Therin's point is well taken. If TNG films were not appealing to the mass audience, then what about FC? It featured an integral story to the franchise (Picard's assimilation and later sufferings used as a story idea) that also featured TNG's most dangerous foe the Borg. How is it that that one film did so well with the mass audiences?
Star Trek III
- Thread starter CaptainMatt
- Start date
It was an exciting action movie with SPFX and zombies for groups of teens going on Friday night dates. You didn't have to know any previous ST story to be entertained by "First Contact".
"Generations" and "Insurrection" made profits, too.
Just because someone is critical of something doesn't make them lesser fans than others.
It may not be necessary to appeal to a mass audience, but why on Earth would you cater to a fanbase when a film with a broader audience appeal could make you over 25% more return on your investment, as happened with TVH over TSFS?
Just for the point of discussion I pulled some numbers from a few sources and punched them into Excel. Because it's difficult to compare the actual revenues of films released in different years, I've here adjusted everything on the chart to account for inflation adjusted to 2009 dollar amounts.
(NOTE that I'm not swearing to the accuracy of these figures, as I don't have access to Paramount's accounting, obviously. But they're good ballpark numbers.)
Notice the dip in the Profit/Loss field where TSFS comes in and make of it what you will.
P.S. I chose to apply an industry-rule average to calculate profitabilty, which is that your box-office grosses must reach 1.8(ish) times the production budget in order to break-even. This is not an absolute as it doesn't take into account marketing costs or the specific deals made with the theaters (which have changed over the years), so it's just an rough average for a point of comparison.
I suppose even Picard's backstory with the Borg is aptly covered in the film itself but being a fan I like to watch TBOBW afresh and consider it a worthy precursor to watching FC.
In my personal opinion, what Abrams did was make a lowest common denominator, shallow video game in the guise of Star Trek. It did have mass appeal, but so do Transformers and Big Macs. The mass audience will eventually move on to the next shiny object and this movie will not be remembered well.
Truly memorable movies go for a specific niche and succeed by capturing and exciting that entire niche and then spilling over into the general public. I'm thinking of either 2001 or TWOK. I don't consider TWOK a mass appeal movie because it's a sequel to a specific episode and it's about aging sci-fi heroes. It's very targeted (as far as an action movie and not an art house kind of thing) but was so well made it became part of popular culture.
I'll give you the point that the heroes are a bit older than typical for the genre, though it happens not to be a problem for this film because of a lack of fisticuffs and whatnot. (When Kirk fights Kruge in TSFS, it becomes apparent that he's getting a little old for this shit, and GEN is just embarrassing.)
The sequel point I won't give you. You don't need to have seen Space Seed. You don't need to have any previous exposure to Star Trek at all. If you like good character-driven action adventure, this is a great movie.
Well how about this: I never saw TWOK before I saw TSFS, originally speaking. All I had to go on was Spock was dead and the opening sequence, which was a reprise from the movie with this guy named Khan. True story.
True. In fact, when I saw TWOK the first time when I was a kid, I had never seen the Space Seed. It was one of a handful of episodes I has somehow managed to miss. But I loved the movie and didn't feel at all like I was missing anything. Which is how a good sequel should be made.
I had several diehard ST friends who proclaimed ST IV as "the dumbing down of Star Trek for the masses". Was it critically and financially successful? Yep. Did it reinvigorate a franchise? Yep. Is it remembered well? Mostly. So will JJ's.
I don't find JJ's movie to be "shallow at all". There is depth for those who seek it. Or ignored by those who want explosions.
No, memorable movies can also capture the general public's imagination, and yet still have enough to satisfy most of the diehard fans of the source material. "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy did just that.
To whom is ST II "targeted"? Certainly not only to ST fans.
TVH was "dumb" in the same way as The Trouble With Tribbles and A Piece of the Action. If your friends can't appreciate that as part of the Star Trek experience, that's sad.
Well, they walked away from Star Trek fandom, some that very night, others a few years later, but they blamed ST IV for "letting all the mundanes into fandom".
For those who walked away a few years later, was it because of TVH, or because of TNG's lackluster start and TFF? If it's the latter I can certainly understand. VOY, INS, NEM, and a lackluster start by ENT combined to make me give up on the franchise. (I still enjoy the old stuff, and XI gives me new hope for the future of the franchise, so I'm still hanging out on Trek BBS.)
As I said, I know some people who walked out of the gala premiere night of ST IV saying they were "done with Trek". Several others, who participated in a feisty convention debate called "Star Trek IV and Against" actually liked TNG a lot, but walked away from that during its final year, gave away all their collectibles and got heavily involved in sport. As spectators.
Fans get angry with all aspects of Trek. So many people proclaim ST IV as the great saviour of the franchise, but it still pissed off some people enough that they found other entertainment pursuits.
I should add that those fans who hated the last year of TNG ended up returning to Trek for the premiere of ENT and became huge fans of that. But remained totally ignorant of DS9 and VOY. And then loved JJ's ST movie.
How was the reaction to STV, Therin? I remember the magazine reviews from Aussie fans were very, very negative. Did anyone walk away at that point?
TNG Season 1 and 2 also disappointed a lot of fans from memory.
Tough period for Trek fans, but then TNG lifted its game and became much more consistent, then Meyer and Nimoy gave the TOS crew a decent send off with Trek VI, and Star Trek's prospects started looking brighter again.
TNG Season 1 and 2 also disappointed a lot of fans from memory.
Tough period for Trek fans, but then TNG lifted its game and became much more consistent, then Meyer and Nimoy gave the TOS crew a decent send off with Trek VI, and Star Trek's prospects started looking brighter again.
I'm constantly surprised with fan reactions. One bad movie or series in their opinion, and they are "done", jettisoning their collectables and knashing their teeth. I guess it is because despite a particular movie or series not "doing it" for me, it doesn't in any way sully my enjoyment of the Trek I do like.
The same for me, Lloyd. I try to be as open as I can be about liking the different aspects of Star Trek. Sometimes it can be a challenge, but most of the time I like what I see and read.
Charlie X rocked. Still does.
I was running a 1000-strong ST fan club at the time. We'd been following the making of the movie - complete with traditional sealed sections of gossip - and, having seen episodes of "T.J. Hooker" and read lots about Shatner's ego, we were really dreading what ST V might be like. We were kinda prepared for total disappointment. Opening night was quite hilarious, actually, but many people were laughing in the inappropriate places.
I guess there was enough affection-for-the-source-material in the movie that I don't recall any specific groups of fans getting angry with fandom and stomping off saying it was all ST V's stuff. Not like the polarizing effect of ST IV and the coming of TNG.
By the way, as we came down the stairs from seeing ST V for the first time, we ran straight into this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/therinofandor/6756838363/
Teaser poster for Star Trek V by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
Answer: To stop people leaving early?
There was a lot of resistance to the very idea of a "Star Trek" without Kirk and Spock, and those feelings were quite prevalent in fandom for a long time, but the club was swelling with new members, curious to see episodes because there was a "12-month video holdback" on episodes here in Oz. Luckily the club had a good relationship with CIC-Taft, Paramount Australia's home video division. The episodes started coming to sell-thru, two eps per tape, but only one tape per month, so it took a long time to get see all of Season One with no spoilers.
Reading resistors' negative comments on JJ's ST movie here on TrekBBS reminds me a lot of the old TOS vs TNG debate. There was so much stuff to nitpick, so it was tricky keeping the tone of meetings and our newsletter at civil status quo.
Here in Oz, the toughest thing for a club was trying to satisfy everyone's wants. Opinions were polarised like never before. Some members wanted everyone to shut up and watch the video; others wanted to socialize. Catering became impossible. Would there be 15 attendees or 200? If we charged people to attend, were we in breach of copyright screening a new episode "hot from the USA"? (Yes. We were.) For many years, we'd had people saying that a new TV series would be the best thing to happen for the club, but it did become a juggernaut that became less and less what originally members from 1972 wanted from their little old club.
Yeah. Michael Pillar was God for a while.
How could they approve that poster? 
Sometimes I think the powers that be decided deliberately to let Trek V go completely pear shaped under Shatner. Just my crazy conspiracy theory, but I could imagine people being rubbed the wrong way by Shatner's intensity/ego/pig headedness and eventually shrugging their shoulders and letting Bill take the heat for the disaster, particularly if he refused to budge on the script when he was told the ending was as disappointing as a vacation on Nimbus 3.
I always felt that Trek V should be CGI remastered so that at least it can sit next to the other five films and have movie quality special effects.
As for organising Star Trek events in Sydney: as you know, you have my full sympathy! It's impossible to keep a group of 10 happy, let alone 1,000! Organise an event with 10 confirmed RSVP's, and you'll get either 2 or 20 turn up
I've never seen anything so offensive that I wanted to walk away from being a fan (so far anyway!). The lame, embarrassing Berman years of VOY, ENT and the Next Gen films just made me lose interest and stop watching the modern stuff rather than burn my starfleet uniform in disgust or anything.
Sometimes I think the powers that be decided deliberately to let Trek V go completely pear shaped under Shatner. Just my crazy conspiracy theory, but I could imagine people being rubbed the wrong way by Shatner's intensity/ego/pig headedness and eventually shrugging their shoulders and letting Bill take the heat for the disaster, particularly if he refused to budge on the script when he was told the ending was as disappointing as a vacation on Nimbus 3.
I always felt that Trek V should be CGI remastered so that at least it can sit next to the other five films and have movie quality special effects.
As for organising Star Trek events in Sydney: as you know, you have my full sympathy! It's impossible to keep a group of 10 happy, let alone 1,000! Organise an event with 10 confirmed RSVP's, and you'll get either 2 or 20 turn up
I've never seen anything so offensive that I wanted to walk away from being a fan (so far anyway!). The lame, embarrassing Berman years of VOY, ENT and the Next Gen films just made me lose interest and stop watching the modern stuff rather than burn my starfleet uniform in disgust or anything.
