I think Hawley's comments point to a cheaper version of Star Trek, if they move forward. We will be dealing with largely unknown actors locked into low dollar contracts for multiple films. Pretty much 2009 all over again. But this time with the budget reined in.
Tbh, I'm not sure the audience will care about another trek movie, let alone one with unknowns. The main appeal of these movies is, now, the cast and there are many, actually, who wanted a fourth movie with them. It doesn't help that they are teasing news about it since years now so for some it's expected, and any news about a new movie is taken for granted it's a sequel with this cast. An understandable, yet wrong, assumption because years later, the cast is still relatively fresh in people's minds. I mean, I did read some complain when they recasted Spock for Discovery because they expected Quinto..and that wasn't even the same trek iteration!
But then again, this - along with the crazy stuff about Tarantino - tells me that one of the biggest problems of kelvin trek is Paramount&co desperately wanting to make a new, bigger, audience watch their movies (which is fine and makes sense), but they totally ignore those who
already love kelvin trek.
Right after st 2009, I feel the studio tried to please everyone
but those who made that movie successful and were excited about sequels. Didn't that, alone, make the sequels a bit doomed? Perhaps.
Even when they are trying to placate the 'fans' it's always the tos fans, including haters of kelvin trek, only; it's never the fans who like these movies: a 'fandom' that has old fans (always erased as such by some who make it seems liking both the old and new is mutually exclusive), but it actually includes people who weren't trek fans before but they are now.
Never in their interviews and promotion I got the feeling they cared about those people
too.
I'm the first to say you shouldn't make a movie just for fans , I don't believe tptb is a slave to the fans. However, I also believe it makes no sense to want your movie to be more successful by catering to haters, or old fans who won't be on board either way, all the while alienating the audience you already have and thus the fans of your version of the thing. And then you complain when the movie underperforms?
Either they ignored the existence of their own audience or they took them for granted. A mistake either way.
You know this could also open the idea for something I have wanted and that is a Captain Uhura series only here a movie set in the Kelvinverse.
Jason
Honestly, if I were to choose my captain it would be Uhura
because she seems to be one of the most competent, reliable officers there, not to mention she's a balanced combo of Kirk's heart and Spock's logic.
That said, does Uhura even want to be a captain? Probably not. Occasionally being the acting captain yes. First officer? maybe. But captain as a career? I'm not sure it's what she necessarily would want to do versus keeping the role and job she had actually studied for. In a way, Spock too would be a great captain but he also is, first foremost, a science officer.
I feel there is this idea among some fans, no doubt exacerbated by how tptb saw Kirk in tos (see Gerrold saying that Uhura&co were only functions of the ship and only the captain matters), that the only protagonist, the only important character, has to be/can only be the Captain. Nowadays it's a bit outdated tbh, but I remember that there were complains about Discovery too when they revealed that the protagonist wasn't the captain.