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Is a $72.5m Opening Weekend Enough For Star Trek?
brumgrunt writes "At first glance, JJ Abrams' Star Trek has won over audiences as well as critics as it stormed to a $72.5m US opening weekend. However, Den Of Geek sounds a note of caution. Can it hold an audience for a second week? How do its numbers stack up? And as Wolverine looks like its struggling to reach $200m off an $85m opening weekend, is Star Trek yet the huge hit blockbuster that some of the headlines are suggesting?"
The difference between Trek and Wolverine is that fanboys were excited about seeing Wolverine while fanboys were enraged at the idea of a Trek reboot (thus the bigger opening weekend).
Except Wolverine was horrible. Really, really bad. For people who were fans of the characters, the movie completely got the characterizations wrong. For people who just wanted to see a good movie, the writing was atrocious and the story was just weak.
And Trek was really quite good - ESPECIALLY for a Trek film. There was enough there that new audiences could get into it and enjoy it as a film, and it was well done enough that fanboys have to grudgingly admit it was not the worst. movie. ever.
One opens strong and then tanks once people realize just how bad it is, the other opens a little less strong and I imagine it'll keep going strong for awhile.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Why did they need to erase everything that had happened? Answer: to become free of the arthritic horror of Backwards Compatibility.
Wolverine is struggling because it sucked. People went to see it and warned their friends away because, though there were some good elements to the movie, it was terrible, as a whole. Horrendous script and patchwork story - it was a movie by committee. We know that a good movie can be made with a superhero character (Batman, and Ironman to name two recent examples) but Wolverine was everything that is bad about a superhero movie.
Star Trek, however, is not going to struggle because it's about as perfect a reboot of the Star Trek franchise as one could hope for. Sure, hardcore Trekkies might rage about this or that and it isn't a flawless movie so someone will try to prove their movie critic cred by picking it apart but the reality is that it's an excellent movie that people are going to recommend to their friends.
Simple lesson to be learned - make a good movie and you'll have long term success. Make a hot movie and you'll have a great opening weekend. Make both and you'll have a great opening weekend and long term success. It's not rocket science.
Why not? Alexander was King at age 20, and that was real reality, not some sci-fi movie.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
I took the implication was that the Queen was just another drone that was chosen to embody the collective consciousness. It made for some interesting dialog between Data and the Queen. But I think the the idea is that even though the Borg have a collective consciousness why would that uber-mind be cold and emotionless. Since its probably damn near impossible to portray the traditional disembodied group echo as having emotion I think the Queen was a reasonable plot vehicle as a "Borg Mouthpiece" much as Locutus was meant to be.
I got a kick out of Zephram Cochrane too. After all, if you literally are living in a post-apocalyptic world why wouldn't you be somewhat of a nihilist.
Odd. I heard the exact opposite, from die-hard star trek fans that refused to watch the other recently released movies because "they're just SO NOT star trek". After suggesting they should watch it, they fell in love with it (again).
Maybe not being faithful in its representation of star trek made it faithful to it. I mean, if ST was about anything (well, more so the series, less so the movies) it was pushing the envelope of what's "standard" in its own world.
My guess is that people had enough of the cookie-cutter heroes without an edge or a speck on their shiny white armor. People don't want heros on podests. They want heroes they can identify with. And a drunk medic and a cheating smartass wanna-be captain certainly is closer to home to the average movie goer than a Earl Grey tea sipping diplomat.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I liked the movie a lot. It was a good movie, but I agree with GP that it wasn't good "Star Trek". It has nothing to do with the alternate universe explanation (it's far from the first time we've seen this, the Mirror universe provides precedent in several episodes).
It's more about the theme of the movie. It was about action rather than sci-fi. Star Trek explored issues in the future in a way that causes people to reflect upon the present. Star Trek had tons of aimless drivel among its episodes, but the best parts of Star Trek weren't action setpieces, but episodes that made you think. The franchise has touched upon issues like capital punishment, homosexuality, evaluation of moral perspective, discrimination and bias, tradition vs. progression.
However, these things are not easily handled in the framework of a movie. And hell, I like action movies too. I liked the new Star Trek movie and I'm interested in where they go from here.
I'm not going to see it until it comes out on DVD.
Why is the parent modded Insightful?
He hasn't even seen the movie yet.
Then every person you've talked to is dense.
Depends what one means by "faithful representation". The new movie has a Kirk very much like the old Kirk, a Spock very much like the old Spock, and so on. But is that what makes it Trek?
Overall this was an action movie with slick special effects and some comedy. The first two Star Trek series were decidedly about moral dilemmas and the promise of a utopian future for humankind. Thus to someone who thinks the "essence of Trek" is this "analysis of the human spirit", this new movie doesn't faithfully represent Star Trek: it has a ship named Enterprise with a captain named Kirk, but it is thematically very different from the original incarnation.
And of course there are many other ways to analyze the question of "faithful to the original". I won't comment on which interpretation I think is right... But it's important to remember that "faithful representation" has everything to do with perspective.
...if ST was about anything...
Star Trek was about addressing and commenting on the norms and issues of current society. You go back and watch the original series and it is very obvious--and that's what was so endearing about he series. It wasn't about phasers, proton torpedoes, and teleporters. Those were just a veneer or a vehicle for people to think.
While I don't disagree that people relate better to characters who have flaws, it was also the shining optimism that Star Trek showed us. It showed us that despite our flaws, our societal qualms, we overcame, united as a species, and sprung from the cradle from which we had evolved. Humanity had proven itself master over its environment--we have yet (in our reality) to master ourselves. Star Trek's legacy shows us what we're capable of once we accomplish that.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I think it's worth keeping in mind that it IS a reboot. If the reboot isn't successful, they'll probably not do much else with it, but if it IS a nice success, then they'll have established a fanbase that'll hopefully allow them to explore once again all of those areas that made star trek so special. And I can't think of a better way to Reboot something than to give a thoroughly enjoyable experience for the masses.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
So you dislike the TOS movies, TNG, TNG movies, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, learning Klingon, and are ashamed of Trekkers, yet you are still a Trekkie? I'd say your just some guy with an affection for a show from your youth.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
"People learning a fictional language?!? WTF?!?
If people are learning it, is it still fictional?
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
and a starship captain at a younger age (lots of opportunity for stories about a less experienced but still excellent captain)
This is where the movie lost me. Maybe it is because of my background in the USN, but the 4th wall was completely destroyed for me by the clumsy way the writers inserted Kirk into the Enterprise chain of command.
Here we have a *cadet* who is on academic probation for cheating - again, let me stress, he isn't even an ensign, hasn't actually received a commission at all, but for some reason the captain of a brand new starship just magically decides he is the new first officer. Seriously? That was such utter crap, I wanted to walk out of the movie then.
Unfortunately, I didn't - which caused me to suffer through the utterly improbable scene where this same person, who is not an officer, has been not only forcibly removed from the bridge but has actually been expelled from the ship itself, somehow manages to cause a mutiny on the ship and become captain by making fun of Spock's mommy.
Then, after miraculously taking over the entire ship, makes the utterly insane decision to single handedly attack a superior vessel, with one other person (Spock) instead of notifying the fleet that the *Earth is about to be destroyed*.
Fortunately, he is able to dance around while 15 or so enemies are shooting at him and avoid being hit. I haven't seen such improbable writing since the A-Team.
Then, instead of being immediately thrown in jail along with his co-conspirators, he is rewarded with a captaincy of the Enterprise (even though he hasn't actually finished the Academy yet).
I just don't get it. I'm honestly not trying to troll here (check my Karma, I don't do that) I really just don't understand how anyone could take this the least bit seriously, much less praise it.
The worst episode of TNG had better writing and plot than this movie.
It depresses me to hear the masses rave about it.
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Your issue isn't with scientific inaccuracies so much as plot holes. Sci-fi, even hard sci-fi, is a lot of hand waving with varying degrees of effort to remain internally consistent.
Fringe is intentionally screwball, hence the name "Fringe". It's not intended to be anything like real science, in any way, in fact is usually a blatant exaggeration or misrepresentation. For gods sake the last episode presented spontaneous combustion of humans as "plausible" while "pyrokinesis" was "that Stephen King thing". It makes for a good show, but I wouldn't put down my physics textbook if I had a final coming up. It is the definition of brain-candy sci-fi.
Star Trek sometimes attempts to be very "realistic" in that everything they present has traditionally fell under the category of "plausible". Transporters, warp drives, energy weapons, etc. I still think it's a bit hokey to poke holes in their view of science, it is, after all, created for your viewing pleasure.
I haven't watched the new Star Trek, I probably will have to wait until DVD thanks to having a 14 month old, but thus far Starfleet has never really shown itself to be a very top-down organization. The Star-ship captains seem to have wide latitude for making policy, and are given extreme lenience on broken rules.
What would be a huge let down is if this is a war/sex driven soap opera, and not a somewhat more cerebral presentation of conflicting ideals. It would be very disappointing if BSG, previously the goofiest of 70s campware, became more intellectual than Star Trek.
With older film stock, its more important to deal with the loss of colour, ISO levels, the acceptable level of noise when the show was recorded, etc..
They can digitally clean up the picture to make the scenes more clear, but really, does cleaning up the picture on Star Trek TOS really improve the viewing experience? I mean really, the sets weren't exactly rocket science.
At least if they decided to remaster TNG, they could bring up the CGI to modern day levels making it more palitable to the younger generation without sacrificing the spirit of the source.
Bye!
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon. It destroyed all future Star Treks. As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe.
Come on, man... The story wasn't hard to follow. You know why it was this way.
It's an alternate timeline. The "future events" of the Star Trek Universe are not destroyed; they're alive and well in another timeline. What kind of Star Trek fan are you?
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.