In 2018, Paramount Pictures was ready to move forward with a follow-up to 2016’s Star Trek Beyond that would bring back Chris Hemsworth from the 2009 Star Trek movie as George Kirk, teaming up with his son, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). A script was written (by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay), a director was hired (S.J. Clarkson), and production was set to start in early 2019 for a likely summer 2020 release. However, deals with Hemsworth and Chris Pine could not get renegotiated and the project was shelved, leading Paramount to move on to several other attempts to bring Trek back to the big screen, most recently with some Marvel vets on a project that was recently removed from Paramount’s 2023 release calendar.
Last month, the screenwriters for the 2020 Star Trek 4 project revealed details of the story, including how Hemsworth’s George Kirk would have been moved forward in time to team up with Pine’s James T. Kirk via the transporter buffer (ala Scotty in “Relics”). Now the Thor actor is talking more about why he thinks his Star Trek project fell apart.
Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk in 2009’s Star Trek
On the latest Happy Sad Confused podcast, host Josh Horowitz lamented how he was never going to see the Star Trek 4 movie with Hemsworth. The actor noted that this was due to “a few reasons” and then assessed how the project never came together, focusing not on salary negotiations but on the script:
It wasn’t what I sort of where I was thinking it would have been or could have been. I thought there would be, ‘Okay, cool, let’s figure that out and keep going.’ And then I think everyone got busy and so on.
Hemsworth added that time has worked against the idea of reviving the role he shot 15 years ago:
It would be weird now to flash back to your father and “why is he so much older than the first time when he died?”
But when Horowitz talked about how much he liked Hemsworth’s role in the 2009 movie, the actor seemed open to the idea of returning, saying, “We could campaign to get it going, though.” In June of this year, Hemsworth stated he was willing to give it another shot:
There was talk about me doing the film with Chris Pine at one point. The script was sort of put together and then it fell apart. And if J.J. Abrams called me tomorrow and said, “Chris Pine and I want to do it,” I’d probably say “Yeah, let’s go for it.”
Chris Hemsworth at the Limitless release event on November 16 (Getty)
The latest Star Trek 4 project did not involve Hemsworth, but with that one pulled off the schedule, who knows what could happen next for the film franchise.
Keep up with all the news on Star Trek 4 and upcoming Trek films at TrekMovie.com.
This makes me wonder if some actor, somewhere associated with Trek, would answer “nope, that ship has sailed”, when asked if they’d ever want to revisit the franchise.
Spiner used to say a lot. We all know how that turned out.
I wish he sticked to his guns on that. i hate what Picard did to Data
You hate that the show gave him a touching send off? A weird flex but okay.
A touching send off? Data essentially committed suicide. .
It was still better than the way he went out in Nemesis.
Wasn’t his death in Nemesis a suicide run? He died on his own terms. He lived for 20 years as a consciousness in a computer and decided that wasn’t a life for him, since he wanted to live as close to the human experience as he understood it. He didn’t want to be Terry Schiavo. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Personally I felt like there was a lot more nuance involved that diminishing it to simply that.
He said he never wanted to play Data again, not necessarily never want to do Star Trek. But yeah, since he is known for playing Data that would imply he was done with Star Trek. Well obviously they found other ways lol.
Spiner felt he got too old to play an android that isn’t supposed to age. But having Spiner play other characters besides Data started long before the Kurtzman era. So I don’t think he was ever done with Star Trek. He took whatever opportunity came up.
Exactly, which was my point. He never wanted to stop being in Star Trek, he simply felt playing Data himself was feeling unrealistic. But the reality is most main actors only play their main character. I don’t think anyone would’ve accepted Nimoy playing Spock’s secret twin brother after TWOK for instance (the funny thing is that wouldn’t feel so ludicrous today ;)).
Spiner just happened to play other characters while he was playing Data, which included Lore who basically IS Data’s twin brother lol. And so now he’s back. And I’m guessing he excuses Lore for aging since he was made to be more human like from the start.
Are you…mad that the actors apparently had a good time and liked making Star Trek enough to do it again? B/c to me that’s a good thing. The fact that they care whether the quality of script and the focus of the people making it is there is really cool, too. I think people used to be far more reluctant to return to roles back before decent stories that really went somewhere new with the characters were not just on the table, but expected. Whether you like them or not, or it’s a mixed bag for you, these kinds of stories have given actors a reason to WANT to come back. And technology coming a long way has helped, too; when you no longer have to deal with greenscreen and/or super long prosthetic application and removal, returning to SF/F roles suddenly becomes a lot less daunting on the practical level that’s a secondary concern for viewers but may loom large in the memories of actors.
I don’t think they implied they were mad, just that Spiner (and let’s face it Stewart as well) weren’t keen on returning before.
Having said that, Trek has changed. They didn’t want to return to do what they did before as positive an experience as it was. But what they returned to in Trek was not what they left and I think that’s why they returned for more.
Sure, Spinner didn’t want to return so that’s why they manufacture a force-fitted role for him in every season now of Picard…lol. That’s all a load of BS — of course he and his agent let that be known…then they negotiate and then they cut him large checks, and the he ALL OF A SUDDEN he has no freaking problem playing another freaking Soong family member that I don’t think any of us really wanted to see. Because crap like “Fresh Hell” doesn’t pay the bills, and he and his agent know exactly what they are doing here to pick Kurtzman’s pocket year after year. LOL
Well put.
I’m not mad at all and have commented on plenty of occasions that there’s nothing wrong with an actor taking a paying gig. Shatner is a great case study; he’ll do anything for a check. There’s context here to consider, Hemsworth’s involvement with the franchise was thirteen years ago, and to not put too fine a point on it, Trek hasn’t been a priority with Paramount. There have been five Transformers and MI movies since 2009. Thirty-two Marvel movies. There have been two Trek movies since 2009.Since Nemesis, three Trek movies in twenty years. Any actor seriously wanting to do Trek these days is talking to Alex Kurtzman, not JJ Abrams. And that’s why, when pressed, the Kelvin cast acknowledges either implicitly or explicitly that, yeah, they would if asked, but they’ve also moved on. Someone being blunt about it shouldn’t be unexpected.
Shatner usually says that he would only return if it was a meaningful script and not just a cameo. But more to the point I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed for him
Understanding that meaningful for Shatner just means there are plenty of zeros on the check.
He knows that IF were to board any ship that
it crash straight into the old folks home just in
time for some Lawrence Welk and reheated
oatmeal from the night before. Isn’t old age
with a large check and reconstituted funky
oatmeal and blueberry muffins sensational?
That would be dumb given EVENTUALLY they will make more movies…and at some point they will at least bring back some, if not all, of the Kelvin actors. For example, 2030 hits, and then it’s exciting and works from a marketing perspective to get a Kelvin reunion movie, or a crossover with Kelvin cast involved — they will all be later in their careers in Starfleet, like TUC was for TOS cast.
Look at almost all of the franchises — they bring the original versions back, even if it’s just for a one-off.
I mean some has said that in past, but things can and do change. I think Nimoy said it about 2 or 3 times and the irony is he nearly ended playing his character the longest out of every TOS actor in the end. George Takei now has the record since he returned to Star Trek this year.
Some like Stewart and Mulgrew in the past has said there would have to be a big enough reason to come back but never completely ruled it out. I think they also thought at some point the franchise would just move on to new things and time periods. NOPE! But never said it would never happen either.
To me, it would be weird to flat out say you would never do a role again, especially if you just genuinely loved it and help give you the career you have. And I remember saying this somewhere, it’s damn if you do, damn if you don’t. If you say you are done with Star Trek for good, some fans will call you ungrateful and that you are now acting like you are too good for it. If you say you want to come back, you’re accursed of just wanting a paycheck. So no matter what someone is going to get on your case about it. And of course this happens in every long term shows and movies.
I do think we won’t see Hemsworth in Star Trek again though, but his circumstances was different. And the idea just sounded very forced. But it’s still Star Trek, maybe he could show up as Prime Universe Kirk and runs into Picard or Janeway. ;D
I don’t think a lot of the DS9 actors would go back, tbh.
Not sure why you would say that since most have said they would love to come back. And two of them recently did with Shimmerman and Visitor in Lower Decks (but yes it’s easier to be a voice actor versus putting on all the make up and costumes again). But they also did a lot of interviews after that episode aired and said they would play those roles again. Shimmerman said it couldn’t be like it was when DS9 was airing because he’s too old to get all that make up done for 25 episodes but certainly like to make appearances at least. Terry Ferrell said last month at a convention she would love to play Dax again.
The only person who doesn’t seem to have a big interest to go back was Avery Brooks and maybe even he has changed his mind, but I don’t think he is waiting by the phone either.
Huh???
Star Trek VI should have been the last we saw of the TOS cast. Generations despite having enjoyable chemistry between Patrick Stewart and William Shatner, is a bad extended tv episode. Though i really like Malcolm as the villain.
sounds like he wasnt too happy with how he was being brought back..like ‘thats it? the transporter??’ (like most fans when they heard about it the other month)
couldve brought him back any number of ways that couldve been quite interesting and taken into account his aging (timetravel/Yesterdays Kelvin, beamed out by the klingons and held prisoner for years on Rura Penthe, the Mirror universe etc) ..but instead it was.. ‘Relics’?
Yeah, I don’t like the Relics re-hash either… part of the fun of wondering about ST 4 was wondering how they were going to get the two together… and to learn it was just another transporter buffer reincarnation, an idea ripped off from TNG. The Kelvinverse already suffered from a lack of original ideas. Another key problem is it really diminishes his sacrifice in the first movie, which is one thing I quite like in that one.
Chris looks unrecognisable now from his 2009 appearance. In the memorable opening moments of that movie he displayed real charisma and star power. I’m glad this discarded plot never made it to fruition though. It’s entire purpose wasn’t so much to tell a good story, but simply to get box office leverage on the basis of Hemsworth’s name, and we all know it. The fact they even tried to do this suggests there’s not even an attempt to approach storytelling in any meaningful way.
Originally I was open to the idea of him returning if it was done right. Now I’m glad that this never worked out, because from what I read it would have only detracted from the powerful opening of JJ’s first Star Trek.
While the 10 minutes he spent on Star Trek was brilliant, it was also 14 years ago, and I’m really ready to move on.
This
That’s the irony, everyone did 14 years ago lol. It just seemed like a ploy from Paramount and Abrams to try and get more people to watch the next one, but most Star Trek fans didn’t sound like they were biting their nails to see George Kirk again. It never sounded like a movie anyone was begging to see and probably another reason it died.
The inability of the Bad Robot films to push Trek forward is a major problem, and this just underscores that. Oddly enough, it’s in this particular series’ past, not the franchises’. Although the conceit to get Hemsworth back is itself a rehash of an idea from TNG.
I really thought for all the flaws of the Abrams reboot/Kelvinverse, the casting was flawless. I enjoy the first one, hated Into Darkness, and liked Beyond. I wanted a 4th film BUT the death of Anton Yelchin plus the great work of Strange New Worlds has taken away my interest in seeing another Bad Robot film. Bringing back Hemsworth always felt cheap and would rob Pine’s Kirk of what’s driven him his whole life. Bad Robot seems to be bankrupt of ideas. SNW seems to know what Trek is and how to tell stories in that era.
I’m still down for that cast to get back together on film. I think it can still work.. it’s just hilarious to me how they spent so much time ‘untethering’ this continuity from existing canon, just keep going back to that well. It’s asinine.
I haven’t seen the Lord of the Rings TV show that’s written by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, but everyone I’ve talked with says that the story is quite bad. So I think we’re lucky that their Star Trek script was never filmed!
What? Wow, that surprises me. It’s fantastic.
My brother watched it and thought it was pretty bad too. But of course every one will have a different opinion about something. But I seen a lot of bad reviews to put me off from watching.
Its very good. People just like to complain because it has a female protagonist and black characters.
Considering my brother is black too, I don’t think that was his complaint lol. He didn’t hate it, but he did think the pacing was slow and the story didn’t feel very compelling. But he did say he will give season two a chance. I’ll probably watch it and decide for myself but when you have so many options these days, it’s really hard to watch stuff most people seem ‘meh’ about.
Fair enough. A lot of the complaints are racist and sexist, but obviously some people just don’t like the show. Given that it is a Tolkien adaptation, I think a slow pace is to be expected. Tolkien’s books really take their time to tell their stories. That style obviously isn’t for everybody though.
To be honest, I’ve never been a huge fantasy fan in general. I didn’t start watching GOT until it’s sixth season and only watched the first episode of House of Dragon so far and these are the shows people were raving about.
I did plan to watch LOTR but once the initial reviews started, yeah, less inclined. And when my brother who DOES love fantasy and LOTR (he bought all the extended movie versions) wasn’t big on it, even less so for me. But I will give it a chance at some point, probably after I finally finish House of Dragons lol.
If you watch the first episode of LOTR Rings of Power it will probably be a good guide to whether you would like the whole series or not. For me they did manage to capture the balance of characters, compelling plot, and cinematic grandeur that I liked in the classic LOTR trilogy, and that was missing in the plodding Hobbit movies.
Yeah I will do that eventually. And for the record my brother told me I should still try to watch it and decide for myself, which I literally said I would, he just gave me his opinion lol. I mean if I listen to opinions about Star Trek shows from random anonymous posters on a message board, obviously I’m going to take an opinion of someone I actually know and trust and understands the genre way more than I do. And being brothers we understand each other’s taste very well. And he’s always been more the fantasy guy and me the sci fi guy.
A great example, he went and saw all the Hobbit movies opening day. But I didn’t bother to watch the first one until after it came to cable and after being so disappointed with that one I didn’t bother watching the last two until years later. And we both agreed they were big disappointments. So as said, I’m not a huge fantasy/LOTR guy in general. But I’ll probably give the show a chance eventually. I’m still trying to get through stuff I’m actually excited to watch on my own.
Right now I’m in the middle of For All Mankind which I been wanting to watch since it started and that’s already three seasons old. And so far loving it. My brother would’ve been bored by episode 3 though lol.
It’s just not very compelling. You can know how a story ultimately ends but any prequel has to present a take that manages to expand upon the source material and stand on its own. The story isn’t well executed and despite watching the entire first season I can’t remember the names of any of the characters created specifically for “The Rings of Power” which typically indicates a lack of compelling characters.
Yeah the reaction does sound very mixed. I went to see what the score was on RT. It has an 85% critics rating but a 39% audience rating. That’s definitely a very mixed reaction lol. So in no rush to see it. Maybe will just wait to see how season 2 fares first and then watch both if that season has a better reception overall.
Good point. Also, notice here that some posters here who are negative on it haven’t actually seen it themselves, while the three of us who actually bothered to watch it all liked it. LOL — draw your own conclusions from that.
There is an extraordinary amount of competition for my TV viewing time these days. If a show wants me as a regular viewer, it needs to grab me right out of the gate. Rings failed to do that. So did Game of Thrones Mk.II. I haven’t written them off, I might give them another shot at some point.
OK, I understand that. But the problem with that approach is that some shows take multiple eps of set up to get going and then become outstanding series. Severance, Turn and The Man in the High Castle are other good examples of this.
I gave up after the third episode. I was just so bored. People seem very split on it. Some really do love it while others think it’s an insult to JRR Tolkien himself.
I don’t care that much. I just want to be entertained and yeah so far it’s failing me big time at least. At some point I will try to finish it and maybe will love it by the end. But if you’re forcing yourself to watch something that is only 8 episodes long that’s probably not a great sign lol.
But loved House of Dragon. Was riveted from beginning to end. That’s a show I can recommend anyone to watch, even if they never seen the original show.
I watched every episode and it just didn’t work for me. The anticipation that typically builds to a season finale just wasn’t there.
And for the rest of us not put off by a female protagonist or Black elves and dwarves, it’s just not compelling television. I can’t help but compare it to “Andor” on Disney+. When “The Rings of Power” concluded after building to the season finale, I wasn’t exactly filled with anticipation on how the season was going to end. Wondering who might be Sauron and if that long haired guy is Gandalf was about all that kept moving the show forward.
“Andor”, however, was built in layers and broken down into thirds, with the climax of each third for the protagonist part of a larger story with other storylines that moved forward on their own.
“The Rings of Power” could best be described as a beautifully shot series that was underserved by an underwhelming interpretation of Tolkien’s work while “Andor” can best be described as one of the most compelling series of 2022.
Well, I give you credit and respect for being the first person I personally have conversed with on this who doesn’t like it, but actually watched the entire season. IDIC
I still think that’s a small but very vocal minority of viewers. I’m unfamiliar with the source material specific to the series, so I think that probably helps.
Agreed. Those who don’t like it are the loudest on the internet. Kind of like the same deal with Discovery for Trek…a popular series that has grown the franchise, but a loud minority of core Trek fans can’t stop bitching and moaning about it on web sites and social media, so it creates this perceived group-think effect that makes it seem like the series is not successful/popular to those people who are not paying attention.
You are correct — it’s fantastic.
This is another example of internet fanboy group-think trying to crap on a great show.
LOL — it does seem like most people who have a negative opinion of it have never watched it. And I’ve seen a lot of this online in the same vein where people saying it’s bad haven’t watched it, but mention (I’m exaggerating, but you get the point) that that their friend’s, sister’s, roommate’s, uncle’s dentist watched it and said it was bad, so it must be crap. Give me a freaking break. :-))
I didn’t get past the first episode. The pacing was glacial. Did it get better?
It was a bit of a slog and watching “Andor” kind of spelled out why: While we know how both stories ultimately end, “Andor” stands entirely on its own by exploring a part of the “Star Wars” universe which is virtually unknown while “The Rings of Power” is weighed down by the original source material by utilizing and relying on far too many characters from it.
Well IDIC here as well — I found Andor kind of depressing and devoid of the Star Wars joy I expect from that franchise. I give Andor a resounding “meh”. For all it’s weaknesses, I liked Kenobi a lot more.
I agree that version of Star Trek 4, would have frustrated me if written the way they said. As for LOTR TV show, the last 3 episodes redeem a lot the rest of the series. That is because the first episodes feels political, with a lot of expositions for the rest. It is painful at times.
I thought it was enjoyable. I can’t say I love it, but overall I like it with some quibbles here and there.
I haven’t seen it, because I don’t carry a pile of streaming subscriptions. I understand it’s been well received broadly, with the biggest blowback coming from people who have their MAGA undies in a knot that there are women and people of color prominently featured.
I’m happy this movie never got made. I loved Relics but this story just sounds… BAD. We all saw Kirk get blown up. he didn’t have time to stick himself in a transporter buffer. Nor does he have the technical know how like Scotty did
Same my friend! The idea sounded as dumb as most JJ verse movies! So I’m shocked it didn’t happen. 😁😂
It worked in TNG because it was done in both a creative and logical way. Here it sounded ham fisted and desperate and even Hemsworth knew it.
And it probably would’ve flopped like Beyond did anyway. Hemsworth only makes movies money when he’s playing Thor. He’s usually box office poison when he isn’t.
Like George Kirk himself let JJ verse stay dead.
RIP JJ VERSE: 2009-2016! 😎🖖
I wouldn’t say the Kelvin universe is completely dead, but yes maybe in terms of films. I just think its long past time to come up with a new concept, which they TRIED with Noah Hawley’s idea but that got sunk too.
But I agree about Hemsworth and this movie. I think Paramount wanted to draw out Hemsworth fans who wouldn’t normally watch a Star Trek movie, but most of those fans seem to only be MCU fans because they don’t show up to a lot of his other movies, even with other franchises like Ghostbusters and Men in Black. Both of those bombed with him in those too and he was the main star in MIB. So I don’t think it would’ve been any guarantees. Maybe did better than Beyond but still nothing Paramount wants in terms of big BO. And yes, it could’ve done even worse.
Thankfully we’ll never know.
I do think we will still see Kelvin characters again at some point. There are always crossover possibilities and with so many shows being made maybe there could be a Kelvin spin off show at some point. What I would love is a Kelvin/Lower Decks crossover episode! Now that would be tons of fun lol.
Lol would totally be down for a Lower Decks and Kelvin crossover! That would be fun, especially since LDS keep making jokes about JJ verse every season. McMahan would go nuts with it!
And I like the cast. I never had an issue with them, just being in bad movies and how badly they did Fratboy Kirk and Emo Spock especially.
But I wouldn’t mind seeing a Sulu show’on Paramount+ or something. It could be Sullu now as captain with his husband and daughter living domestic life on a ship balancing his family life and job.
Dude this is funny but I was reading a different article here discussing the latest Kelvin project implosion and me and you discussed a Lower Decks/Kelvin crossover idea over there several months ago lol. I guess we really really want that crossover. ;D
And yes, I would be into a Sulu spin off show. Actually Bob Orci wrote in that same article saying he actually tried to pitch a show idea starring Cho but it went nowhere; probably because CBS wanted only stories based in the Prime universe again. And the two companies were still separated.
But again,who knows after a few years? Even Quinto said he would love to do a spin off Spock TV show. I don’t have an issue with any of these ideas; especially if the movies are dead. I want to see Trek expanded as much as possible (and we keep getting post-Nemesis shows of course).
I don’t actually think we will see the Kelvin characters again. They cost way too much for TV and they don’t pull in enough to justify a Trek movie. The numbers just don’t add up. It was a good idea to try with ST 2009 and Into Darkness but that time is over.
Well of course if they did a TV show, they would cost less lol. And ALL these actors do both TV and movies, none of these actors are HUGE stars minus maybe Zoe Saldana and Simon Pegg. But Karl Urban biggest claim to fame right now is being on a TV show, The Boys. Simon Pegg is doing a TV show for Peacock right now called The Undeclared War which first season came out in August. Both John Cho and Zoe Saldana made TV shows on Netflix recently, although Cho’s show, Cowboy Beebop got cancelled after the first season. Saldana’s show was just a limited series so it only has one season. Zachery Quinto mostly does TV work which is what he is, a TV actor. It’s only Star Trek he’s ever really done any real movie work in. Even Chris Pine did a miniseries on TNT a few years ago which I watched.
I don’t know where people get the idea these guys are so big they can’t do TV work, especially as shown they all do it, most very recently. With the exception of Saldana, they are not HUGE stars. They get a lot of work but most of them are just working actors end of the day. Pine, Pegg and Saldana do a lot of movie work but Saldana is the only huge star out of the bunch. Pegg would be second thanks to Mission Impossible. And Pine a faaaaar distant third. Cho, Quinto and Urban mostly does TV work. When was the last time you saw any of those guys in an actual movie?
Now all that said, yes if they did a Star Trek TV show they would probably get more money than they did in other TV roles, but that’s how it always works obviously. Patrick Stewart is certainly getting tons more playing Captain Picard again than he was getting being in Blunt Talk. But he obviously isn’t getting paid what he was on the TNG films either including all the other TNG actors coming back in third season. But they are all probably getting above anything else they would get on other shows. So I’m pretty sure if most of given the option of doing more Star Trek on TV versus never doing it at all, most would at least consider it.
But of course that is the bigger question is do they or Paramount want to do a Kelvin show? Which at the moment, at least for Paramount, seems to be a no. But who knows in a few years? And everything is just different today. The Obi Wan show was suppose to be a movie, once they were afraid it wasn’t going to be a major hit, they turned it into a TV show and got Ewan McGreggor back for that too. So everything is different today.
It doesn’t even have to be a full on show, just more of a limited series or a one or done which the Obi Wan show supposedly is.
Welp it gets a little complicated these days. With streaming and everything a lot of movie actors have been doing streaming and TV shows so the lines have started to get blurred. I mean even Harrison Ford is about to do a Paramout+ show and I think we can all agree he is a movie star LOL.
I just found out a week ago Harrison Ford was doing a TV show lol. I saw the trailer for it on YouTube. One of the Yellow Stone shows, which I never seen. And yeah he’s a HUGE star even now. He still gets $10+ million in every film and I imagine he probably got 20 or 30 million for the next Indiana Jones movie.
So you’re right, TV and movies have been blurring for awhile now, but streaming has erased it completely at this point. I mean all the MCU movie actors are also in the MCU shows too.
And I also think because there is just less episodes more movie actors are willing to do it. In the old days when you were the star of a show, that used to mean 20 episodes a season. Now that can mean 6-10 tops, so it’s probably easier to commit to that even if you’re still mostly doing films.
Yeah, I mean after COVID it just became a thing I guess? Like there is Tv. there are movies. Streaming is something in between i guess? Like it’s not tv because you pay for it but its not the movies cause you are at home? It… just… different…? and no one knows how to classify it. Even the stars.
Wonder Woman 2 bombed as well. Chris Pine is no draw. WW 84 didn’t even make back its budget. It did far worse than Star Trek Beyond.
You’re not wrong but WW 84 came out in the middle of the pandemic. And it was the first film they decided to release on HBO Max the same day it was released in theaters. My guess is most people, especially people still afraid to go to theaters, just watched it on HBO Max instead. I was one of them. And boy so happy I did because I thought it was soooooo bad lol. I could not tell you how excited I was to watch it. I haven’t seen it since and I still have Max.
I imagine it would’ve at least broke even if it only went to theaters but yeah it’s no way it was going to be close to the hit as the original because the word of mouth killed it.
I’m in a writer’s group and I got thoroughly trashed for saying I enjoyed WW84. I thought it was better because it was at least an attempt to put something not in the middle of a huge, shot-to-death war. I also thought the end of the first WW was terrible.
Well the way they brought back Steve was absolutely ridiculous lol
It might be years, but they will eventually show up in either a reunion movie or a crossover movie. The cast will age and will not always be this expensive, and also in another 8-12 years sentimentality and studio marketing ideas will likely kick in, and they will revisit this crew again.
As Trek fans, we should know better by now to not rule out revisiting old crews, sometimes even decades later.
Yeah, it will happen eventually.
I suppose it’s possible. But this cast is not like any other Trek cast. These aren’t people that got started with Trek like almost every other Trek series minus Scott Bakula. They mostly all had successful careers before this and are not defined by Trek. So I guess we will see.
Sorry to be blunt, but in another 8-12 years a lot of the legacy character actors will be dead. The wasted opportunity now is the reluctance to flesh out new characters, even in universe.
Chris Pine did the TV miniseries I Am The Night for TNT in 2019.
Zachary Quinto is currently in American Horror Story on FX.
Karl Urban is currently in The Boys on Amazon Prime.
John Cho has been in like 5 different TV shows since 2009 lol. I know because I watched them all minus his last one, Cowboy Bebop. I actually loved Flash Forward, which was an ABC show which came out the same year the first Kelvin movie did and was being produced by Brannon Braga. Unfortunately all the shows he’s been in has only made it to one season minus Sleepy Hollow; but he just did a few episodes of that show and wasn’t starring in it.
And Karl Urban was also in another good sci fi FOX show which got cancelled after one season. It was a JJ Abrams show called Almost Human released in 2013. Sadly it was also shut down way too soon.
Zachary Quinto never stopped doing TV shows. He was still doing Heroes when the first Star Trek movie came out and kept doing more shows when that was finally cancelled through both STID and Beyond. I didn’t know he was in AHS.
I don’t know where this idea came from everyone on that cast are huge A list movie stars? It certainly can’t be due to the Kelvin movies themselves since none of those were actually big films. Zoe Saldana has been in multiple billion dollar films, so at this point she is considered a bonafide star. But most of the other actors were doing TV shows when the movies were still being made as shown. I think Chris Pine decided he wanted to just be a movie actor which obviously makes sense, but I suspect he will eventually do TV shows in the future too if he never cracks the movie star thing he’s been trying for.
I really enjoyed Sawyer’s book Flash Forward, but the TV show was underwhelming. It changed the date of the flash from 20-something years in the future to just a couple, if I recall correctly. And it took way too long to get going (compare that to Lost’s superb pilot). Just another in the long list of failed “shows with a hook” that tried to emulate the success of Lost. I didn’t remember Cho was in it.
Saldana is easily the biggest star in the cast, but even then in Avatar she is basically unrecognizable and the cast doesn’t really matter much anyway (that movie is all about the CGI, the writing and acting are mediocre at best and the Avatar II trailer’s exclusive focus on the CGI suggest more of the same.)
Guardians is really where she’s made her name, I think. Star Trek would be second, but Paramount’s astounding incompetence in making Star Trek 4 has diminished her success here.
Yeah I heard about the book when the show was just starting. But I think because it’s a TV show they had to limit the time interval more to increase the drama. So the first flash forward was a year but then the second was five years. It did lean into the format of LOST a lot lol. It was meant to replace that show as the next big show on that network but yeah didn’t work out that way.
Cho was a big part of the cast. He was another FBI agent on the teem trying to solve the flash forward and was the boyfriend of Gabrielle Union’s character.
I agree about Saldana, she is a big star but of course it’s mostly due to stuff like Marvel and Avatar obviously although like you said Avatar it’s more about the effects. But it also made nearly $3 billion so that probably increases what you earn in future projects no matter what. It’s going to be interesting to see how how Avatar 2 does. Can’t believe its been 13 years lol. That’s probably how long it will be before we get the next Star Trek movie. ;)
We’ve had this conversation before, the Kelvin cast isn’t hurting for work, at all.
Yeah they are doing well and watch a lot of their work. I was only saying none of them A list actors except maybe one.
The bottom line is I think they wanted to move on from the Kelvinverse, but they focus grouped it and determined that the cast was recognizable and liked enough to try to make that happen. Admittedly, I’m open to it because of the cast, myself. Quinto and Pine are much better in the roles than the guys on SNW, but I don’t hate Ethan Peck’s portrayal of Spock. The guy playing Kirk is just… not right for that role.
But that is the irony about it. It’s understandable that people want to see more of them but then they are not confident of the cast to even get another movie funded. That and the fact this is the third attempt to make a movie with them in it. So at some point, you have to say you tried and try something different you think will be more feasible or realistic. That’s the entire issue and where the frustration comes in for fans who want a Kelvin movie or not.
Clearly Paramount is stuck between a rock and a hard plus. They don’t really know where to go with these films, which I been saying a few years now. And it will probably stay that way for at least a few more until they figure it out sadly.
It doesn’t help that it’s been a revolving door at the Executive level. I honestly think it was scheduling of the cast that doomed this most recent false start, but what do I know?
Based on all the interviews with the actors, they never got a concrete offer, one that included a script. They keep saying that they know nothing beyond “Paramount may want to do another movie.” They could be lying, of course, but that sounds like there are bigger problems than just scheduling.
Of course, we have been over this time and time again. So it’s kind of pointless to keep discussing it.
But this article, which is a complete non-story, already has almost 150 comments so Trekmovie will keep posting these.
No, that was a talking point for awhile, but it went way beyond that. Based on all reports, they never really had a green light to even do a movie because they never had the money to do it. It sounds like they put enough pieces in place to get writers to make a script and hire a director with an opening date and was probably hoping it would be enough to pull in investors to throw money at the project. That was the point of announcing it on shareholders day, to show Paramount had a real plan for one of their bigger but sadly lagging IPs and raise the stock. It was nothing more but a ploy to get investors on board to fund it and it obviously didn’t work. But everyone else from the fans to certainly the actors felt like they just been trolled…hard. Because even naysayers like me thought THIS TIME it was real.
Again, just based on the pieces that’s reported out there. It was probably even more to it than that. But Paramount only pretended they were committed to making a movie. The second it was revealed the cast wasn’t informed of the announcement made clear it was all smoke and mirrors with the hope that maybe something would come out of it later. But since we heard absolutely nothing official beyond that until news came the director moved on, that’s all it was from the start. And then we learn after all of that is that the script they been writing for a year now was still not even finished because it sounded like they didn’t like where the story was going. Or maybe it was just more of a budget issue?
It’s funny, this was suppose to be a new group of executives who were really serious about making a movie and they showed to be the most incompetent with this silly ploy they tried to pull and it failed.
Anyway, it’s hard to make a film when you have no budget, script, cast or director lol. But money sounds to be the biggest culprit.
LOL totally true. I mean nothing against the man himself but what non-marvel movie has he made that was a success? Heck, 2 out of the 3 Thor movies weren’t great. I’m not saying it’s his fault per se but he just hasn’t had that many great roles. I mean him being the guy version of ganine in the Ghostbusters reboot? Like seriously?
Yeah they know Hemsworth is not some big box office draw. Hollywood keep pretending like he is but the only movie I saw him in a theater when he’s not playing Thor was Ghostbusters lol. And my girlfriend wanted to see it. He was OK in it but he’s not Tom Cruise or Will Smith. They actually replaced him with Will Smith in MIB and it bombed hard.
Same thing probably would’ve happened if they made this movie. When not even Star Trek fans cared he was coming back that was already a bad sign for it.
And the last Thor movie was sooooo bad!
Honestly just the Kelvin movies as a whole have fizzled out. It’s just been too long and the Kurtzman tv shows have been doing well as of late. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Kelvan movies cost way too much for the little money they bring in.
I totally agree with this. I think the Kelvin movies are done as well. I think Paramount tried one last ditch effort with this latest one but once they couldn’t even get the funding for it, that basically told you everything. ‘
And the thing is most of us knew it wasn’t a real thing once the actors were saying they knew nothing just a few months ago for a movie that should’ve been shooting now.
For me, I have no issues if they make another one, but I always been saying it needs to be MUCH lower than the other movies and that’s probably the issue. They can’t get one low enough to justify spending the money on it because they are obviously afraid it too will bomb.
It’s funny people wanted to argue with me every time I said Beyond bombed. If the movie made money, I don’t think they would still be in the turmoil they are in 6+ years later. If Beyond made at least a half a billion dollars, we probably would’ve had two movies by now or at least the fifth one in development if the fourth did well enough.
And sadly Paramount has no one else but themselves to blame (well OK JJ Abrams as well). They squandered what should’ve been a consistent movie franchise for at least 5-6 films minimum. But they did nothing very creative with them after the first one with boring one note ubervillains and gave them ridiculous budgets trying to be the next Marvel (who does nothing BUT ubervillains) and shot themselves in the foot in the process.
Honestly, and I’m sorry to whom ever I am SURE I will piss off, but JJ is the problem with all of this. 1. he was never a Star Trek fan. 2. He admitted to Quienten Tarentino he never even understood the movies he was directing. 3. he dropped the ball on Star Trek to go on to be involed with Star Wars which is what he always wanted from the beginning. The man wrecked 2 of the biggest sci fi franchises at the same time. I’m sorry I know I’m coming off as pissy but that’s just how it is. I hate that guy.
Yeah Abrams is definitely to blame at some level. I have always said I don’t have an issue with the Kelvin movies in terms of their overall tone and execution. He was trying to draw people in who don’t usually watch Star Trek and I was fine with that. And my thinking was if watching that movie would get someone to try out TOS, TNG or VOY then it’s a plus in my book. And I still defend putting them in an alternate universe. I still think that was a brilliant idea, it’s too bad they have completely dropped it when it went back to TV, but understand why.
But there also reasons why I hope Abrams never gets near a Trek movie again. Because he doesn’t seem to understand or care about it either. That is the biggest irony of it all because when he got the job, everyone treated him like the new messiah of Star Trek. It was so bizarre. It became this talking point he didn’t just understand and love Star Trek, but specifically TOS. That he was a ‘fan’ of it and he was going to do right by the original show.
And while I thought the first movie was more good than bad story wise (and I think that was more due to Orci and Kurtzman than Abrams), STID (which I just mentioned in another post to you below lol) is what told me why I don’t think Abrams should’ve been making these films. Again, I can’t blame everything on him but when you are the one who gives the final decision, that’s how it goes, even if it wasn’t your idea. Same thing with Kurtzman running Trek now. He probably has very little to do with actual involvement story wise, but since he’s the guy at the top, he gets the blame as well as the credit because they are paying him the insane amount of money to turn out quality shows.
And the entire thing over Khan told fans everywhere not only does Abrams not get it in the least…but he doesn’t care he doesn’t get it. I’m going to guess a few people probably said to him Cumberbatch looks and acts nothing like Khan, including some of the writers themselves. And Abrams probably waved it off by saying the new fans don’t know that so it doesn’t matter. And it’s in another universe blah, blah, blah. But I bet if someone suggested changing the looks of anyone in Star Wars just slightly above their original image, those people wouldn’t be working on his movies. You can really see just how much he made his Star Wars fit in with that universe, in tone, style, looks, etc. TFA really felt like a sequel to ANH 30 years later. That’s why SW fans drooled over that movie, at least originally.
But with Star Trek, he just saw it as this outdated looking show that can use some huge updating. And he wasn’t wrong but apple bridges and beer factories standing in for engineering was eye rolling to some people for a reason. And then STID just proved it went beyond set design or turning Kirk into Luke Skywalker. Khan made it clear how tone deaf he was to Star Trek overall. You take probably one of the most iconic characters most fans was begging NOT to put into the next movie and then you #$@% it up so badly, you basically derailed the franchise just two movies in lol.
But again, it goes back to Paramount as well. No one just told the guy no. I think they all saw WOK at least since they were the company that made it even if none of them were around. But they didn’t see it as a big deal probably because like Abrams they only cared about new fans and Cumberbatch was only becoming a bigger star, so the old nerds can stuff it. The new fans won’t know or care and will be the future of the franchise anyway. That’s how arrogance works.
And then Beyond came and lost most of those people too and here we are today. So yeah. It’s nothing wrong to do something new with a franchise, but as Picard once said, the line must be drawn here!
I’m sure if Abrams could do it all over again, he would do things differently…at least I hope so. But it’s too late now.
Yeah see the thing is, when it comes to ST 2009, the alternate universe idea was all bob orci. to this day JJ Abrams still doesn’t get why that even works. That’s EXACTLY what he told Tarantino because Tarantino doesn’t get it either. Both of them are clueless. And no, Tarantino, Chris Pine is NOT William Shatner you dumb ^*%*^%*
No I think he understand how the Kelvin universe works, IIRC he only said he didn’t care if Tarantino (who didn’t understand it) snubbed it for his own thing because he thought most fans hated it anyway.
And again another reason I’m happy Tarantino got nowhere close to this thing either. To me, if you want to do Star Trek then you have to honor it, all of it. Again, imagine Tarantino going up to Kathleen Kennedy and said he thought the SW prequels sucked and he wants to make another prequel movie where Padme joins Anakin to the dark side and they both fight the Jedi or something until Padme is killed and Anakin becomes Vader.
Sure it sounds interesting (well I made it up so it has to be ;)) and I’m guessing all the people who hated the prequels would love to see that version, but it’s no way it would ever get made, because it goes against everything in canon.
I’m not painting people like Abrams or Tarantino as evil or anything but you can’t take a long developed franchise and just do whatever you want without some push back. You still have to play in the parameters. But then that is the beauty of Star Trek, you can create NEW parameters as long as you are clear about that. That’s why TNG was made a century after TOS in the first place.
In Abrams case, he should’ve did a hard reboot on day one instead of his queasy soft reboot idea which only confused people including Tarantino himself.
I know you heard me say this a thousand times, but I just don’t understand why anyone fears doing a reboot? I thought that’s what Taratino wanted to do with his idea, just start fresh. I was into him making a movie when I thought that’s what he was doing. Instead he just wanted to muddy waters more than what Abrams already did lol.
And then it drives me INSANE when fans defend him saying “Tarantino doesn’t care about canon”. A. Sorry for fans like me who DO, that’s not going to win a lot of us over lol and B. He absolutely cares about it, the problem is only the stuff that suits his story and that’s not how canon works.
Well, this is the exact quote I just googled.
‘In an interview, Tarantino revealed that he does not seem to understand what timeline his film would take place in.
“Now, I still don’t quite understand – and J.J. can’t explain it to me, and my editor has tried to explain it to me and I still don’t get it … Something happened in the first movie that kind of wiped the slate clean? I don’t buy that. I don’t like it. I don’t appreciate it. I don’t … fuck that! Alright? I don’t like that,”’
OK I see what you’re saying now. But I think it’s just how Tarantino worded it meaning Abrams probably TRIED to explain it to him but he still didn’t get it. That seem like what he was saying.
And I mean while Abrams wasn’t big on Star Trek, the guy is a sci fi nut in general and has made multiple stories involving time travel, alternate universes, etc like Lost and definitely Fringe. That entire show is about parallel worlds, oddly enough which revolved around Leonard Nimoy’s character in it. My interest over him has certainly gone down over the years, especially after Star Trek and Star Wars, but this is a guy who has made a ton of high concept science fiction shows and movies over the years. The idea for the Kelvin movies is just another day at the office for him.
That is also what is frustrating to me, because his TV shows lean in hard when it comes to these complex concepts, especially Lost (but I know most of that came from Damon Lindelof). But the Kelvin movies they were afraid to go too sciency with it the same way they did a show like Lost even though Lost was huge at the time. If you can get a big audience to watch a twisty show that threw in every strange sci fi trope out there weekly for six seasons; I think you can trust your audience enough to explain what a parallel universe is in a Star Trek movie.
But the Kelvin movies wasn’t really about science. That was just a by product to get Spock in the movie. It was really more about a lot of punching, running and explosions sadly.
Well this is the exact quote I just googled. Except I took out one swear word cause I just got censored for it lol
‘In an interview, Tarantino revealed that he does not seem to understand what timeline his film would take place in.
“Now, I still don’t quite understand – and J.J. can’t explain it to me, and my editor has tried to explain it to me and I still don’t get it … Something happened in the first movie that kind of wiped the slate clean? I don’t buy that. I don’t like it. I don’t appreciate it. I don’t … #### that! Alright? I don’t like that,”’
Actually I think I got what Abrams was saying to Tarantino wrong. I think he told him he didn’t care if Tarantino didn’t get it and can change it because he said most of the fans didn’t get it either.
Again, whose fault is that?????? This is what drives so many of us nuts. Orci would spend countless interviews discussing, even laid out the entire idea of it back on this website in 2008 (I even have the article bookmarked) about it all being a parallel universe, how time travel works according to quantum mechanics, the idea if a different you share the same soul and all of that. But then the movie comes out and it’s explain in about five sentences in the most ambiguous way possible…and never brought up again. If someone simply said Nero came from an alternate universe, one freaking line, no one would’ve been confused in the least after that.
But they were SO afraid that it would be too ‘Trek-y’ for new viewers that they didn’t want to scare them off with too much technobabble or in this case, an actual real scientific theory. Because they were too afraid the concept itself would confuse people so let’s confuse them more by not explaining it at all.
It was the same problem with the Star Wars sequels but in a different way. Because everyone said the prequels were too ‘political’ Abrams decided not to try to bother to explain how the new Republic became so weak in 30 years to the point a new Empire just suddenly showed up out of nowhere. Again, it’s explained in comics and novels, but nowhere in the actual movie that the comics and novels are based on. He just wanted to focus on Jedis, the Death Star and l Darth Vader again. None of that other stuff mattered.
I guess I’m ranting now lol. But its frustrating because Abrams seem to think audience can’t handle a bit of depth outside of “that’s the bad guy and these are the good guys who have to kill him.” And because of that marred what should’ve been two stronger and smarter trilogies in two iconic franchises.
The prequels weren’t that political except for the first one with trade routes and taxation. Which was endlessly mocked. They are all about Palpatine seizing power through his machinations and too subtle on his slow corruption of Anakin because none of it is shown on screen. Lucas left all the real story beats up to Filoni on the cartoon show. Years after the prequel trilogy was finished.
I’m not saying that personally, but others certainly said they were. And it clearly scared off Abrams to even mention any of that in his movie.
And I think Lucas laid it out too clumsy in TPM and why people mocked it. That ended up being the fascinating part about the prequels. How Annakin became Darth Vader was what everyone expected, but the real subtext of the story was how a democracy turns into a fascist state is what gave the prequels something with depth. But again, it was all marred because the story just came off too clunky overall. And there are definitely things about it that don’t completely add up, but at least there were more to it than having Jedi’s fight in every movie.
But then Abrams decided not to bother with any of it at all. At the time I don’t think it was a huge deal because I thought the backstory would slowly get told in the other movies. But looking at the trilogy now, it just feels so lackluster in so many ways because it didn’t add anything new or interesting to the overall mythology. It just did what the OT did and just retold another Rebel vs Empire story with another Luke and Vader dynamic with Rey and Kylo; although this time it made far less sense for that story line to even happen.
Of course what’s more ironic now for everyone who watched Andor, you can’t get anymore political and hard nosed about how the rebel alliance rose in power and the intricate layers of how the Empire operates to stay i power. It’s like if George Orwell made a Star Wars show lol.
The MIB remake was decent, every Ghostbusters since II is bad. Even still would have preferred a 3rd film with Billy, Danny and Ernie. So sick of Disney style passing the torch movies. They started the trend with Disney Star Wars, and i’m sick of it. Stop bringing back franchises and ruining legacy characters or giving us empty fanservice.
Remember our discussion last week where I was suggesting that the transporter created a data file of someone that could be stored just like a replicator? Well, that plot device keeps coming up in Trek, from Relics to SNW and now for this Kelvin potential plot, so I think we have to assume that my interpretation that transporter technology and replicator technology are both branches of the same overall technology tree is correct.
It’s understandable to see others’ perspective: I’m listening to comments about what sone believe about his age now, compared to when they shot ST 2009, being a handicap to continuity; it’s interesting, however there are always Hollywood Methods to get around such details. Then, there exists another facet of “George Kirk” that many have not seemed to have noticed: G Kirk IS STILL ALIVE in the “prime” ST universe. We even saw an alternative timeline in Strange New Worlds’s season one, final episode, where a young James T. Kirk tells Pike that his dad served aboard the USS Kelvin. If that holds water, even at all, and since CBS has reunited with Paramount, it should be possible to bring Chris Hemsworth on SNW as George Kirk in some future storyline. That is something I’d like to see.
I doubt very much that they spend that much to use him only for a cameo in a probable last episode.
Characters are always played by different actors in the Prime and Kelvin realities. It would be weird if George Kirk was the only exception.
Yeah the idea just sounded a bit ridiculous. It really just came off like ‘we got to put Thor in the next movie to sell tickets’. If they did something involving time travel, alternate universe, etc it would at least sound more credible.
To be honest I’m pretty sure money was an issue too, but yes not the only one. And in reality most fans didn’t sound like they were in love with the idea from the beginning. I certainly wasn’t. I would’ve watched no matter what but it was probably a good reason why it didn’t. I just think it’s time to move on from the Kelvin cast, at least in movie form and come up with something new. All these Kelvin projects keep dying off for a reason.
At this point, I just don’t care.
It’s dead Jim.
I know TrekMovie started with the Kelvin momentum, but I feel that at this point we need to move onto another stage of grieving. That is acceptance.
Paramount may still be stuck in bargaining or depression, but the fanbase is mostly at acceptance.
The fanbase has been split on these movies since the first one and I don’t think that ever changed frankly. It only got worse after STID lol. I think Beyond is when most fans actually came around but unfortunately it was too late by then. Most had moved on, both old and new fans. And now here we are talking about the fourth movie they already cancelled four years ago lol. And we are still waiting for ANY movie to arrive, Kelvin or not.
I’m hoping the latest Kelvin project that arrived DOA will finally just tell Paramount to move on already. The fanbase as a whole has lost interest long ago. And it’s even harder now when you have so many TV shows to compete with. And on top of that, thanks to streaming it’s getting harder and harder for movies to make real money at the BO unless they were big franchises to begin with and Star Trek wasn’t. It’s no longer 2009, everything is too different now.
STID was God awful. Speaking as an Indian American it REALLY REALLY REALLY pissed me off that they cast Khan with the whited person on the planet. No one else seems to care, but what if they cased Uhura with a white woman? I bet they would have cared then!
I think plenty of people care though lol. I mean that was the biggest gripe against that movie among other things. Now I’ve always said if they told us this was a DIFFERENT Khan, OK, fine. Still would’ve bothered some people but wanting us to think it was Montalban’s character, just whiter and more British did them NO favors at all. Still the oddest miscasting ever done, at least in Star Trek. You can not be more tone deaf than that, especially when you’re trying to appeal to a fanbase you already know is very fickle to begin with.
You know there are people that tell me that, hey Montaban wasn’t Indian either. And you know what? They are right. But at least he was a person of color. You know what else? George Takei is not the same race as Sulu either. No one ever seems to point that out!
Yes but the point is the character is suppose to be from India even if the actor wasn’t. I mean James Doohan wasn’t Scottish or from Scotland but Scotty was. It was the 60s, casting was simply done very differently back then mostly out of both convenience and not sensitive to cultural issues like we are today. But it’s no way anyone is suppose to believe Cumberbatch’s version is Indian or even suggested that’s where he was from in the movie.
Again, what gets frustrating. You want to pretend it’s the same Khan (even though we have eyes and ears) but yet made his backstory SO vague to the point the guy could’ve just been from anywhere and my guess is that was the point. Vague enough for a newbie to not think that much about it, but all the fans would just know his backstory, so that way no one is (completely) confused depending on who is watching it.
Why bother making him Khan if you were afraid to really use him?
Exactly the point! I mean it was the 60’s! India hadn’t even been a free country for more than a decade or so! Like sheesh! They did they best they could at the time!
Montalban could at least “pass” for Indian, particularly if you do a slight recon and say Khan was of mixed Sikh-Latin American ancestry — which would be quite plausible, since the Augments were (1) a multinational bunch, and (2) the product of genetic engineering.
That could actually explain why Khan was evidently able to appeal to various confessional groups across the subcontinent — obviously the name “Khan” suggests an appeal to Muslims. It also explains why, in “Space Seed,” his costuming suggested a subtle Indian vibe (Nehru collars, etc.) when none of the other Augments dressed particularly distinctively.
The situation would be somewhat like that of Sapamurat Niyazov, the (wacky) first post-Soviet president of Turkmenistan, who nominally hailed from the dominant Teke tribe, but had in fact been orphaned in the 1948 earthquake that destroyed Ashkhabad, which allowed him to position himself as “a child of all Turkmen tribes” (or “Turkmenbashi,” “father of the Turkmen”) and a unifying figure.
Cumberbatch, of course, couldn’t “pass” in the slightest for either Sikh or Latin; the casting was absurd and an insult to a foundational part of Khan’s character. If they really wanted to use him, they could have called him “Joachim” — he did bear a strong resemblance to Khan’s deputy.
Similarly, apart from the ethnic confusion, that Khan was NOT portrayed as genocidal in “Space Seed” — Scotty even said that there were no massacres in Khan’s territory, unlike that of the other Augments.
Like the mis-writing of the Gorn in SNW, it just shows that the NuTrek writers have no understanding of what makes Star Trek tick beyond the most superficial.
I agree completely.
I quite like this take. Homogenization of our cultures is already much more prevalent, and easily justifiable.
I get that. For me, I just felt like even beyond the superficial, they got Khan all wrong. He didn’t come across as the guy Montalban played in any way. Khan was more brute force than calculated tactician. They completely botched the character, as well as the characterization.
I still remembered an article Damon Lindelof gave after the movie came out and he was basically patting himself on the back over Khan. He said something to the effect that they knew putting Khan in the movie was a risk but was happy how right they got him.
I remember reading that thinking what the #$@% are you talking about??? You didn’t even TRY to get Khan right. They didn’t get his appearance, speech, personality or even his full backstory right. It’s just another guy completely with the same name and a similar history, but he’s about as much Khan as Trump is Obama.
It still pains me how tone deaf they were over this character. A character most fans didn’t even want in the movie in the first place.
They got so caught up in the idea of Khan, they forgot to actually write him as Khan. If you’re going to use such an iconic villain, you have to get the essence of the character right, or what’s the point of using him? I could have gotten over the superficial changes.. they can be explained… but not understanding who he is as a character is flat out literary neglect.
Tiger2, I sincerely find it hard to understand how people still have so many words to say on this.
I’d just much rather have a good 2 and a bit hour made-for-streaming and limited theatrical release Trek movie once a year.
Think of all the characters and stories that could be filled in with a one-off. The novels have done this well, and it would allow legacy characters to shine on their own briefly.
I think people still find a lot to say about it out of sheer frustration, anger and outright confusion six years on lol. And of course that Paramount seems to keep trolling people over it. I just remembered when Pine and Hemsworth walked away for this project Paramount pretended they were going to just replace Pine to make the film and obviously that never happened the same way they said they were going to replace Shakman as director in their latest troll session when the last project imploded.
The whole thing has just been so bizarre. People keep talking about it because Paramount keep announcing movies and directors to projects they either don’t have the money or faith in the project they announced. And it’s probably both 100% of the time.
And I fully agree, if you just don’t think the next movie will do that well (and that’s very obvious at this point lol) then just make smaller movies and gear them towards Paramount+ with a limited release. Netflix paid Ryan Johnson $400 million to make 2 Knives Out sequels that will only be in theaters for a month and then hit Netflix. I don’t see why they can’t go with the same idea with a Star Trek movie but with a much tinier budget lol. I think somewhere in the vicinity of $80-90 million is realistic if it’s meant more for streaming but can play for a month in theaters.
And maybe at some point that will happen. I see people on different sites suggesting if the third season of Picard is a huge hit with the entire cast back, then maybe they may try for a cheaper TNG movie. It’s mostly wish fulfillment like most of these things are, but at this point they are probably open to anything. But they may even be too costly to do another movie with.
Yep. I mean Patrick Stewart keeps saying he wants to do a movie. I dunno if that is gonna happen or not but depending on how Picard Season 3 goes I bet that would get more people to go to the theaters than a 4th Kelvin movie would.
If Picard S3 is a good sendoff for the TNG cast, as Terry Malalas tasked himself with when tapped to run S3, then I hope they don’t do anything else.
Rather than a fourth Star Trek movie set in the Kelvin timeline released in theaters, I would much rather see a Deep Space 9 movie, a Voyager movie, and an Enterprise movie with the respective casts from those shows on Paramount+.
In an ideal world, all series would have a final 10-pisode goodbye like Picard season three is doing for TNG.
I would be fine with those too, but most will say those can’t make a lot of money. But I (nor Paramount it seems) think the Kelvin movies can make a lot of money either anymore either.
I think in reality they should just start anew with the movies with a new cast and characters. Put a ‘name’ in the lead if they feel they need some box office draw but do something new but cheaper films in general.
The trick is to find a concept that will get more than just Star Trek fans to care and I don’t know if they really will. They turned the Kelvin movies into Star Wars and newbies still lost interest eventually. Star Trek’s long term future is probably on Paramount+.
Just forget movies, period, and focus on streaming for the next decade. Strengthen the brand.
In all honesty I don’t think most fans would care if the movies were dropped as LONG as they continue bringing in quality shows. We all want a movie, but let’s be honest, no one is losing sleep over it lol. And it’s only in our minds because we keep getting these types of articles discussing what could’ve been, what might be, what was supposed to be, blah, blah, blah.
I’ve been saying if you don’t have a real plan right now, put them on the back burner for a few years until you come up with a new idea that will excite fans again. The Kelvin movies are no longer it.
Indeed. They really were never it. They were flawed from the start. No need to keep adding to it.
DS9 and Voyager both had finales that effectively wrapped things up. An Enterprise movie or miniseries could work though.
I would rather have another Enterprise revival show or mini-series personally. I would take that over another movie or even more DS9 and Voyager; especially because as you said those both got endings.
Sequel, one season, ten episode, one-offs might be a better term. More like how Picard season one and two were a spin-off of TNG.
A DS9 one-off about Jake Sisko and his half-brother (or is it sister?) who is a quarter Prophet might be well-worth it.
A VOY one-off might show whether or not Harry Kim ever got a little box on his chair…
No one has any interest in this except for some name-hungry Hollywood producer. Let’s be honest. This ship has sailed, sunk and has been excavated. Next!
I really don’t see the need to go forward with the Kelvin-verse or really any movies. It was fine for then. But since Beyond, we have had over 100 episodes in the prime timeline before, during and after the years covered between ST09 and Beyond. Overall Trek is much better suited for television anyway. Every movie has to be around some galactic threat to Earth, the Federation, or the galaxy – and way too many have involved some hokey method of putting the cast back together on that ship in 5-15 minutes for whatever happens. STTMP to ST5 happened because we didn’t have any other Trek at the time. ST09 – Beyond did too.
Yeah that’s the other big elephant in the room, Star Trek just does better on TV in general. And now since we are getting so much of it again, it gives fans less of a reason to pay $15 per person to see another 2 hour movie with an ubervillain promising to take down the Federation for reasons just so they have an excuse to blow up a planet or more ships. Sure they will see it, they will just wait until it comes to Paramount+, Blu Ray or Itunes to see it.
And I think most fans are happier with the shows not just being in the prime timeline again but we are getting post-Nemesis shows (finally) which a lot of fans wanted more than anything. And for people who want a more TOS based show, well now we have SNW for that too. And they made 10 episodes that didn’t require a supervillain trying to blow up Starfleet headquarters or the galaxy and oddly enough fans seem to like it more. That’s the entire problem with movie Trek vs TV Trek. Fans like spectacle but that’s not why most watch Star Trek in the first place. TWOK is still the most popular movie and it only had one explosion at the very end of the film.
Lastly, for a lot of fans it’s no need to rush to the theater when you have Picard, Spock, Janeway, Riker, Kirk, and Seven on your screen every week for $5-10 a month. That’s really all most want anyway.
The Kelvin films were great when that’s literally all the Trek there was and it was nice to do something a little different with the franchise. But I think sadly Star Trek fans want comfort food more than anything and to give them the kind of Star Trek they were getting in the 90s versus Star Wars type spectacle the Abrams movies provided.
Hit the nail on the head for bro!
There were so many reasons why I didn’t care about JJ verse, but the biggest is because Star Trek for me are the 24th century 90s shows. That’s where I fell in love with Trek. I can listen to Picard and Janeway talk the entire episode and wouldn’t complain. I love seeing them work together or have more simpler stories like asking is Data a life or not?
I love big stories too. That’s why I fell in love with DS9 because of the Dominion storyline. But that doesn’t mean every episode had to show some big battle. I loved the stories where they just discussed the politics over the war.
But for fans like me we love Star Trek because it makes us think, at least a little. And I’m not some movie or TV snob. My favorite show growing up was Baywatch lol. I actually love action movies as my favorite genre. I wasn’t a big sci fi fan at all outside of Star Wars until I started watching Star Trek. It didn’t just get me to love that franchise but more science fiction in general. I started reading Isaac Asimov books because I heard he was a Trek fan. And his stories have the same vibe, his short stories especially.
I like most of the new Trek shows today. Discovery has become a badly written tedious weeping bore but I would still take that over JJ verse because it at least tries to be about something, just does a bad job of it IMO.
But SNW, PRO and LDS feels like 90s Star Trek again. They are presenting simpler stories but also a lot of great character stories again like you got on TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT. LDS is a comedy and yet still does a great job honoring Trek values and canon. I thought I was going to hate the show and now it’s my favorite! But it spends a lot time exploring it’s characters and just solving smaller problems. It does everything the 90s show does just with comedy but has so much heart too.
That’s what fans like me love. With the movies there is some of that but it’s really just a lot of running and shooting. The TOS and TNG movies did it better than JJ verse but even those it was mostly just 2-3 characters. Every one got stuff to do but you learned zip about them.
For me Star Trek is about action and ships exploding for sure but the stories I love the most rarely even has a phaser fight in it most of the time and just about people trying to solve a problem through science.
None of the JJ movies solved any of their problems through science outside of using Beatie Boys music to confuse the drones to run into each other in the last one. And when that’s the high bar of science in your movies it tells you a lot. But outside of a few movies many rarely does use science when it always comes to killing a bad guy.
I’m sure if the movie happened it would’ve just been Kirk and Thor kicking some bad guy ass together who wants to wipe out the Federation again. Sure it could’ve been good and fun of course but fans are just so sick of the same crap every movie.
I agreed with everything you said. I think Star Trek works on so many different levels and why its still so popular today. For me personally, that’s why I think Star Trek IS great, because it can be different things. Every new iteration can take it in a different direction. It always tries its best to stay relevant to whatever era it’s in. That’s how it lives long and prospers.
But I also think there is something at its core EVERY show and movie should try and follow. The biggest used to be just about exploration but even DS9 didn’t make that a mandate of its show which at the time really bothered people. But to many that’s what Star Trek is. Star Trek has always been an action show as well at its core, in every show. It’s really funny how some people consider TNG a non-action show. Because you have episodes where people work things out in the conference room instead of a photo torpedo it was considered too ‘talky’. No, it’s an action show too. If things are blowing up, people shooting phasers or Worf is punching someone out every other episode, that makes it an action show.
It simply didn’t rely on it the same way TOS did back in the day. And TOS only relied on it because action shows were the main draw at the time. It had to just to stay on the air. But then if you watch TMP, you wouldn’t know it lol. And that was partly why that movie put people off, it didn’t include one of its core features, action. It took the exploration angle higher than any film has since but it was missing a vital part of what made TOS fun, captain Kirk karate chopping someone lol. Or firing a photon torpedo.
As far as the 90s shows, I think what the spin offs did really well was reframe the shows more character driven than plot driven. Michael Piller was really the one who started that mandate back in third season of TNG and it drove all the other shows that way. DS9 did it the best IMO. Voyager gets dinged over it because it didn’t do it as well as TNG and DS9 did or it didn’t focus on other characters as it should have. But those era of shows tried very hard to tell diverse stories and do it where it mattered to a specific character, not just always the crew as a whole.
But then when we get to the movies, that gets lost easily. You only have two hours to tell a story. When TNG had 26 episodes a year you can focus on whoever you wanted any given week. In a movie, that focus is always the ‘stars’ of the piece and yes it’s usually 2 or 3 main characters and the ‘villain’ of the piece. Like you said, everyone gets something to do and have a few fun scenes but the movie isn’t about them. It doesn’t have the time to be.
And sadly I think the biggest mandate every executive has made with the movies since TMP is that they must be action driven and a villain must be the focal point. Or maybe it was TWOK that taught them that lesson moreso than TMP failing it. Because after that, villains became bigger than life. And with TNG and the Kelvin movies, it became ALL about the villains basically. Generations, FC and Nemesis was all marketed as how evil the villains were (well the Borg makes that clear on appearance alone lol). The Kelvin movies the same. Just like comic book movies, the villains are as equal to the heroes to the point nothing else about the movie matters. The plot is just designed to get them shooting at each other basically and why people like me has grown tired of them.
The irony is while having someone to shoot at has also been a core in Star Trek (and they do provide the ‘action’ part of the series), they never were vital to the franchise in the shows like they are in the movies. But that’s what they think drives attendance so sadly it’s what we will continue to get with them.
Yep! 👍
This is exactly why the movies just fail for me as a story when you compare them to the shows. It doesn’t mean they are bad, but they are just meant to be spectacle with jokes and cool one liners but very little in the way of themes, story or character development. It’s all there but just superficially.
I asked someone this question on another site before to bring my point home: out of the three JJ films tell me three things we learned about Uhura? Any three things that was either said about her or she mentioned? Even just in passing.
Here is the three I came up with: her first name, she can speak multiple languages and, um, is dating Spock!
Do you see the problem? I point out Uhura specifically because in JJ verse, she is the third lead after Kirk and Spock and the only woman in the main cast. She’s heavily marketed, and has a lot to do, especially the first two movies… unlike the original Uhura who was basically a background character most of the time.
But not here. She is given a big run time in these movies and basically just turned her into the hot girlfriend who can kick ass Mariner style when the time comes for it and really good at her job. That’s it bro. And she’s played by a huge famous actress on top of that.
No actual back story, character arc of any kind or development in any way after three movies. Oh wait she broke up with Spock in the third one… until they get back together again in the final act. Riveting stuff lol. Like I said, she’s just the smart hot girlfriend who can give attitude and nothing else. It’s the same thing in every one of them.
Now take Uhura in SNW! We got an entire back story about her in episode 2. She actually has an arc, does she want to stay in Starfleet or do something else with her life? It’s nothing amazing (and we sort of know the answer lol) but it’s actually developing the character. We know how hard space is for her because they spend time talking about it. They been showing her working in different departments and how smart she really is. We saw her developing a relationship with Hemmer (but I’ll digress on that, oy).
I never cared about Uhura in TOS because she was mostly just there, but her being there was historical in itself so it was something for it’s time at least. But it’s another reason why TOS doesn’t interest me as much.
But there is no excuse for it in JJ verse. But that’s only because those are action movies made for teenagers, they don’t think their core audience cares. She’s there to look pretty, kick butt and make out with Spock basically. Although it’s funny every movie they give her one scene of showing off her linguist skills. Hey, it’s something I guess.
That’s the difference between these movies and the shows. Character development matters at least a little on the shows. The movies only do it with 1 or 2 of the main characters and don’t even try with anyone else, especially empty action movies like these are. And even with the main characters, its all just to tie people over until we get to the next action scene like a Marvel movie does.
Wow great point about Uhura lol. I think she is considered important in those movies but probably more so in presence than actually integral to the story outside her relationship with Spock. It would’ve been nice to learn something about her family, why she joined Starfleet, etc. That would’ve been nice to get in the other movies, but we never got that with any of the characters outside of Kirk and Spock unfortunately. We learned a t-i-n-y bit about Bones (including why he’s called Bones), but yeah pretty shallow on that end of the pool as well.
But it is more proof why Trek excels more on TV and why fans seem to be enjoying SNW more, because it can just develop characters in a way the movies don’t really spend much time doing; at least beyond the main stars (although as you said she is treated as a main star).
I find it somehow embarrassing that a major film company can’t pull off a star trek film for years. All the actors are up to return. The only problem is now that the director jumped off and now everything is canceled? I mean, really?! I’m sure there are TONS of talented directors out there who would die to do a star trek movie!!
No, that’s actually backwards. The director bailed because nothing was happening with the project. That’s why. The actors have been saying for months now they haven’t been told anything about the movie happening or anyone had been signed up. That was already the big red flag, you told everyone the actors were coming back without talking to them first but then AFTER you announce them you still don’t call to get them to sign on to a film you already gave an opening date for?
The real reason it stalled because Anthony Pascale said that the movie couldn’t get funding and they been having trouble coming up with a script. Getting someone to direct it is the easy part…it’s paying for it that seems to be the real problem.
Yes Tiger2, exactly. They don’t have a script or the financing. JJ’s little show a while back was a load of BS.
Yeah Paramount was trying to do a runaround on people in the most bizarre way ever. When Shakman left. Paramount even put out a statement saying they would look for another director, but most of us knew it was just more smoke and mirrors, there was no movie. And when they took it off the schedule a month later, it was a collective groan these people just been wasting everyone’s time for the fifth straight time.
And of course it wasn’t just the actors saying they haven’t been called that was the warning sign, it was also the fact we never got a single piece of news or update by the director or the so-called writers of the movie for an entire year. Not so much as a ‘we’re working on it, it’s going swell’. So it was what the actors were saying combined with what the people involved in the actual process wasn’t saying…which was absolutely nothing.
The irony is when many of us questioned it over and over, we’re told we’re just being cynics or don’t want a movie to happen. And here we are yet again lol.
Yep….
Really? Since Nemesis, they’ve only done three in twenty years. They actually seem pretty good at slow boating these productions.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with those 3 films costing almost a billion dollars to make and not making double or triple what they spent.
Dude that is SO depressing. I never thought it that way but we only had 3 Trek films in the last 20 years?? LOL, WOW!
Looking at the first 20 years of Trek films with TMP from 1979 to 1999, we got 9 movies in that time (along with multiple shows), literally 3 times the amount. It’s TRULY amazing how badly Paramount has squandered this franchise. And what’s sad is it will probably be another 3-5 years before we even see another one.
I’m glad it didn’t get made. What I’d prefer is to drop the JJ Verse, pick a new era and start the movies over with a whole new crew.
Given what little we heard, I’d rather they not. Sounded completely derivative, and if there is something I want from JJ Trek at this point, it’s to forge ahead.
The one thing he might do well is a Superman movie. It could be fun. Less lens flares the better. And even better if it starred Cavill. But he won’t. He would bring verve and energy to a dead franchise. As long as he doesn’t write it.
I loved the original star trek as a kid and couldn’t get enough of it. I didn’t like any of the other ones. These new movies have been a joy to watch as I think each star has brought a special part of themselves to the role. Spock has shown himself to be half human after all. In this last movie I almost lost it when he did a belly laugh. And how about him in a relationship with a woman? I cannot wait for #4. I check all the time for progress when there will be a new movie.
Unfortunately you’re going to still be waiting for quite awhile longer. ;)
And it’s no guarantee it will be with the Kelvin cast. They may just start over with new characters or maybe go back and do another TNG movie (but I don’t see that really happening either).