Star Trek Beyond was Actually Great... And May Save the Franchise

All right, I stand corrected. Well, sort of. Star Trek Beyond was great, but I wasn't completely in the wrong for criticizing it during its promotions.

Watching it, my eyes watered. Not because it's sad, but because, at long last, I was watching a Star Trek movie. JJ Abrams admitted he wasn't a Star Trek fan, and those first two movies showed it. But this time it was clear that people who care about the franchise were in charge of it, at least the writing part.

This time it was about the crew coming together to solve the problems. It's what Star Trek was always supposed to be about! They are overwhelmed by what they're facing, so no amount of fighting is going to win the day. They have to intellectually figure something out to save the day, and they have to do it together, each one bringing their own special knowledge and talents.

But I still hold to the fact that the promotion campaign was crap. In fact, it hurt the film. While it opened to a positive weekend, it did worse than the other movies. Why? Because they promoted it as a hip action film rather than a smart, emotional one. It detracted the audiences that would want to see it, people like me. I only grudgingly went because I heard several people who hated the Abrams films said they loved this one.

Somehow, Hollywood still thinks it will get a larger audience by following formulas of pop culture. But if they just trust good material, they'll get larger audiences. I believe this film will have legs, and will bring Star Trek back as long as they follow the team who created this film rather than those who marketed it. I'm waiting with baited breath for the next one, and the series, if they're going to be this smart about them.

Let Disney Take Over Star Trek

Someone posted something a few months ago about wishing Disney could take over Star Trek.  At first I cringed, but then I realized that’s from how I used to view Disney.  However, ever since they have handled the Marvel storylines so well, and are building up Star Wars in a nice way, I’ve grown a trust for them.  And frankly, Star Trek needs the same handling.

            By that, I do not mean to put Abrams back in charge, or to make it more like Star Wars.  These were two problems with the reboot.  Abrams himself admitted he wasn’t into Trek, and he made it more like Star Wars, which is what it should not be.  It’s a mystery adventure, not an action/war series.  It would work best if done with more of a focus on exploration of the unknown, and problem solving.

            However, my cousin Michael said it best a number of years ago when there were several Trek series on TV.  He said the network should bring Voyager back immediately, and have all the series intermingle with one another.  Basically, he was predicting the universe building that Disney is doing today almost 20 years before they did it.  And he was right.  Star Trek has a lot of potential for several series happening simultaneously and interconnecting.  The overall storyline should move forward based on the actions of multiple crews and ships.  You could even have series and movies about factions other than the Federation.  Wouldn’t a Klingon series be fun?  Or how about being on board a Romulan War Bird during the original series when they were more like submarines?

            There’s a lot one could do, but so far, it’s been very shortsighted.  And with the new Star Trek about to be released, I have little hope for its future.

I had been optimistic at the end of the last movie.  Even though it was a pretty bad movie, I was looking forward to the crew finally beginning on a five year mission of discovery.  Maybe now they would finally make it about exploration, Roddenberry’s original vision.  And with the departure of Abrams to do what he really should have been doing instead, the series might actually get good.

Sadly, I believe we jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.  I really began to believe this when I saw they had replaced Abrams with the director of The Fast and the Furious.  Their tone deafness was particularly prominent when they began bragging about this fact.  They went on to have fast paced action scenes for all of their trailers, and had a whole campaign about hearing Rihanna’s latest track on the newest trailer.  (They didn’t say anything about the plot or the characters or where the series was going.  No; Rihanna is more important to them.)  All along, they have de-emphasized the only positive element of this movie; the fact that Simon Pegg wrote it.  This, and only this, is the reason I’ve considered watching it.  But the producers have done such a complete job of glossing over that fact, and put so much emphasis on the elements that make it look like another Fast & Furious movie that I simply can’t look.

I’m sad to say it, but I’m done with Star Trek.

That is, unless they can do something better with it.  CBS has a new series coming out, and they’re right about a couple things.  First, it really should be a series.  There’s too much potential to be locked away as just individual movies.  And second, an idea they’re mulling is to have each season be a different crew, which taps into the potential of multiple storylines.  However, I happen to know that they really don’t know what they’re going to do, and are going into this venture blindly rather than with a passionate vision like the one Roddenberry had.