I think you're the one projecting since I didn't make any comment about the 2009 movie. YMMV on that. Personally I thought its opening excellent and that there were some other good qualities but that the characters were poorly done and that it eventually devolved into schitzophrenic nonsense. What I do argue that it's financial returns or the number of sequels spawned ought to be secondary considerations to quality. Again without discussing his evaluation of the film quality, @Diacanu argues above that Blade Runner 2049 was an excellent film but that that is not enough. You note the volume of sequels and the profitability, that it reinvigorated "the franchise". Fuck the franchise. Fuck studio profits. The point of this stuff is not to get to watch more of it. Make it great and if more follows, then fine. If not, then at least we have a great movie.
Look at what are often considered some of the greatest movies ever made in American cinematic history. Citizen Kane, The French Connection, The Godfather pt. 2, The Wizard of Oz. Does anyone know (without looking it up) how good their box office performance was? I would've said Star Wars as well but given it came along in the 1970s just a few years after Jaws began the trend of "summer blockbuster" most people have pretty much tracked its performance over the years.
I've heard the term of an actor "fully inhabiting the role of...". To me, Urban has fully inhabited the role of Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy. On the other hand it always seemed to me that Pine learned most of his stuff about Kirk by watching Saturday Night Live clips.
My quibbles with the JJverse and that god-awful ugly Enterprise aside, you gotta pay Pine. But you don't HAVE to (and almost certainly shouldn't) write some idiotic script that includes George Kirk. Walk away from Hensworth, give that money to Pine, and write a good story that doesn't depend on stunt casting. Hell, cast someone you can afford as Gary Mitchell and do something with him (but not simply re-hashing WNMHGB)
there's a lot of writing out there that basically says Les Moonves (who hates Trek and SF in general)came around on Disco almost entirely because CBSAA lacked a marketable identity and it was the one "franchise" he had available. If true that would imply the movie had little to do with that choice. (also some chatter that part of what was wrong with the first half of S1 was hm dicking around with the show he didn't even like and knew nothing about - dunno if that's true)
I don’t care how many Star Trek shows there are and how good they are, I’m still not paying for yet another streaming service.
Well, Urbans McCoy is already the fully formed character we remember from TOS by the time we meet him. Kirk and the rest were supposed to be young, inexperienced cadets during the first two movies. It makes sense that young Kirk would come off as a parody of his more mature self.
RickDeckard, Champion of the Worker* *unless you work for a studio outputting films I do not feel meet my criteria for quality, in which case be grateful I'm not bulldozing your worthless corpses into mass graves before your weeping families - families who'll I'll gleefully send into destitution for failing to be sufficient muses to those in this industry. The proletariat WILL learn to enjoy the films I do! Hear me special-effects loving maggots!
I specifically said I wasn't debating what was or wasn't quality, so it has nothing to do with my criteria. The objection is to those who will accept lesser product even on their own terms if it's good for the profit takers.
Wrong. Objectively wrong. Money makes this shit exist. You don't get DS9 without the dough TNG raked in. "The franchise", matters. If Burger King implodes, there's no more Whoppers. You can't experiment with angus Whoppers, or chicken Whoppers, or black bun Whoppers, because there's just no more Whoppers. Keeping lifeblood going into "the franchise", makes the incarnations you want happen. This "give me a unicorn Whopper, or give me nothing", mentality is how we ended up with Trump.
Technically, we can have all of those things without money, but it would require massive support from the general populace.
Well, yeah, but but we're not there yet. For the time being, in the world we live in, yes, we have to work with studio heads, and show this thing can be viable. It's why millions of Trekkies saw TMP 15 times even though it was a sleeping pill. If they hadn't, there's no TWOK, no sequels after that, no TNG, DS9, etc, no TrekBBS, and then we're not even having this conversation. 70's Trekkers got that you had to hold your nose sometimes, I dunno where that got forgotten.
When the internet happened. I mean, sure, it existed before the internet, but the internet made it possible to spread that around much farther.
Trump?! Really? You're stuck in this feedback loop, which I can only liken to that of a drug addict where all you care about is more. And you assume that that's what everyone else must "objectively" want. It's why we got Voyager and Enterprise. It's why The Simpsons has overstayed it's welcome by almost two decades. And it's why cinema screens are full of the superhero movies and remakes that you love so much. So fuck the franchise, and fuck franchises in general. I'd happily take no more Star Trek if something better and more original was produced instead. I'm interested in it to the extent that it is good - no more, no less.
I'm on your side, in principle, but these days I don't really mind what people watch as long as they enjoy it. Of course, it could be said that people enjoy modern films because they're bright, flashy, lacking in content, and mostly demo reels for special effects and product placements, and I would likely agree, but I just can't begrudge people liking something as long as it's harmless. I mean, if someone said "let's make a new Triumph of the Will," I'd be like "that sounds bad, let's not do that," but otherwise, if people want to watch a 3 hour film where two CG robots kick each other in the crotch, I can decide it's not for me, but I can't really fault them for it if that's what they like, or at least what they've been told they like.
What does that even mean? If a movie or series had never been made, then no-one would miss it and we'd all be talking about something else. In any event I like both TMP and TNG (the more utopian aspects of Rodenberrys vision have become far too maligned) so how does that even arise?
I’m not watching or paying for stuff I’m not interested in. Why would anyone do that? If they don’t make any more Star Trek because of that, that is totally fine with me. The only Trek related thing I can see spending any money on is a DS9 Blu Ray set but I know that will never happen. Possibly interested in the Picard series although I would need to hear a lot more about it before I spend money on a whole streaming service just for that.
