Star Trek Beyond (2016) (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan Perregaux]

It would be funny if Spock left a few notes within his belongings:

"When encountering a large cone-shaped device made of pure neutronium that devours whole planets for fuel, engage the following procedure..."

"When encountering a large cloud entity measuring approximately 2 A.U. in diameter and answering to the name 'V'ger,' engage the following procedure..."

"When encountering a large black cylinder having a retractable ball that renders all starships powerless and directs its energies towards Earth's oceans, engage the following procedure..."

"When the Klingon moon Praxis explodes due to over-mining and the Klingons sue for peace, please note the names of the following traitors and take necessary precautions against them..."

 

[Osato]

I have said it a million times - V'ger is STILL coming! (as is the whales probe)

The wrath of v'ger.
Oddly enough cumberbatch will play the part as well!!!!

Paramount will release the film on blu ray in 3 waves. Wave 1 will give you the first 1/3 of the film only. And so on.
The audio commentary will be available separately on cassette.

Enjoy!

 

[George_W_K]

The wrath of v'ger.
Oddly enough cumberbatch will play the part as well!!!!

Paramount will release the film on blu ray in 3 waves. Wave 1 will give you the first 1/3 of the film only. And so on.
The audio commentary will be available separately on cassette.


Enjoy!

And each third will be available exclusively from a different store.

 

[TravisR]

I just rewatched this on Blu-ray and I had a ton of fun again. Easily my favorite summer movie. The older I get and the more messed up the world gets, the more that the Trek message of unity and peace really means more to me.

 

[Carabimero]

It seems like they learned nothing from the Into Darkness situation. "We know without a doubt that this made lots of people mad the last time... Let's do it again."

Have they said who is on the commentary?

I've always believed one of the perks disc-based media offers its user is a commentary track. Netflix has a lot of advantages over discs. But commentaries should always be a perk of discs, IMHO. But as to why I am not more upset? Because I got upset last time, wrote a letter, and nothing changed. A battle better than this deserves my energy.

 

[Carabimero]

Is this supposed to be a good thing, Miri?

I hope that figure isn't considered a box office failure. It sounds good to me, Star Trek 2009 earned $385.7m

It's a domestic disappointment, not a flop, but worldwide the grosses were healthy, if not wonderful. But I would say Star Trek 4 needs to do better or 5 will have a smaller budget or not be greenlit at all.

 

[Osato]

I've always believed one of the perks disc-based media offers its user is a commentary track. Netflix has a lot of advantages over discs. But commentaries should always be a perk of discs, IMHO. But as to why I am not more upset? Because I got upset last time, wrote a letter, and nothing changed. A battle better than this deserves my energy.

Resistance is futile!!

 

[benbess]

Star Trek Beyond grossed 343m worldwide, but only c. 50% of that comes back to Paramount, for a take of c. 172m. That's close to the production budget of 185m, but those costs don't include advertising, studio overhead, etc, which is usually c. $100m for a big movie like this.

So revenue so far looks to be well short of costs for Star Trek Beyond. Home video and streaming might add $50m over the next few years, but that seems optimistic.

My guess is that Paramount will retrench starting with the next one, looking to bring costs down. And that makes sense, since Star Trek shouldn't have costs close to Superhero movies, Star Wars, etc. I think they'll need to bring the budget down to 150m or less for the next one. I wish they'd also bring up the intelligence level of the screenplay, but that seems unlikely. Their trend is to dumb it down and add action, as with this one.

 

[Tino]

Break even numbers for huge films are usually 2-3 times production cost which would make the magic number for STB approx $460 million or so.

With that $343 million from worldwide boxoffice I agree it will take some time to make up that $100 million or so.

I agree they should lower the budget but not too much. Don't want to look like a sy-fy channel film. $150 million is a good number

 

[Nelson Au]

Could they save that much in the next film? They shot in Canada to save on cost. The Enterprise A in the new film will likely get revised sets, so maybe they redress the existing bridge and other sets to reflect that. So no huge costs there. Maybe the cast already has salaries set. Seems like what the fans want, a simpler story with a morality theme, could be a direction they could go that could save a little.

I believe in the TOS films, the main cast wore the same Starfleet costumes from each film, so they were pretty thread bare. So those films really shaved on costs. Shame really that Star Trek from the start was always a budget constrained entity from Desliu to Star Trek 6. Except Star Trek TMP had a decent budget of course.

 

[Tino]

It's the nature of the current film business. Everything has to be new bigger and better than before.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

If they want to save on the next one, I humbly suggest perhaps cutting back on the "one extra action climax" trap at the end of the picture that both Into Darkness and Beyond fall into.

I've seen Beyond about half a dozen times. I really like it. But I can't help but start to check out when Kirk and Krall are flying through zero gravity at the station and punching each other. The movie seems over by then. Once they've stopped the swarm and figured out who Krall really is, it feels over, and that action sequence just drags for me. Critics who generally liked the movie weren't in love with that part of it either. And yet it was probably one of the single most expensive things in the movie - location photography, massive numbers of extras, complex stunts, detailed CGI. And in my view, while it doesn't harm the movie, it doesn't help it either - we don't learn anything new about the characters or the plot, we just watch civilians running around terrified as our stars punch each other to oblivion. I wonder how much that sequence cost. If the deleted opening to Superman Returns cost over $10 million in 2006 dollars, you gotta figure that this Star Trek Beyond ending must have cost at least that.

We just don't need this many action beats in a single Trek film. Star Trek IV was the most successful movie for the longest time, and it didn't have any. Star Trek II is generally the most beloved of the movies, and there's not much actual violence in the film - it's all about the tension for the confrontation that could be coming, but if you were to go over the movie with a stopwatch, the amount of time actually spent on action is pretty small.

I'm not suggesting that there should be no action in a future Trek movie, but rather, that they use action sequences more carefully and only when they're integral to the plot. The destruction of the Enterprise felt necessary to the story, as did the motorcycle rescue of the crew from Krall's base; the final action sequence doesn't reach that level for me and seems like it's there because it looks cool, not because it fulfills any storytelling need.

 

[Carabimero]

They could even try something really radical: write a character-driven script and make us really care about the people, develop moral argument more than once in the story, and then put the characters in jeopardy. Three action set pieces. One at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end are all they need--if the script is good. They could make it for $100 million or less. But they have to change how they think about writing and producing tent-pole movies.

 

[Tino]

I for one thought the last three were character driven scripts and made me care about the people.

Who knows why Beyond faltered. Bad timing, audience erosion, competition, etc. it certainly was well liked by the vast majority of reviewers and it's audience.

The box office of the next film I believe will really determine the course of future Trek films.

 

[Carabimero]

I'm talking about really character driven movies. With a couple of exceptions, the best ST episodes, IMHO, are not action driven. They need to do a movie like that. Not where they just do lip service but rather SPEND TIME developing characters, not action scenes. They might be surprised at the grosses if they got a good writer to craft it, and a very, very good director who spends time on performances. Plus, when you have fewer action sequences, they have more gravity. I doubt they'll ever wake up and actually do it, but there's always hope.

 

[dpippel]

I think they'd be more successful if they simply did something different with Trek. We've basically had the same "big baddie with a personal beef wants to destroy the Federation" plot in all three Kelvin Timeline films. ID was a slight variation on this theme, but not by much, and it's getting OLD.

 

[Chris Will]

I know it wouldn't be exactly new but, I want a whole Kelvin timeline movie about a conflict or war with the Klingons. Not just a single set piece cameo like ID.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

I am beginning to sense a pattern with all these movies. Thought patterns of exactingly perfect order. I believe they emanate from Paramount Pictures executives:

I: Villain that is a large starship threatens Earth
II: Villain with a matching starship threatens Enterprise
III: Villain with a lesser starship threatens Enterprise
IV: Villain that is a large starship threatens Earth
V: Villain who wants a starship threatens Enterprise
VI: Villain with a lesser starship threatens Enterprise
Generations: Villain without a starship threatens Enterprise
First Contact: Villain with a huge starship threatens Earth
Insurrection: Villain with a huge starship threatens Enterprise
Nemesis: Villain with a huge starship threatens Enterprise
Star Trek: Villain with a huge starship threatens Earth
Into Darkness: Villain with a huge starship threatens Enterprise
Beyond: Villain with tiny starships threatens Enterprise

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Jokes aside, there is a lot of overlap at least on superficial levels between the subjects of the original films and the reboots:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture & Star Trek '09 = villain arrives in a cloud in space
II: TWOK & Star Trek Into Darkness = Khan
III: TSFS & Star Trey Beyond = Enterprise destroyed
IV: TVH & untitled announced fourth reboot movie = time travel

I'd like to think this is all a coincidence....

I agree that these new movies have overdone the "one master villain bent on destroying Starfleet" and the next films would do better to find another threat. Before "Beyond" was released, between the way trailers were cut and interview comments from cast and crew, it seemed like it might not have necessarily been a "one man against the Federation" type story, and that there would be a moral conflict between the Federation which thinks it has a monopoly on the "right" way to live, and other cultures and species that exist outside the Federation and may live in a way that the Federation doesn't approve of, but that might not be wrong in and of itself. Obviously the final movie turned out to be something different, but I think that's a valid idea for a Star Trek story.

Besides that idea, I'd love to see another Star Trek movie where the villain isn't a specific person, but a misunderstanding or inability to comprehend or something unknown that it takes the crew the length of the movie to figure out. Both Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: The Voyage Home are examples of this - they take wildly different paths to telling a story without a central villain, but are examples of how a story without a lead henchman can still be done and be done in different ways.

I really want to see a reboot Star Trek movie that doesn't involve time on Earth, or time spent at an Earth-like space station. I want to see a movie where the Enterprise is the only home our crew knows for the duration of the story. Beyond didn't feel as "deep space" as I would have hoped because the Yorktown base is so Earth-like, both in the design seen onscreen and how it functions in the plot. I guess I'd like to see a bottle show - or even not necessarily combined to the ship, but something that really felt like it was taking place way out there. If there's one criticism I might have about these new movies, it's that they make space seem like a short highway that's just about getting from one place to another, and once you finally get there, then the action can begin. I don't think the new movies have fully nailed the feeling of a crew living and working on the ship full time - the montage at the beginning of Beyond was lovely, but not enough.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

With two glaring exceptions, the methods by which Star Trek movies have resolved the major conflict with the villain are pretty freaking monotonous in retrospect:

I: Evolved
II: Exploded
III: Exploded
IV: Communicated
V: Exploded
VI: Exploded
Generations: Exploded
First Contact: Exploded
Insurrection: Exploded
Nemesis: Exploded
Star Trek: Imploded
Into Darkness: Punched
Beyond: Disintegrated