Still, Star Trek II was at least produced by a guy who sat down and watched every episode and was very concerned with the fanbase. There was an emphasis on character and was in the space opera vein of the original series. It wasn’t trying to be a blockbuster. Just the opposite, it was a modestly budgeted film that just wanted to be an entertaining story. New York critics of the day actually called it “an overblown TV show.” So it wasn’t a Big Summer Tentpole Blockbuster. It made less money than the first but made a larger profit (or so it’s been said) and was a critical improvement over the first.
Overblown TV show? Get a time machine and haul that critic to 2021 and make him watch everything since then. If TWOK is "bloated tv episode", a lot more flicks down the road redefine that to a new level.
TMP was lucky in that people loved the f/x, which were truly new and unique, as well as being combined with truly beloved characters they wanted to see more of. Another place or time and TMP would have flopped. I'm not a fan of soap opera, but a few elements of that, deftly used, go a long way and they're perfectly done in TWOK, while keeping true to Trek's fundamentals (even if being just shy of being rated R, though the gore demonstrate and remind, without verbal exposition, that Khan and his crew are so rabidly dangerous that it's a good thing nobody met them face to face.)
I recall TWOK being made cheaper, even wanting electronic instruments instead of an orchestra at one point... definitely not to be made as a blockbuster as intent, but to see if the fans would return. I do suspect the gore kept some away, but all of TMP's successes, TWOK feels like the Enterprise crew are more fully back.
Arguably, the second, third and fourth films were the most successful critically as well as in how they captured the essence of the series without bending the format to appeal to the normal or having to shoehorn studio mandates. It was “Star Trek before it became a franchise.”
^^this
Star Trek doesn’t require blistering action and lots of yuks to be good. Look at the best of Star Trek: how much action was in City on the Edge of Forever? Did Mirror, Mirror require 51 minutes of space battles?
^^this
At the same time, The Doomsday Machine and Balance of Terror aren’t great episodes because of the combat. They’re exceptionally well written character pieces with a semi-subtle commentary. There needs to be content, not simply pyrotechnics. Something has to separate Trek from Wars other than "the guy with the ears" or whatever.
^^this
The action relied on the characters. Not the other way around. Ditto for the effects. Trek was better off as a result. Star Wars is not without its merits, but its style as a franchise was always radically different and not interchangeable like cookie cutters.
Even The Wrath of Khan wasn’t an “action movie” per se. It was a movie with action sequences – and not even that many. After the simulation, the first ship confrontation 45 minutes in, then the climax – much of which was a “seek and destroy” submarine type sequence. Star Trek's 2 and 4 were repeatedly used as templates for box office success, but the studio kept looking at the wrong things. It wasn't simply the battles, the laughs, the time travel and Khan like villain that made these films work. Without good writing, content and character, that's just bullshit.
^^this!
The most powerful Kirk 80s movies created set pieces used later on, hence "cookie cutter motif". But redoing scenes and lines or character names alone, for audience recognition of nostalgia (?), isn't the strongest backdrop for a movie. FC, NEM, 2009, ID all directly leech off bits of Kirk era films and doing nothing really new with the tropes. (Think "The Brady Bunch Movie" where they wrapped a new plot around set pieces from old tv episodes, only less effective.) ID would have been far stronger if it didn't dip into the well of Khan and tribbles and magic blood, which is a shame as that regurgitated stuff aside there's something of a great movie, complete with double double-cross, that was strong enough on its own. But all felt that embracing nostalgia that little else was needed to make a great movie. Established fans may or may not care, new fans may be confused - or if they do like the references and see the originals, they may stop liking the new material as a result.
Well, maybe The Next Generation films didn't work as action blockbusters because the series wasn't an action adventure. It was a Sci Fi drama series with more discussion than movement. The Original Series was an action/adventure SF show. The second pilot ended in a fistfight. There were lot of fisticuffs and space battles (as the budget and stock footage would allow) and phaser fights. Lots of violence and death. If anything, Generations was the one TNG film that was anything like the series since it had so little action and Picard got his ass beat by an old guy and needed Kirk to do the fighting. The next three films made Picard an action hero, which was something he never was. That's what Riker was for. Insurrection was kinda close to the series but nobody seemed to like that either.
Pretty much.
INS had potential, but choked on its own overstuffing of half-baked ideas that fall apart too quickly. Even a famous movie critic belittled the film, saying that FC had already done the rebel thing (but as a joke!). Given how badly FC was set up with all that, it's amazing that FC remained the stronger of the two films - when by any criteria INS should have been by far the stronger.
Making Star Trek action films isn't the problem. It's making them DUMB action films that's the problem. Star Trek Beyond tried to balance the two, but by that time people were over it. I felt it was the most successful of the reboots at capturing what I loved most about the series while still giving us epic thrills. It was just a little over the top.
ST2009 had nostalgia in a blender. STID was delayed and still relied more on nostalgia, when they didn't need to. After STID and its aftermath, and prerelease issues for Beyond, the reboot was done. A shame, because BEY truly was a breath of fresh air, and doing the impossible in incorporating pop music in a way that didn't feel gratuitous.
Star Trek was never really a mainstream attraction and only got big box office when 1) returning to the fans after a 10 year begging marathon for new adventures 2) making it different enough to appeal to the normals: which either meant full on comedy, time travel or promising blistering action with young leads. Anything but traditional Star Trek.
It did get a lot of fans, but "mainstream" can be a very splintered word. TOS did hit a cultural zeitgeist. But without Star Wars to cross over genres (and it's more idle fantasy), would Trek really have found a movie or Phase II after the new network idea folded, etc?
And I love how people still jump up and say "Star Trek is a morality play" like it's a frigging new discovery after 55 years of people saying those exact words.
