I for one loved that Beyond's approach to celebrating the 50th was simply be like a really big-budget episode of TOS, albeit through the lens of what JJ has wrought.
Why didn't Beyond do better at the Box Office?
- Thread starter The Overlord
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It cracks me up that people can bitch about a 13th movie, on the 50th anniversary, of a canceled 1960s tv show.
I think fans would complain even if tickets were free, and came with a two week all expenses paid cruise on a real starship.
Beyond felt pretty damn perfect for the 50th to me, and even in 3D I paid a very fair price to see it for what I got.
It cracks me up that people can bitch about a 13th movie, on the 50th anniversary, of a canceled 1960s tv show.
I think fans would complain even if tickets were free, and came with a two week all expenses paid cruise on a real starship.
That's s bit simplistic isn't it? Yes, the series was cancelled three years into it's original run, but then the franchise went on to be a cultural phenomenon...It's not as if ST is some little known underdog that can't stand a little "bitching" from the fans.
Star Trek has never been a super popular franchise.
So were Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey.
In my humble opinion the film has failed or should I say disappointed for two simple reasons.
1/ The marketing campaign for this film and the 50th Anniversary in general was terrible.
They released possibly the worst trailer ever for a major blockbuster. That first Beastie Boys trailer was absolutely insulting and turned a lot of people off
There was absolutely no buzz around this film and I blame that squarely on the studios marketing plan or lack there of for the film...Compare Disney's marketing of The Force Awakens or even Paramount's marketing of ST 09 to the nearly non existent marketing for Beyond.
2/ The film itself wasn't very good.
There are undoudebly some great character moments (mostly centered around Nimoy/Ambassador Spock's death) but beyond that this film doesn't have much to offer.
A weak villain with convoluted/confusing motives and two hours of things loudly banging into other, doesn't exactly make a great film in my mind....It's exactly what I expected from the director of the Fast and Furious.
I was hoping for much more. That leaked statement about the studio wanting ST to be like Guardians of the Galaxy spoke volumes about why this film turned out the way it did.
1/ The marketing campaign for this film and the 50th Anniversary in general was terrible.
They released possibly the worst trailer ever for a major blockbuster. That first Beastie Boys trailer was absolutely insulting and turned a lot of people off
There was absolutely no buzz around this film and I blame that squarely on the studios marketing plan or lack there of for the film...Compare Disney's marketing of The Force Awakens or even Paramount's marketing of ST 09 to the nearly non existent marketing for Beyond.
2/ The film itself wasn't very good.
There are undoudebly some great character moments (mostly centered around Nimoy/Ambassador Spock's death) but beyond that this film doesn't have much to offer.
A weak villain with convoluted/confusing motives and two hours of things loudly banging into other, doesn't exactly make a great film in my mind....It's exactly what I expected from the director of the Fast and Furious.
I was hoping for much more. That leaked statement about the studio wanting ST to be like Guardians of the Galaxy spoke volumes about why this film turned out the way it did.
BINGO!!! Announcing early is as much a marketing tool as it is getting a head start on a sequel to help reduce the time between films. I have no doubt they had already started work on a script and had a list of potential directors, etc. All the while expecting a much different result at the box office than we have seen so far.
I personally believe a 4th movie will happen with a budget in the $160-180 range but I know that nothing is official before filming starts. These kinds of projects get cancelled or indefinitely "delayed" all the time in the industry.
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Well-thought out, nuanced analysis. While I personally enjoyed Beyond, I was not overly impressed either. No way $185MM was necessary to tell this hackneyed revenge story; for example I asked myself during the movie, "How much money was spent just to have CGI dandelions floating through the air?" Don't even get me started on the ludicrously over-designed Yorktown starbase. I also wonder how much of the inflated budget was caused by the compressed production schedule ala TMP (overtime, "blank check syndrome", etc.).
I cautiously look forward to a next installment on a lower budget, but with a much stronger screenplay. My only concern is that, due to contractual talent pay increases, we get a production with a budget heavily lopsided above-the-line (ala TFF). This might not be the non-challenging shiny object required for the China market either.
No, Star Trek has had a far greater impact than nonsense like either of those...You can't even mention trash like that in the same breath as Star Trek
Maybe it didn't do better because it wasn't good enough to for the target audience? I just saw the movie earlier today and wasn't particularly impressed compared with the previous two. All three are decent space action cowboy shoot'em ups but they're not particularly good Star Trek films. There are plenty of folks that said here and elsewhere on the interent that this felt more like traditional trek but I didn't see it. That's obviously an opinion and others can (and will) disagree.
If the movies in this new trilogy are experiencing ever lower opening weekends and box office totals (no idea myself as I haven't researched it personally but it's been said in the thread), I suspect the reason is that the novelty has worn off with casual moviegoers. The folks who watched a few episodes as kids or young adults but then largely didn't follow trek might have seen the first one or two movies simply to check out the newness of the reboot and what changed; those casuals might have already had their fill of nutrek and moved on if they weren't converted into full trekkies. It's the diehards that followed trek for decades that kept the franchise ebbing and flowing across the decades and these reboots certainly weren't catering to them and some have stayed away (by "staying away" I mean not buying merchanise and seeing it only once...not the rabid reaction/purchasing they'd previously done).
Again, I don't dislike the JJverse but I certainly haven't taken a liking to it either. It's more along the lines of acceptance personally but that "meh" attitude doesn't translate into purchases for me. I only saw two of the three in theatres (and only once each), haven't bought any of the DVDs, and haven't bought a single piece of JJverse merchanise (props, posters, models, books, stickers, keychains, whatever... zilch!). YMMV.
If the movies in this new trilogy are experiencing ever lower opening weekends and box office totals (no idea myself as I haven't researched it personally but it's been said in the thread), I suspect the reason is that the novelty has worn off with casual moviegoers. The folks who watched a few episodes as kids or young adults but then largely didn't follow trek might have seen the first one or two movies simply to check out the newness of the reboot and what changed; those casuals might have already had their fill of nutrek and moved on if they weren't converted into full trekkies. It's the diehards that followed trek for decades that kept the franchise ebbing and flowing across the decades and these reboots certainly weren't catering to them and some have stayed away (by "staying away" I mean not buying merchanise and seeing it only once...not the rabid reaction/purchasing they'd previously done).
Again, I don't dislike the JJverse but I certainly haven't taken a liking to it either. It's more along the lines of acceptance personally but that "meh" attitude doesn't translate into purchases for me. I only saw two of the three in theatres (and only once each), haven't bought any of the DVDs, and haven't bought a single piece of JJverse merchanise (props, posters, models, books, stickers, keychains, whatever... zilch!). YMMV.
Oh, I know.
2 minutes of the new cast beating the hell out of a Nimoy replica, before taking turns to shit on its face?
Then making the Tagline 'Star Trek: Our Movie Is Totally Fucking Your Mum?'
Absolutely insulting. Don't know what they were thinking. Why, I half expected Shatner to march out and start telling people to get a life!
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Box Office Mojo says it had a 60 percent drop in revenue from last weekend. By the end of the second week, it's made about $45 million less than STID did at that point in the US. (The second weekend drops for ST09 and STID were in the low 40 percent range.)
Can it all be explained as just a bad year for movies at the box office? All kidding aside, maybe STB was too "Star Trekky?" A little too spot on to TOS? Everyone speaks of all the great character moments, but the action aside, was there enough of a story behind it to otherwise to entertain movie goers who don't get the reference to a big green hand, or appreciate hearing about MACO and the Xindi war, or who those who can indeed get too much of Spock and McCoy going on and on like an old married couple?
Paramount spent $185 million to essentially tell what almost everyone says is a TV-episode quality story done with Tiffany-quality FX. Sadly, the visual spectacle of Yorktown might as well have been replaced by an AMT model of K-7 as far as being enough of a visual feast on its own to draw the interest of non-fan movie goers.
And, given Trek has never been as popular abroad as other American movie franchises, will a Trek a story that everyone says "feels" like TOS attract foreign movie goers in the numbers of those who went to see STID? Looks like it will be more like regressing back towards ST09 numbers, depending on China and Japan.
I say these things out of great love of the franchise and having liked STB for what it was as a fan. But while it was certainly not intentional, maybe STB turned out to be too much of a familiar valentine for fans at the expense of keeping the feel of freshness and accessibility that drew people to ST09 and STID. It does seem to be a movie best appreciated by those who were already fans.
Don't know, really. Just a rant, I guess. Everyone wants to see the things they root for wildly succeed.
Can it all be explained as just a bad year for movies at the box office? All kidding aside, maybe STB was too "Star Trekky?" A little too spot on to TOS? Everyone speaks of all the great character moments, but the action aside, was there enough of a story behind it to otherwise to entertain movie goers who don't get the reference to a big green hand, or appreciate hearing about MACO and the Xindi war, or who those who can indeed get too much of Spock and McCoy going on and on like an old married couple?
Paramount spent $185 million to essentially tell what almost everyone says is a TV-episode quality story done with Tiffany-quality FX. Sadly, the visual spectacle of Yorktown might as well have been replaced by an AMT model of K-7 as far as being enough of a visual feast on its own to draw the interest of non-fan movie goers.
And, given Trek has never been as popular abroad as other American movie franchises, will a Trek a story that everyone says "feels" like TOS attract foreign movie goers in the numbers of those who went to see STID? Looks like it will be more like regressing back towards ST09 numbers, depending on China and Japan.
I say these things out of great love of the franchise and having liked STB for what it was as a fan. But while it was certainly not intentional, maybe STB turned out to be too much of a familiar valentine for fans at the expense of keeping the feel of freshness and accessibility that drew people to ST09 and STID. It does seem to be a movie best appreciated by those who were already fans.
Don't know, really. Just a rant, I guess. Everyone wants to see the things they root for wildly succeed.
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Got to admit:
If I'd never been a fan of Trek prior to 2009, Trekkies saying 'It's so much more like TOS!' would not fill me with excitement.
Come to think of it, it's probably not much of a recommendation to the Berman-era only fans either. It is possible to both like Trek, and hate TOS.
If I'd never been a fan of Trek prior to 2009, Trekkies saying 'It's so much more like TOS!' would not fill me with excitement.
Come to think of it, it's probably not much of a recommendation to the Berman-era only fans either. It is possible to both like Trek, and hate TOS.
I know many fans and critics are suggesting that Beyond is like a TOS episode, but I just don't see it...It's just as big, loud and stupid as any modern day franchise film...It's more Transformers or Fast and the Furious than TOS
TOS could be quite stupid, even during good episodes.
One of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek is “The Naked Time”. I absolutely love this episode.
But it doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny, like most of Star Trek. Regardless of individual series.
We are supposed to believe that a trained officer would beam down to a situation where everyone is dead and someone shut off the life support, would take off his glove, itch his nose and then place his hand on a possibly contaminated surface?
We’re supposed to believe that while in a tight orbit, that the helmsman would be able to sneak off of the bridge with no one noticing?
We’re supposed to believe that there is only one entrance in or out of engineering?
We’re supposed to believe that both the engineer and his assistant would abandon their posts during said tight orbit to go to the bridge? Why not simply call up to the bridge?
Star Trek has never held up under the type of scrutiny placed on the Abrams films.
Yet, if you say 'like TOS' to someone who didn't watch every Ep of TOS, all they'd think of was the 'stupid.'
We hold TOS in high regard for stuff like COTEOF. But for non-fans, it was very much just 'bright colours, bad fight scenes, hammy actors, and bikini-clad aliens stealing brains.'
Both perspectives are 100% accurate. But for some, any suggestion of the latter is (understandably) going to turn them right off.
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The generation that has been impacted by those franchises is still growing up. It's impact will be felt for a while, and still mandates scrutiny within the broader cultural context.
Hmm. I must've missed or forgotten about that bikini-clad aliens stealing brains episode. Gotta check my TOS DVDs more closely.
I'd say there's a second rather undesirable opinion for non-fans: that it was this preachy and even sometimes self-righteous show. I'd say that outsider point of view was created by the growing Trek mythology in the early 1970s that largely overstated what the show was and what it stood for. That thought of what Trek is will put people off, too.
While fans are comfortable with the tone of a Trek story like STB, compared to the heavy themes and deep emotions of ST09 and STID, there may have been too many non-fans at STB wondering if they were supposed to be taking this movie seriously or not.
Compare that to the wonderfully-received by non-fans TVH, where it was clear everyone, including the characters, that it was an absurd lark not to be taken too seriously. In that movie, everyone was in on the farce (in the theatrical use of the term).
To me, it comes back to STB not being entirely clear what kind of movie it wanted to be. What emotions it wanted to evoke. I'm not sure how it wanted to reach or connect with the audience, especially the general audience. How did it want them to feel involved? To a great extent, therein may lie any box office problem compared to the previous two movies. No strong general audience connection to the story that makes it worth seeing as a movie and not just a "Star Trek" movie.
Full disclosure: I was in fact eating popcorn while watching that movie.
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