I think the lack of marketing, especially the fact it was the 50th anniversary of Trek along with the marketing being pretty poor hurt the film.
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Star Trek Discovery |OT| To Boldly go into the new streaming era
- Thread starter berzeli
- Start date
I think the lack of marketing, especially the fact it was the 50th anniversary of Trek along with the marketing being pretty poor hurt the film.
I would absolutely go with Into Darkness ruining the brand. 09 was exactly the film it needed to be but ST was overall still in a VERY fragile place. A lot was riding on Darkness and it shot the bed.
Am I the only one who would really rather not see this? Like, can any of these fuckers just be normal people with normal problems, and not transdimensional bus drivers or double-agent body horror nightmares or evil doppelgangers from a parallel universe?
That was probably it for me to be honest, along with the marketing too.
I'm a huge Star Trek fan and I really hated Into Darkness, just too many dumbass moments (blood that cures death, Enterprise going from near the moon to suddenly being sucked into Earth's gravity still irritate me to this day) and ridiculous pandering to Wrath of Kahn. That plus all of Beyond's trailers just made it look mediocre and gave most of the movie away (Enterprise gets blown up, Crew is on a planet, gotta stop badguy).
Beyond was alright to me, it wasn't as fun as Star Trek 09 (but it did have several fun moments), and it didn't go as "weird" as I was hoping they might go when it was announced it wouldn't take place near Earth again (the Federation spacestation was pretty cool, but the generic alien planet was pretty boring), but overall it was definitely a step up from Into Darkness, it just wasn't enough of an improvement to get me hyped for the next one.
You know guys, I really miss the TNG carpetI'm hoping that the DSC "goes in for repairs" (excuse for repaint) for S2. Nothing drastic, just throwing some extra color in there on the existing furniture. Red doors and railings, some soft blues where appropriate, color on the displays. Getting a little of that TOS flavor in there without having to resort to candy and cardboard.
It'd look a little happier, which might be appropriate for the post-Lorca bridge.
Just so-- COZY
You know, as little sense as it would make, I'd be up for more Bob Picardo in Star Trek.
Hell, he can be Zimmerman's grandfather or something. They did it with Brent Spiner in Enterprise.
I'm going to say...
1) Came after Into Darkness, which wasn't liked by audiences, therefore people were wary. It's the M:I2 > M:I3 effect.
2) That first trailer with Sabotage as the music was a hyper botch, and Beyond's hype struggled to recover.
Saru's obviously good enough at his job to get to be the second in command, and be the acting captain at times. I think having him get promoted to captain and having him trying to overcome some of the failings of his species such as trying to be braver could be an interesting story arc for him.
So the question becomes: why is Into Darkness rated higher than Beyond? Again, this perplexes me as well.
Michael was raised as Vulcan. She's going to act like one, and with regards to that Martin-Green is doing an admirable job with the character.
Sometimes critics get it wrong. This is one of those times. Beyond is absolutely fantastic, while Into Darkness is trash with delusions of mediocrity. Probably the result of letting 9/11 truther write the script.
JJ Abrams is just about the master at making a film that's really good, even emotionally captivating on the 1st view, but doesn't hold up when you dwell on it. And this is coming from someone who loves ST09, MI3 and TFA.
Oh no, I'm not talking critics. Look at the audience ratings on IMDB and RT. Look at the Cinemascore.
This is closer to my estimation. Abrams is very good at making action popcorn that makes audiences happy. Into Darkness might be a worse film and Beyond might be more Trek, but Into Darkness has a pace and look that resonates with general audiences.
And that's factored into what Discovery is.
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I was bored to tears by Beyond whereas Into Darkness remains a guilty pleasure.
The latest episode of Discovery is like Nemesis with somehow better production values. I can't believe how quickly the show descended into complete and utter unapologetic cheese. It's... pretty impressive.
Because JJ Abrams is very good at estimating what a majority of people want to see and giving them exactly that, nothing less and nothing more. If you don't care about thinking too much about something you watched, and you don't have a strong personal preference of "what Star Trek is" (or what Star Wars is, etc) then you'll likely have a good time and leave it at that. Beyond on the other hand seems to be something that was made to cater to an audience who weren't very satisfied by the Abrams Trek films, and since it has a more specific demographic target, perhaps it alienates those who simply don't see what there was to "fix" to begin with.
I haven't seen Into Darkness, but Beyond wasn't all that entertaining.
I think it's safe to say that Into Darkness wasn't that bad for general audiences and honestly, I don't remember the fans even being that down on it at the moment of release, although it definetly generates heated debates about gravity and miracle blood and, ugh, that Khan scream from Spock...
I think Into Darkness left a meh impression, but good marketing and hype for Beyond could have fixed that (a lesson for Disney and Episode 9, me thinks) and there's also the fact that Beyond wasn't that good.
The novelty factor and pacing from Trek 09 is just not there as much either, and I loved Starbase Snowglobe, the call backs to Enterprise and the theme.
I was (or am?) excited to see Jaylah as part of a future crew.
I think Into Darkness left a meh impression, but good marketing and hype for Beyond could have fixed that (a lesson for Disney and Episode 9, me thinks) and there's also the fact that Beyond wasn't that good.
The novelty factor and pacing from Trek 09 is just not there as much either, and I loved Starbase Snowglobe, the call backs to Enterprise and the theme.
I was (or am?) excited to see Jaylah as part of a future crew.
The production value on this show is really impressive, it looks like they spent an lot of money on the props, sets and costumes.
Of course it probably helps that a lot of episodes are only set on Discovery and they don't have to built a bunch of new sets or film on location very often.
Star Trek really needed 09 to get people interested again it was a good movie.
People forget that Star Trek peaked in terms of popluarity with TNG season 5 and had been on the slide since.
DS9 and Voyager had to make ratings ploys by bringing in Worf and 7 of 9 and Enterprise got cancelled.
Nemesis flopped and Star trek died. JJ did his job and got the general public to care again, he made a few missteps with Into Darkness but he gets unnecessary hate.
People forget that Star Trek peaked in terms of popluarity with TNG season 5 and had been on the slide since.
DS9 and Voyager had to make ratings ploys by bringing in Worf and 7 of 9 and Enterprise got cancelled.
Nemesis flopped and Star trek died. JJ did his job and got the general public to care again, he made a few missteps with Into Darkness but he gets unnecessary hate.
Quick answer: The Sins of the Father
Why that's my answer
The brands fragile and foothold in the public sphere created a narrative momentum to the collective consensus that, I believe, couldn't be accurately captured in a snapshot.
By the time Beyond was a thing, the overall enthusiasm for the brand was that much lower.
Why ITD got good reviews but ended up doing that?
First of all I would say that IDT has the dubious distinction of being an... ok... movie but a terrible sequel and that what ITD and 09 both needed to do as products beyond just being 'good' was different.
The thing is 09 did NOT prove that StarTrek was viable again as a continuing film series. It the first half of a two part question of viability that was not a conscious thought to anyone but the actual StarTrek fans.
09 demonstrated that you could update Trek and make the base world and characters 'work' even if it meant hanging them on a lattice of being a typical summer blockbuster (let's be honest, you could have redressed 09 as any fictional world Andy the film would have worked). Something both necessary and thought impossible.
It wasn't fully formed in that it didn't go full Trek in seeking out new worlds and new civilizations, but that wasn't its job. It was very much setup for the promise of the premise.
There's something about being a child of two worlds here that I can't quite pull from the either of my mind, but act two of doing the impossible was very much to show that you could have the full soul of Trek in the body of this template and make both sing in unison.
The problem then with Darkness emulating 09 so closely while being at best Inferior? In the moment that was certainly enough to get decent reviews and user scores but it utterly failed as a sequel and in sustaining interest in the brand.
Partially because the fridge Logic was just that bad and partially because it declared to audiences casual and hardcore alike that the brand had nowhere to grow. So the more casual audience members and mainstream critics who probably reviewed it as a summer blockbuster had no reason to tune in for the next one or passionately advocate in its defense. They got the formula and truth be told it wasn't all that different from what anyone else was doing, except this one makes StarTrek references.
So it's easy to then understand why the people who were passionate about it tended to fall into the camps of being passionately underwhelmed and offended. Those are the people who shaped the discourse and public consciousness of the Kelvin timeline films in the years leading up to Beyond, and I don't even think that they were fringe for having done so.
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Ugh, I wrote a long ass response agreeing with you and my Chrome shutdown.
Whatever. Basically, yeah, audiences didn't think Trek had new ideas beyond (hehe) remaking Wrath of Khan and Beyond's marketing was shit and didn't alíviate that worry.
Also, Beyond was the first Trek movie after the return of Star Wars (and cosmic Marvel movies). Both franchises' eras of popularity general don't overlap and one leads to the other (like how Star Wars motivated Paramount to bring back Star Trek with movies).
I'm a über fan of both franchises, but most people just see one or the other and there have been better space adventures recently compared to 2009 and 2013 (not even Guardians of the Galaxy was out by then).
I would also not underestimate the power of peak Cumberbatch. Like, I know at least a few people who came out of that movie utterly confused as to who the hell he was in terms of the character, but nevertheless enjoyed the performance. Hell, I enjoyed Into Darkness when I came out of the movie theatre, and it's more as time has gone on I've kinda realised just how little in long lasting substance the film has - that it doesn't even add much in terms of worldbuilding, oddly falling back and concepts and characters that kinda require you already know what they mean - Khan's reveal means nothing if you do not know who the character of Khan is. It is very immediate as a film - which helps when accruing online scores and all - and very easily subject to just falling by the wayside in the long run. When fans look back on the Kelvin timeline, I think they will more remember Yorktown, 'the Nebula', the implied transition between United Earth and the Federation, and the potential addition of Jaylah to the crew. Those are things genuinely unique to that incarnation of Trek.
Disappointed that they turned Lorca into a simple villain and then killed him off. I understand that it was well foreshadowed that he was from the mirror universe, but it took his grey morality and turned into something more boring. I was enjoying this show at first and I thought it was interesting a captain with war scars and a protagonist who was a criminal, but it may have jumped the shark for me now. Might as well finish series 1 off though, it's near the end.
I would have preferred if they made Lorca one of the desperate leaders of an earlier version of the Terran Rebellion, using unorthodox methods, rather than just another evil guy from that universe trying to be the new emperor. It was a bit boring how they revealed him as a villain and killed him off so soon.
Thought there would be a layer more to Lorca instead of just "i planned this for sooo long and i want to be Emperor to rule them all". Don't mind him a villain but he suddenly went 100%. Like the federation had absolutely nothing he thought was fine or worth it. You could maybe say the antagonizers brought him there but well...
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I love Discovery. The best Star Trek has been since 09. As someone who ranks my Star Trek-movies: Motion Picture, 09 and First Contact as the best three, I have to say that neither Into Darkness or Beyond did much for me even though Into Darkness is more entertaining (I won't say "better"). Both were just Space Terrorist of the Month-plots with little substance.
Can someone clear up for me about Discovery (and CBS access), forgive me if its come up earlier in the thread- they are only releasing episodes one at a time, weekly, right?, sort of like a show on a regular network- but you can go back and watch old episodes at will, right, like Netflix?
I ask, because I probably plan on eventually buying a month and binging the whole season once its all up, if that's doable. I otherwise have no other interest in CBS access and don't want to keep paying an ongoing monthly fee since they are opting to trickle these out instead of posting the whole season like Netflix.
I ask, because I probably plan on eventually buying a month and binging the whole season once its all up, if that's doable. I otherwise have no other interest in CBS access and don't want to keep paying an ongoing monthly fee since they are opting to trickle these out instead of posting the whole season like Netflix.
So...? Since when is a movie's commercial success representative of its quality?
Correct. Each episode is released weekly but if you just want to wait until its all out you can sign up and binge watch it like you would a show on Netflix. At that point CBS AA operates the same way as Netflix and Hulu do in regards to the show.
If you have Amazon Prime you could sign up for the CBS AA channel there for $10. I think it's said that performance is better there for some people since it's running on Amazon's Amazon Video service instead of CBS AA itself. However others have had no issue with CBS AA itself. Personally I've had no issue streaming Discovery this entire time.
My estimation is it's partially that, but also what's described here.
Which is my larger point. What we want from Star Trek? Doesn't really put asses in the seats as much and it's sort of antithetical to the type of prestige television we watch.
That has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm saying. A movie's commercial success, especially within a franchise, determines the direction of the franchise.
Again, even if it was 'only' $100 million you get a decent flick out of it. Biggest issue would probably be the salaries because the actors generally don't have the franchise as their main, primary means of getting work, giving them much more leverage. And you kinda have to stick with the Abrams cast unless the director somehow has the clout to just do whatever he wants with a random cast that-
...Hm...
...Hm...
To be fair: the "fans" all seem to be against Star Trek: The Motion Picture too. As someone who has seen all Trek there is to see, let me put this in no uncertain terms: it's the best one of them all. Robert Wise gave that movie a sense of class that the show had never deserved or achieved again. But then that's a movie proper, and not a TV show. <3
Beyond was an awful movie. I do agree that it was very much like a ST TV show, unfortunately just not a very good one. It was dull and fairly uneventful, and there's really no reason to rewatch it. I think it's fairly obvious why it didn't do very well, both in sales and reviews.