Nov 09, 2005

Here’s my 2 cents (well, judging by the size of this, maybe my 20 cents!) on the potential of a new Star Trek movie, and on the franchise in general:

The hardcore Star Trek fans are waaaayy harder on the standards than Paramount will be, or should be.

I think that a good WIDE appeal movie is what is necessary to breathe life back into the franchise. To do that, I agree with many who have written on the subject, that a prequel is a bad idea. There is too much history to line up with and get right without it sucking. AND, it is only interesting to those who already care and know about the existing body of work. That’s the crux with the prequel - it is of interest to less people, and the people that it is of interest to will be the harshest of critics.

I say fast forward to the future. Show us some advanced weaponry - show us massive political upheaval. Show us a trilogy that has the death and resurrection of Starfleet, or the death and evolution of Starfleet. Heck, show us the Starfleet that kept fuxing with the Enterprise crew by jumping back in time (but PLEASE, leave the time travel out of it - to easy to step on your own foot). Well, OK - you can jump back in time to get T’Pol so she can be in whatever movie they do next, but THAT’S IT on the time travel. Maybe she’ll finally figure out that the Vulcan Science Directorate doesn’t have it all figured out…

The fact is that a Trek movie or show is expensive to make, so it has to be widely appealing to make it to general distribution. If the franchise becomes widely popular again, maybe some of the stuff that we as fans want to see will come out direct to DVD for those of us that care, but that is a long shot.

People get old, and new people have to replace them to keep it interesting. I don’t want to see Sisko looking fat, old and droopy - like they did with Frakes and Sirtis in the final episode of Enterprise which was entitled These Are the Voyages… We ALL get that way, but its depressing and people don’t want to see it. It’s the Bond phenomenon, but in space…

I think that today’s movie culture is more about EPIC than it is about straight character. Star Trek was always more “focused” in its scope - two ships off in some sector battling with wits and phasers. I think that is a major contributing factor to why something like Enterprise or even Nemesis did so poorly, yet the new Star Wars films, being equally flawed, are in the top tier in earnings. They were epic!

Lord OT Rings was epic too, but they were very well done, so that you still cared about the individual characters (even after just the first film…) so it is certainly doable. Also, to be widely appealing, it has to appeal to kids. Kids loved Starwars (crap, there was - count them - TWELVE Darth Vaders at our Halloween party this year - out of 20 kids!!!). They also loved LOTR…

I say take the Trek universe and make it epic, give us some heartfelt characters, add in a few characters that the kids will dig, and mix it up with some wild imagination on technology. You’ll have a surefire winner that would breathe life into the franchise. THEN maybe Paramount will have open ears to another movie like Wrath of Kahn.