetween), of course Nimoy was due to be in it as well but would've had to be written out. plus youd have some sort of conclusion of the prime/alt timeline theme - started in ST09, continued in STID (the consequences of the changed timeline affecting Starfleet, and inevitability of the prime timeline events seeping into the Kelvin-verse) , and in ST3 it all comes to a head/conclusion (but obviously not wiping out the Kelvin timeline at the end- like the way City of the Edge/Yesterdays Enterprise didn't wipe out the Prime timeline at the end - so it would be like the inverse of those i.e. the alt timeline is now the 'prime' one that would remain). an 'all roads led to here' type thing with major ties to the first movie (abit like TDKR which is what i think Orci said he was aiming for with ST09/ID - using TDK trilogy as a template) and who knows what extra little nuggets Orci had up his sleeve (where the wreckage of the Narada ended up? a different fate for Spock Prime? Klingons? (esp after what happened in STID), previous events visited BTTF2/Terminator Genisys & AGT/TrialsTribulations/Flashback style? maybe even links to 24th century/TNG/Picard?) . and it could've even (indirectly) tied in somewhat with Discovery (i.e. bringing attention on to the Prime Timeline and its importance as a primer for the new Prime set tv show). It would have probably been abit like Dr Whos 50th - a complete nerdathon of trekkiness!

Instead Beyond was a departure of anything timeline related (which is what many seemed to want STID to be.. yet it ended up the biggest grossing Trek movie so far)..and it just felt abit ..Insurrection

 

[Dales]

James Cameron? Lol


And yet, here you are saying that sites like rotten tomatoes are irrelevant, in spite of that so called 'number' literally being the result of the opinions of a sizeable amount of real people in the audience and critics.
Probably, some of those sites you quoted are already included in that number too, in that "whole".

It seems to me that you are accusing (to question their validity and relevance) sites like rt of doing the very thing you are doing right now with those bloggers whose opinions you pass as facts.

Again, an important detail keeps getting deliberately ignored here: that "number", thus those opinions that rank stid above beyond, are consistent, in this case at least, with box office and DVDs sales results as well. It's different elements that in no way contradict each other. The only contradiction is in your argument stating that a movie is more successful than another in spite of evidence suggesting quite the opposite.
To put it simply: there is no proof the people you quoted speak for the majority of the audience, but there is some evidence they might be the minority.

Most of the audience doesn't even post online but they still made their opinion clear by making the choice to spend their money more for a movie than for another. This is something the studio does care about because their job is first foremost making money and if the audience likes, by real numbers representing real people, one movie less than the other two - when they at least hoped it could get the same results of its predecessors, if not doing better - it's a problem. It's the reason this thread even exists.
What I have here is that we got beyond thank to stid being successful still and telling Paramount&Co that trek could make a profit, while thank to beyond we are now in doubt about whether we will get a fourth movie that had already been announced, and whose part of the cast had already signed for.

The rest of this argument is just a discussion about..nothing.

I never said rt was irrelevant, I said there is more to a reception of a film than RT. And the reception of STID as for 2017 is worse than Beyond.

When you go on rt what rt does is just collect reviews in numbers. RT has never done an evaluation of why one film is better than other. that is not how rt works.

I think I would just draw it down to this simple question I ask you, Please can you tell me why star trek into darkness is better movie and better trek movie than start trek beyond?

 

[Smellmet]

it is becoming a discussion about nothing because we start to ignore questions that becomes unanswered.
I never said rt was irrelevant, I said there is more to a reception of a film than RT. And the reception of STID as for 2017 is worse than Beyond.

When you go on rt what rt does is just collect reviews in numbers. RT has never done an evaluation of why one film is better than other. that is not how rt works.

I think I would just draw it down to this simple question I ask you.
Please can you tell me why star trek into darkness is better movie and better trek movie than start trek beyond?

It isn't. It's about on a par. It's without question the more exciting and dramatic movie, and is generally a faster paced roller-coaster ride. I enjoy BC's khan a lot more than krall too, but the casting of that role and spock scream/magic blood are the sole flies in the ointment here, pretty much everthing else is on the money for me.

Beyond counters with having a generally more fun vibe with the characters being for me at least more like what I expect them to be. I think bar the motorcycle sequence (which I didn't like) it also has the best action set pieces and the best visuals. I think the score also is slightly better too. The middle section of Beyond is what let's in down slightly for me, I thought the fight with jayla was an utter bore and the aforementioned motorcycle scene was just... crap. The beastie boys scene was pushing things a bit too also in my view, though the humour in the rest of the film was generally excellent and the easter eggs were much more skilfully woven into the narrative over the heavy handedness of its predecessor, as was nimoy's death.

So all in all I'd call it pretty much even, and I'd include the 2009 film in this also, which suffers from it's own set of problems, but is again, for me an excellent sci fi blockbuster, and every bit as good.

In no way is STID the worst. They're all about the same calibre I think and are all very rewatchable. Not perfect, but what is.

 

[PixelMagic]

I thought 2009 was just ok, Into Darkness what utter dogshit, and Beyond was pretty good.

 

[M-Red]

I love Beyond. It's a TOS episode on the big screen and the character interactions are intelligent and charming. Nuanced with a lot of heart in so many places and ways.

It's also a beautiful film with gorgeous set pieces. And it's "out there."

Great Trek.

 

[Longinus]

I know, factually, that Star Trek Beyond had the weakest box office performance, but critically I find it hard to credit, because it was the best of the Kelvinverse movies by a wide margin, IMO.

It is easily the best of the Kelvin films. The reason I din't go to theatre to see it had nothing to do with Beyond itself, it was the previous two films. I greatly disliked the first, detested the second, so I kinda gave up on this offshoot of the franchise. But I recently saw Beyond on Netflix, and I was positively surprised. It was not amazing or anything, but I genuinely liked it.

So when assessing the success of Beyond, it is good to bear in mind that previous films will have a lot to do with whether people are interested in seeing their sequels.

 

[mos6507]

So on one hand, star trek into darkness is getting passed around as some sort of flop or universally disliked movie, in spite of facts like its results suggesting the very opposite and contradicting these arguments.

That sounds dangerously close to a conspiracy theory. I really don't think things work that way.

For whatever reason the RT stats aren't telling the full story, but the dropoff in engagement definitely says something undeniable. When there are very few user reviews, positive OR negative what that tells you is that the property has largely fallen off the radar. You can argue that Into Darkness was unfairly maligned but the circumstantial evidence points to that film's reception combined with JJ stepping back and the director/script shuffling causing an erosion in fan engagement.

 

[Dales]

That sounds dangerously close to a conspiracy theory. I really don't think things work that way.

For whatever reason the RT stats aren't telling the full story, but the dropoff in engagement definitely says something undeniable. When there are very few user reviews, positive OR negative what that tells you is that the property has largely fallen off the radar. You can argue that Into Darkness was unfairly maligned but the circumstantial evidence points to that film's reception combined with JJ stepping back and the director/script shuffling causing an erosion in fan engagement.

You are right about JJ , him stepping back as a director damaged any momentum the films had left but what killed it on JJ's part was his confession that STID was not that great and I think jj even said, his heart was no longer there in the film during post-production...I guess. this part is what bothers me because if jj maybe had put his heart in the film, the film could have avoided a lot of things even n the very polarizing re-acting of WOK or the fact that BC was khan. we will never know but what is done is done.


I understand why some may prefer STID because the dynamaics of the characters they liked was there more such as spock/uhura relationship but even for me...my pov, that romance was one of the low points in STID and was just badly thought out and mediocrely put together. in truth the only dynamic I liked in STID was between kirk and bruce greenwood's character.

Poster :M-Red could not have said it better than me when he said beyond had character interactions that were intelligent and charming, which is one of the reason I prefer beyond over stid. maybe my number 1 reason.
character interactions are intelligent and charming sums up what makes the 700+ episode of trek so close to home. I did not have that in STID at all, I had it in Beyond.

 

[Malaika]

I greatly disliked the first, detested the second, so I kinda gave up on this offshoot of the franchise. But I recently saw Beyond on Netflix, and I was positively surprised. It was not amazing or anything, but I genuinely liked it.

So when assessing the success of Beyond, it is good to bear in mind that previous films will have a lot to do with whether people are interested in seeing their sequels.

It's not a coincidence that a lot of the people who like beyond best are those who didn't like the first movies.
But on the flip side, a lot of those who genuinely liked the first movies maybe felt alienated by beyond precisely because it was too different and didn't act as a true respectful sequel of the narrative already established.
It's this difference between these two groups, and what they want to watch, that made it so that probably the opinions of those reboot haters who praised beyond essentially had the opposite effect on those reboot fans (hence why positive reviews couldn't automatically help the box office) Nimoy was right when he once said you can't please all the fans. You can't. You please one, lose the other or part of it.

No one is right or wrong by default, but beyond being the least successful may be just another hint that those who disliked the first movies were, after all, a minority; and it's maybe counterproductive to cater to that audience at the cost of driving away the very audience that made your first movies successful.

In either case, if people can understand a reality where there are fans who simply dislike the first movies, it shouldn't be so hard to equally understand that many didn't like beyond. And yet, it seems uber complicate and impossible to even imagine for some people.
Some here seem to essentially say that there is no reason why anyone could dislike beyond TOO, so the reason for its failing MUST lie in "other reasons" that don't contemplate giving to this creative team any responsibility for their own choices, their own product. Seems legit.

That sounds dangerously close to a conspiracy theory. I really don't think things work that way.

For whatever reason the RT stats aren't telling the full story, but the dropoff in engagement definitely says something undeniable.

Beyond being less successful than stid is an idea based on tangible facts that obvioustly don't take only rt into consideration, beside noticing a coherence between different results. People didn't like beyond enough, simple like that.

Conspiracy theories are mostly based on speculations and fabricated facts and manipulation..which is what beyond' supporters are literally doing now to pass stid as the flop that beyond, actually, was.

Everything provided in this thread (and others) to counterargue the evidence showing that beyond is the least successful (or that stid wasn't) is opinions and speculations passed as facts.

And really, I don't even like stid that much. Like I said, I'm the living example that debunks the "beyond got damaged by stid" argument. My issues with beyond have nothing to do with stid, beside feeling like it was worse in the aspects I already didn't like in stid. I can't even say which one of the two is better for me, which would be irrelevant to the point anyway.

 

[donners22]

Blaming ID for Beyond's failure strikes me as a cop-out. It seems to mostly come from fans who dislike ID - they can't point to box office, or critical reviews, or user metrics, or home video sales to cite a consensus to support their view, so a stretch is made to the next film.

Strong Trek films have been able to perform despite a weak predecessor (see the even-numbered films up to Nemesis), and ID was not that anyway - it did well on release, it held a solid audience for a number of weeks, and it performed strongly on DVD & Blu-ray.

Beyond, on the other hand, got weaker reviews - the real warning for me was when I heard a review saying that it was for long-time fans, but wouldn't make new ones. That's what was said about films like Insurrection, and we know how that wound up.

Beyond had a mediocre opening, lost a huge chunk of its cinema audience after the first week, and performed dismally on disc. That suggests poor word of mouth and lack of appeal.

ID had far more emotional impact, a stronger cast (and, better yet, didn't render its guest star unrecognisable) and a more ambitious and dramatic plot. It had broader appeal.

Much as I enjoyed Beyond, it tossed out the progress that the Kelvinverse had made to attempt to appeal to a vocal portion of the fans. Those fans are not numerous enough to prop up a big-budget film, and losing the mainstream audience to try to win them back was a disastrous move.

 

[Longinus]

It's not a coincidence that a lot of the people who like beyond best are those who didn't like the first movies.
But on the flip side, a lot of those who genuinely liked the first movies maybe felt alienated by beyond precisely because it was too different and didn't act as a true respectful sequel of the narrative already established.
It's this difference between these two groups, and what they want to watch, that made it so that probably the opinions of those reboot haters who praised beyond essentially had the opposite effect on those reboot fans (hence why positive reviews couldn't automatically help the box office) Nimoy was right when he once said you can't please all the fans. You can't. You please one, lose the other or part of it.

No one is right or wrong by default, but beyond being the least successful may be just another hint that those who disliked the first movies were, after all, a minority; and it's maybe counterproductive to cater to that audience at the cost of driving away the very audience that made your first movies successful.

Perhaps so. Though simple franchise fatigue might also be part of the blame. It is not unusual for sequels to do worse than previous films, especially once you get to the part three or four.

However, I really don't see why people who like the two first films would particularly dislike Beyond. It is pretty similar action-adventure film in the core, just with less awkward callbacks to the pre-Kelvin Trek or glaring plotholes. But then again,as I don't really like the two first films, I'm probably completely missing what the people actually like about them in the first place.

 

[donners22]

It is pretty similar action-adventure film in the core, just with less awkward callbacks to the pre-Kelvin Trek or glaring plotholes. But then again,as I don't really like the two first films, I'm probably completely missing what the people actually like about them in the first place.

Pretty similar reasons as to why people liked the action-adventure films with gaping plot holes like Wrath of Khan and First Contact, I suppose.

 

[Longinus]

Pretty similar reasons as to why people liked the action-adventure films with gaping plot holes like Wrath of Khan and First Contact, I suppose.

So people would have liked Beyond if it would have had more plot holes?

 

[XCV330]

I actually think Paramount will look and see how Discovery performs for CBS before selecting a script and deciding how to move forward. They're not going to abandon making star trek. Paramount doesn't have another bankable franchise they can rely on, short of starting a new one. Disney is going to keep vomiting up Marvel and Star Wars movies like a machine gun, and they have to have something to counter-offer.

At the same time, it has to be pretty clear by now that whether you like Abrams' films or not, he's not an idea guy. He takes old things, dusts them off and assembles the pieces in more or less the same order, and restarts the motor. Lin offered a movie that broke that mold, at least and went back to Trek tropes. That doesn't get you a lot of new fans.

I think the best thing that can do right now is let Tarantino have his movie, restrain him from from having a scene where he drinks tequila off a yeoman's foot, and otherwise let him have fun with it, casting and otherwise. Don't expect it to have sequels, let it be a one-off that gets attention, and be ready in a couple more years with a new crew and production team.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I hoped my family would step into my world a little more. My sister-in-law said, "it's still Star Trek..."

 

[fireproof78]

So people would have liked Beyond if it would have had more plot holes?

At least a more memorable villain, at least for my money. Krall wasn't bad, but he wasn't great either. He was just average.

 

[Smellmet]

He could have been more interesting if his back story played a more prominent role in the film instead of the too little too late shoehorning that went on, to say nothing of the fact that he looked like a shitty, generic alien that could have come from a multitude of sci fi franchises. A missed opportunity in my view. I enjoyed khan in STID way more, despite the issues with it.

 

[Longinus]

At least a more memorable villain, at least for my money. Krall wasn't bad, but he wasn't great either. He was just average.

This is true. It was under using Idris Elba. It would have been better if the nature of the villain was revealed earlier and there would have been more interaction with him.