Regaining Ground Lost by Star Trek Into Darkness
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Star Trek Beyond
Eric266 — 9 years ago(December 25, 2016 10:48 AM)
I REALLY enjoyed Star Trek (2009). I thought it was a fantastic reimagining of the original series and with the timeline reboot, it would allow them to go off in any number of directions without being tied to the original's canon. However, all that was made moot by the complete rehash of Star Trek II that was Star Trek Into Darkness. It felt less like an homage and more like a complete lazy attempt to rip off fans. The box office suffered for it. Star Trek made $257m domestically, Into Darkness only made $228m and Beyond only pulled in $157m. When it comes to movie series, usually the sequel's box office is a product of the film that came before it. I do believe Into Darkness hurt Beyond's chances. Thanks JJ Abrams. He can now lay claim to ripping off two beloved movie franchises and driving them into the ground much like Kirk did with the Enterprise.
Beyond has all the elements real Star Trek fans love: character interactions, space action, a clever plot, and some fun dialogue. It even has some things for non or casual fans. The story is interesting, the plot moves along briskly and the interactions between the characters (always a hallmark of ST film) is top-notch.
Where it suffers is it doesn't really cover any new ground. You have another planet (or in this case a space station) in danger and the Enterprise crew are the only ones who can help. Blah blah blah. I mean does ANYONE else in Starfleet actually do anything? This movie also suffers the same way that many subpar Bond films suffer: a one dimensional villain trying to destroy everyone for no real discernible reason. One of the only positives I found in Into Darkness was the fact Khan really wasn't a bad guy. He had sincere motives. Krall is angry and pissed off and I get that, but not really sure his reason for being pissed off are enough to make him want to destroy civilization.
The action is top notch. The lens flares are gone. The plot moves along quickly. The camaraderie is there and the dialogue between Spock and McCoy is some of the best in the series. It was a nice recovery after the mess that was Into Darkness. I hope the fourth film continues the upward trend.
My memory foam pillow says it can't remember my face. I can tell its lying. -
HannahLee_3 — 9 years ago(December 26, 2016 09:37 AM)
As far as the box office, I think Beyond was hurt more by its marketing campaign than by the other films.
While STID had its issues, and was disdained by some Trekkies, it had a pretty good critical and general audience reception.
There was a long wait for Beyond, and I remember lots of anticipation for its first trailer. But when it hit, there was lots of head scratching and "oh no! What did they do?! It looks like Fast & Furious in Space, not Star Trek!"
STB never really recovered from that: subsequent trailers couldn't undo that damage, TPTB skipped any 50th anniversary tie in which could have re-sparked interest and brought back anyone who might have lost interest, and the film itself wasn't strong enough to get enough critical praise or audience word of mouth to draw big additional or repeat audiences in a crowded box office. For instance, Beyond opened lower than either of the previous two films, and then had the poorest staying power at the domestic box office; it went on to make only 2.7 x its opening weekend $$ in the rest of its run, compared to3.42x and 3.26x for ST and STID. Overall WW box office was $385M for Star Trek, $465M for STID and $344M for STB. If the marketing and story were stronger, Beyond could have still brought in core Star Trek fans, but also a broader movie audience which is what it needed to do to stand out and succeed in an overcrowded box office.
Beyond was a pleasant enough film, like an OK episode of TOS in some ways, but IMO tptb dropped the ball on a space exploration film after the previous two films, which had just managed to get the five year mission started. (STID teed that up nicely in its final scenes, but Beyond skipped right past the next adventures of the crew and decided to jump to a burnt-out Enterprise crew for some reason) That and bad marketing decisions hampered Beyond's success.
Have a lovely day - John Finnemore -
be236 — 9 years ago(February 06, 2017 01:23 PM)
I prefer to watch more ship-to-ship combat, firing lasers, strategy maneuvers, etc (eg, the final ship-fight sequence near the end of Star Trek II - Wrath of Khan) than the crew being on some planet and doing regular hand-to-hand fighting, etc
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Classics-Movie-Fan — 9 years ago(February 06, 2017 11:13 PM)
Into Darkness poor word of mouth & Beastie Boys trailer both hurt Beyond a lot box office wise I hope we get another movie with this cast & crew but its not looking guaranteed as Paramount just cancelled or delayed 2 sequels (Friday the 13th & WWZ got delayed a long time!).