Can we all agree, though, that Karl Urban has apparently been possessed by DeForest Kelley's katra ghost?
Can we also all agree that, regardless of one's opinion of the JJTrek movies, it is an objective fact that they reinvigorated the franchise? I see too many people's opinions clouding this particular truth.
Can we also agree that given that when the Abramstrek movies first came out, Star Trek not been in theatres for several years and there were no Trek tv shows airing either. So damn near anything they threw up on the screen and called "Star Trek" would have "reinvigorated the franchise". Which is precisely what happened.
The failure of "Blade Runner 2049", disproves this premise. That had a 35 year wait for a sequel. And it was excellent. But only to Bladerunner hipsters. Core fans aren't enough.
I really enjoyed Beyond and was looking forward to a fourth movie, but yeah, with Discovery and other series to come I'm not going to be that bothered if the JJTrek line withers away. Question becomes if they at all address the destruction of Romulus in the new Picard series. I'm inclined to think that if a merger hasn't happened by then they will ignore it entirely.
It's bizarre that some of you see success or failure in terms of profitablity for the studio and value quantity over quality. I prefer one good production to ten mediocre ones.
If we're going with this logic, shouldn't every Terminator or Alien or Predator movie "reinvigorate the franchise?"
Again, you're allowing your personal views to cloud the matter. Not only that, you're projecting your opinions on others. By every objective measure, the 2009 JJ Abrams Star Trek film was a smashing success: financially, critically and with audiences. Yes, there are people who dislike the film. That's true in every case. But you can't argue with the overwhelming consensus that the 2009 movie was successful. No, because with the exception of the first two Alien and Terminator movies, few of those films were modest financial successes and most were bombs with critics and audiences.
Here's a great example: I don't like the LOTR films. At all. I thought they were boring as fuck and I'm not into fantasy shit even though I toyed with D&D as a dumb teenager. (Although for some strange reason I really like GoT). But I can recognize and admit that they were very well-received award-winning films that were phenomenal successes. And that success spawned the Hobbit trilogy. Had the LOTR films been financial and critical failures, you can bet your ass the Hobbit films would not have happened. It's the same with 2009's Star Trek.
So popular opinion and box office equates to quality? No it doesn't. Blade Runner has been mentioned. IIRC it performed so badly that it virtually bankrupted its studio yet is today considered one of the most iconic and important modern science fiction movies. And I've said it before (and this opinion was the final straw that got me banned from the TrekBBS), I'm convinced that were the average movie critics hostile to the 2009 Abramsverse movie and were it not financially successful, the majority of die hard Star Trek fans would be giving it a "meh" as well. But after decades of being considered little more than a "cult following" of the franchise, Star Trek fans were elated to be part of the "in crowd" for once.
Jesus fucking Christ, Dayton. You're just as bad as @RickDeckard in terms of putting words in my mouth. Where in the bloody fuckity-fuck did I say that box office and critical/audience approval equates to quality? Please point out the exact post where I said that. Quality is subjective and dependent on one's personal tastes. The issue I have with arsefucks like yourself and all the other haters is that you refuse to recognize that reality.
To me you pretty strongly implied it. If you in fact do not believe the Abramsverse movie in 2009 was of high quality then I withdraw my statement. Do you or not?
You said it is subjective and dependent upon ones personal tastes. Shouldn't you define it for yourself? And why do you whine about my negative reps here when you are using your own?
Anyway... to answer your question, I thought the 2009 movie was a hell of a lot of fun and well-put together. Was it of the same artistic calibre as something like 2001? Hell, no. But I see the film for what it is. The problem with a large part of Trekkie nerddom is that they ascribe some sort of Shakespearean quality to Star Trek, when if fact most of it is popcorn schlock dressed up to appear more significant than it really is. Trek films -- including the much-lauded TWOK -- are just popcorn flicks that are largely one-dimensional, in my opinion.
STID and STB wouldn't have happened without ST09's success. But I don't see how that is connected to STDIS. If TPTB had produced that show thinking they were going to tap into JJ-Trek's audience and success, surely they would have set it in the JJ-timeline and made it at least superficially similar?
We have a altered timeline. Trek has always been cagey about time changes. For example, in City... McCoy alters the timeline enough, iirc, the Guardian informs them all they knew is gone. Yet in pretty much every other example, things remain the same, even though a ripple effect would change things (only seen a few eps so far, but Timeless does a good job with this) So I don't know. Is JJVerse writing over the Prime timeline? Or is it a branch? I'd like to think both can co-exist (the comics crossover the two for example)
It's recognising the financial reality. The ideal is a perfect Trek film that is a critical success, a commercial success and somehow succeeds in shutting even the most obstinate, whiny bastard only-my-Trek-is-teh-acceptable up for the duration. That's the ideal. We don't get the ideal, so we trade off. Lose a bit of quality so we get a sequel? Yeah. Fine. If you adopted your attitude to Trek to sexual partners, you'd likely have an arm like Hellboy's and a dick like Hedwig.
I'm pretty sure both timelines exist.The Kelvin timeline began with the destruction of the Kelvin, but the prime timeline continued and the Mirror universe also exists at the same time.
I'm not sure that follows. Just because they recognise the success of the films, doesn't mean they'd set them in the same same universe, especially given the TV and movies come under different subsidiaries with all the dick waving that goes on. One example - the success of Dr Who led to movies, none of which are really associated with the series.
While they are not in the same continuity, and the Doctor is no longer clearly an alien in them, 95% of the scripts are lifted directly from the two most successful serials at the time. But what I'm really trying to say here is that I see no reason to think Discovery would have been any less likely at this point if there hadn't been a new movie franchise.
It's even more complicated than that. In the merger mania of the '90s Paramount and CBS were owned by the same company. After the dot-com bubble popped, they were spun-off from one another. Paramount got the movie rights to Trek, CBS got the TV rights, and merchandising rights are such a clusterfuck that literally nobody knows who owns them, so they just guess. Right now, Viacom (which owns both Paramount and CBS) is locked in a bitter board battle. The board wants to merge Paramount and CBS back together again, while Sumner Redstone's family (who owns lots of Viacom stock) doesn't want them to be merged. The smart thing for CBS to do is to be coy about how STD fits in with JJverse. That way they don't have to worry about being sued by Paramount if the merger never happens. If the merger does happen, and the next (assuming there is one) Trek movie is ginormous hit, they can easily shift the show to the JJverse. Or, if the film's a giant flop, they can keep sailing right alone in the prime timeline, without worrying that they'll be impacted by how shitty the movie was.
There really is no way of knowing either way without access to a What If machine. Personally I'm not sure the stink of NEM and ENT was fully off the franchise until ST09 which, for all its flaws, managed to at least fumigate the last vestiges of that away. They also came to the table with reasonable budgets, something Trek historically rarely did, and managed to show that it was worth investment. So would we have gotten DISCO? I'm sure we'd have eventually gotten a series, maybe even around now, I'm not convinced they'd have invested quite as much in it though, or have been quite as prepared to return to that era without JJTrek having crossed the minefield first.
