[canadianrosey]

Originally Posted by Saquist

The winter schedule is always a bad time for a movie...~Star Trek Nemesis.

ANY time was a bad time for that movie...

Good to hear Trek XII is moving forward, though.

[Saquist]

Originally Posted by kevin

Actually the Christmas holiday period can be very lucrative nowadays, as the last couple years have shown.

But there are already lots of big hitters planned for that month already the next couple years.

Lucrative yess...but typicallly very packed with the family style movies....G movies make serious head way at this time.

[starwarsrcks]

good news

[tannerwaterbury]

Well.... guess Trek 12 will be released AFTER the world ends...

[Futureguy]

Originally Posted by tannerwaterbury

Well.... guess Trek 12 will be released AFTER the world ends...

Star Trek XII, Oblivion: The Other Undiscovered Country

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

There's nothing to straighten out, it's not smart business to have two of your big movies competing against each other.

I criticize the fact that Paramount has converted Trek into a cash cow, i.e. a product in your portfolio with a large budget, large revenues and small risk used to finance smaller, more risky products.
I don't like lowest-common denominator, minimum-brain, fear-to-piss-off-people, mass-market Trek.

I am of course well aware that I am in the minority which is per definition relatively small in the case of such movies.

[canadianrosey]

Sadly, Trek went the cash cow route a long time ago. I really hope the rebooted movies give the franchise new, fresh legs to run on.

[Futureguy]

Originally Posted by horatio

I criticize the fact that Paramount has converted Trek into a cash cow, i.e. a product in your portfolio with a large budget, large revenues and small risk used to finance smaller, more risky products.
I don't like lowest-common denominator, minimum-brain, fear-to-piss-off-people, mass-market Trek.

I am of course well aware that I am in the minority which is per definition relatively small in the case of such movies.

If anything, I would like to see ST as the riskier project and that being a "GOOD" thing. Something brainier, sublime, and profound. Why not bring in hard-core Sci-Fi writers and take Trek into where it's true potential of telling a story is, with characters and themes that are deeper than the surface FX.
To take the viewer beyond judging a Trek Movie by the shape of the ship and plot holes. Lord knows I have complained and made mention of them myself. There can be better. Do the FX Have to drive the cost of a movie over 200million $$$? Has anyone thought of paying that much to develop the story-line instead?.......

Well...not THAT much, but my point is to move the emphasis back to story and away from flashy FX to keep the viewer's attention.

[horatio]

It is a fact that ST09 emphasized action and effects more than traditional sci-fi and Trek ingredients. You have pointed out that the latter are not a matter of money but of skill and will.
Whether this change of Trek is great or horrible is a matter of taste, to my surprise most fans seem to like it.
Whether this change will be lasting is a matter of forecasting. Given the success of the first movie, the unchanged cash cow strategy of Paramount and the continuing contribution of writers who write anything but conventional sci-fi I expect more of the same.
I don't think that arguments along the lines of "look, they were so busy with setting up everything in the first movie and now they can do the real thing" are valid. First, the writers have claimed that they have given all the got when they wrote the first one, second, what the fu*k does reboot/setup have to do with the hyper-actionization of the franchise? It wasn't a matter of necessity but of choice.

And our choice is whether we wanna watch BlockbusterTrek or not. I personally won't watch anymore of it, I hope that it doesn't contaminate the future of Trek and I wish all the folks who watch the next movie a great time at the theatres.

[martok2112]

I don't see the first movie so much as a set up for a second, deeper movie. It was more of a hook. It grabbed the fans both old and new with an energetic tale. Now, the fans have more to look forward to. The flash and whiz-bang stuff is out of the way. The way is paved clear to do the Roddenberry-dogmatic tale that some other folks want to see.

I would love to state: "If this second Star Trek doesn't prove to be more of a feast for the brain this time around, I will withdraw my support for Star Trek in any incarnation forthwith."

But alas, I love Star Trek whether it's brainy, or brawny, or somewhere in between. So, the above statement would simply be hot-winded felgercarb. Why? Because I am a Star Trek fan. Star Trek means much to me, whether it be profound, epic, simple, or whatever. Heady stories? Check. Beautiful babes? Check. Starship porn? Check. Space battles? Check. See.....Star Trek has it all.

The whole "writers said they gave everything they had" with the first movie sounds a little taken out of context to me. They may have given everything they had at the time of writing that film. A new film on the way....those creative energies are likely going to be restored. They'll likely give everything they have in writing the second film as well.

Besides, how many times have we heard "Ah'm gi'in all ah got, Cap'n!" only to find out the next time that once again, Scotty was "gi'in her all ah got"?

As Canadianrosey pointed out, Star Trek became a cash cow LONG before Trek 09 was even conceived. Hell, it became a cash cow well before DS9 was ever conceived.

With today's budget vs. returns, anything less than blockbuster level Star Trek will likely kill the franchise as a viable "big screen" contender. Trek's wisest move would be to go back to episodic television, where the kinds of stories that certain Trek fans wish to see can be told.

This all goes back to how I'm sure a lot of folks who turned out to see the first new movie had some sense of morbid curiosity to see if this was going to be another over-hyped movie like First Contact or Insurrection, (pandering to the nerd crowd) or whether the movie could live up to the trailer. Indeed, it did live up to it, and gave old and new fans a wild ride for their movie going dollars. Old fans were emboldened. New fans were gained. And Star Trek was alive and well....with the prospect now of two more films.

To me, First Contact fell flat on its face (even though it did do decently at the box-office). It was hyped up to be an all-out action flick. (Even Jonathan Frakes said this was to be an all-out action movie.) Well, it was nothing of the sort. It blew its wad in the first twenty minutes of the movie, and then droned on. A good story to be sure, but it was not what I was expecting from the trailers. It was, at best, a good Next Generation episode.

Nemesis at least was pretty much an all-out action flick, as shown in the trailers, albeit, a poorly executed one that split the fan base almost cleanly down the middle. Even though I loved Nemesis, I was pretty much done with Next Generation based movies after that, even if it was the final film for the TNG crew.

Star Trek 09 delivered. A good story, great visuals, lots of action....and characters one could easily be endeared to.