I’ve been getting in quite a few side-conversations about the marketing of Star Trek recently, both with hard core Trek fans and with people who are more interested in seeing what JJ Abrams plans to bring to the series.
There was a discussion on Twitter between movie bloggers last week about The Enterprise Project, where certain artists and celebrities were given the opportunity to paint/modify a model of the Abrams-era starship however they liked. Some on Twitter said this was somehow a “cheapening” of Trek.
Meanwhile, the tracking for Star Trek’s opening weekend is still putting it in the ’round $40 million mark, about half of what X-Men Origins: Wolverine is tracking at.
As a Star Trek fan who was raised on a steady diet of TOS and TNG, I have this to say: The JJ Abrams movie existing and being sold as well as it is alrewady means that what you are seeing is probably not going to be what you consider to be Star Trek. JJ Abrams has made an action movie with enough nods to the original series (*cough*Timeline A*cough*) that those of us who go to Memory Alpha instead of Wikipedia will feel involved, but what your watching is NOT TREK. Here’s the cool part, though: It might be just as good.
We live in a time when studios aren’t going to go out an blow millions of dollars on something that doesn’t have an audience. That’s why we’ve become accustomed to this wheel of re-makes, prequels, re-launches, re-imaginings and adaptations. JJ Abrams might have Lost, Alia and Cloverfield under his belt (three original franchise stories), but he also had to jump in and try saving the Mission Impossible franchise just to earn some cred around the system.
The only way we’re going to get original content in this new day and age is to let people take our dead franchises and run amok with them. Like, beyond turning a dead Sci-Fi franchise (killed by Nemisis and Enterprise) that was based on simple morality plays into a whizz-bang summer tent-pole. We need to go beyond making Sherlock Holmes a boxer and taking away his iconic pipe. The story smiths of the A-List must have good stuff in their noggins, because these subtle transformations (like, say, making Transformers - on the surface - about a boy and his first car instead of an inter-galactic robot war) have been breathing new life into films that have little relation to the source material, but still draw on that materials’ audience.
Star Trek is going to be a space action film. The budget (currently being lo-balled around Hollywood) is all going to show up on screen. I’m fine with that.
The problem is thinking that gimmicks like painting an Enterprise somehow cheapens a brand. What Star Trek fans need to realize is this: without the current Paramount marketing team there would be no more Star Trek brand. The formula was played out.
Or, as Greg at HitFix points out in his excellent post called “Why Star Trek Fans Have To Stop Worrying About The Box Office:”
Do you know how hard it is to make something that’s not inherently cool, cool as a marketer? If you get a chance, go back and look at the final trailer for “Nemesis.” It’s 10 times better than the movie itself. Perhaps the poster wasn’t as slick as it could have been, but I know the website (cough, Hollywood Key Art Nominee 2003) made the picture look like a true Sci-Fi flick (which it wasn’t). So, taking into account the stigma the franchise has faced from the mainstream media and moviegoers, a few departments at the Melrose studio deserve pats on their back for the work they’ve accomplished so far. Those trailers and TV spots? Absolutely superb. The daring avant-garde poster and outdoor? Risky, but cleverly out of the box (although the 60’s era logo is still a mistake). And how about that publicity campaign? Somehow, the studio has convinced media outlets across the world that Chris Pine is a real star and, oh yeah, he’s never opened a movie. A photo shoot in Vanity Fair and the cover of Men’s Health? Sure the magazine business is dying and desperate, but put “Star Trek” in the same sentence as those two publications. Do it again. Out loud. No, hell hasn’t frozen over, it’s just a publicity team pulling miracles out of their, um, hats.
My 8th, guys, it’s a whole new Trek. Which is EXACTLY what we needed.
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