The new Star Trek Beyond Trailer is here! Here, I'll give you a link. Watch it, and then we'll discuss.
Oops! Wait, it's here somewhere.
Star Trek Beyond
There we go.
Sorry about that.
Pretty jarring mistake to make, right? You think you're going to get a cerebral sci-fi story about space exploration, and you're confronted with a bunch of ass-shots and fart noises pandering to someone with a short attention span.
Hmm, I think there's a lesson to be learned here.
A good buddy of mine (like me, an early 40's male Sci-fi fan) told me that people have been taking him to task for his dislike of the new Star Trek Beyond trailer. He said "I keep getting told that I’m stuck in the mindset that Trek has to be made for me." Implying, if not outright stating, that it doesn't.
Well, I call bullshit. Star Trek movies do have to be made for him in the same way that it has to be made for me, because we are the generation that have been keeping Star Trek alive with our ticket purchases. The average seventeen year-old does not give damn number one about Star Trek, nor will they ever. I don't care if they cast Miley Cyrus as the next Edith Keeler and score it exclusively with nothing but Drake songs, the average seventeen year-old will never give a damn about Star Trek.
Check out this disturbing shit.
Simon Pegg (Scotty, also re-penning the script) has been "doing what he can to make the script less like Star Trek than ever before."
Hey, Simon, I'm a fan of your previous work, but how would you like it if someone said "I'm gonna make a sequel to Shaun of the Dead except without all those poncy English accents and dry, unfunny jokes"? Dry, English humor and the cast sounding more intelligent than Americans are integral parts of what makes that movie the treasure it is. Changing the vital elements ruins the point of it carrying the label.
"They had a script for Star Trek that wasn't really working for them. I think the studio was worried that it might have been a little too Star Trek-y." - Simon Pegg, without a trace of irony.
"Pegg actually draws a comparison to... the Avengers. That seemingly niche movie, based on a beloved but specialized property, made $1.5 billion dollars, while... Star Trek Into Darkness made less than one-third of that. And the studio is wondering why." - Quote from aforementioned disturbing shit
Note to the studio; Star Trek Into Darkness sucked big floppy donkey dick, and it sucked because you weren't trying to make a Star Trek movie, you were trying to make an action movie using Star Trek characters. It's almost like they're trying to plug Star Trek characters into non-Star Trek movies, which is such an idiotic concept that they can't possibly oh for the love of God-
"The strategy is to 'make a Western or a thriller or a heist movie, then populate that with Star Trek characters so it's more inclusive to an audience that might be a little bit reticent.' " - Simon Pegg, crushing the last ounce of respect I had for his artistic vision and integrity
I'm crushed two-fold, because not only are they destroying a beloved franchise in a cash grab, but I had so much respect for Simon Pegg, and that has now been turned into a cube and crushed. Taking a series known for cerebral sci-fi and making it a music video is an obnoxious money grab, and the new generation that my friend's friend claims they are making this for will cast it aside for whatever shiny product comes next down the line that isn't beholden to the tropes that need to be in a Trek movie. The crew are part of a government military branch, not roguish scoundrels, and if you try to change that, why not just renew Firefly? The ships are slow and lumbering, more like naval vessels than the sexier fighters in a movie like Star Wars, but if you swap out the Enterprise with the Millenium Falcon, you're no longer watching Star Trek.
All their doing is risking alienating the one demographic they know they'll almost always have. You don't put a singing Billy Bass plaque in Little Women just to get the Larry the Cable Guy crowd, and putting a tribble in Fast and Furious 8 doesn't make it Star Trek. Star Trek is a series grounded in cerebral sci-fi set in a space exploration setting, even when it's got space hippies and cuddly hairballs, and Simon Pegg is an idiot if he thinks it could ever be as successful an action movie as the Avengers, which is History's Greatest Movie.
This will kill the series, because, as a tent pole action franchise, Star Trek is sub-par, and if labeled and developed as such, it will inevitably collapse. The series will be branded a failure, and no one will be willing to make Star Trek movies in the future because of it. Because they disrespected their loyal fans and pandered to mouth-breathers, who were never their audience to begin with. They're part of the dumbing down of science fiction, and the world in general. Congratulations, Simon Pegg and Paramount; you're now part of Mike Judge's superbly made Comedy-turned-Documentary, Idiocracy.
So it looks like I posted the right trailer after all.
