|
Gene
Roddenberry - creator of Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the series of the same name and became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. Since its creation, the franchise has expanded into various films, television series, video games, novels, and comic books, and it has become one of the most recognizable and highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
The franchise began with Star Trek (The Original Series), which premiered on September 6, 1966, on Canada's CTV network. In the US it debuted on September 8, 1966, on NBC. The series followed the voyages of the crew of the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century, on a mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before". In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry was inspired by C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series of novels, Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels, the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, and television westerns such as Wagon Train.
The Star Trek canon includes the Original Series, 11 spin-off television series, and a film franchise; further adaptations also exist in several media. After the conclusion of the Original Series, the adventures of its characters continued in The Animated Series, and six feature films. A television revival beginning in the late 1980s and concluding in the mid 2000s saw four spinoff series: The Next Generation, following the crew of a new starship Enterprise a century after the original series; Deep Space Nine and Voyager, set in the same era as the Next Generation; and Enterprise, set a century before the original series in the early days of human interstellar travel. The adventures of the Next Generation crew continued in four additional feature films. In 2009, the film franchise underwent a reboot, creating an alternate continuity known as the Kelvin timeline; three films have been set in this continuity. The newest Star Trek television revival, beginning in 2017 and set in the original continuity, includes the series Discovery, Picard, Short Treks, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds, streaming on digital platforms.
Star Trek has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. From 1998 to 2008, there was a Star Trek–themed attraction in Las Vegas. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world. The constructed language Klingon was created for the franchise. Several Star Trek parodies have been made, and viewers have produced several fan productions.
Star Trek is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is also notable for its progressive stances on civil rights. The Original Series included one of the first multiracial casts on US television.
TELEVISION SERIES
Twelve television series make up the Star Trek franchise: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds. All series in total amount to 940 episodes across 49 seasons of television.
FEATURE FILMS
Paramount Pictures has produced thirteen Star Trek feature films. The first six films continue the adventures of the cast of the Original Series; the seventh film, Generations, was intended as a transition from original cast to the cast of the Next Generation; the next three films focused completely on the Next Generation cast. The eleventh film was widely considered to be a reboot of the franchise, despite being a continuation set in an alternate timeline known as the "Kelvin Timeline". Additionally, streaming service Paramount+ intends to release a television film every two years starting with Section 31.
CULTURAL INFLUENCE
The Star Trek media franchise is a multibillion-dollar industry, owned by
Paramount Global. Gene Roddenberry sold Star Trek to NBC as a classic adventure drama; he pitched the show as "Wagon Train to the Stars" and as
Horatio Hornblower in Space. The opening line, "to boldly go where no man has gone before", was taken almost verbatim from a U.S. White House booklet on space produced after the Sputnik flight in 1957.
Star Trek and its spin-offs have proven highly popular in syndication and was broadcast worldwide. The show's cultural impact goes far beyond its longevity and profitability. Star Trek conventions have become popular among its fans, who call themselves "trekkies" or "trekkers". An entire subculture has grown up around the franchise, which was documented in the film Trekkies. Star Trek was ranked most popular cult show by TV Guide. The franchise has also garnered many comparisons of the Star Wars franchise being rivals in the science fiction genre with many fans and scholars.
The Star Trek franchise inspired some designers of technologies, the Palm PDA and the handheld mobile phone. Michael Jones, Chief technologist of Google Earth, has cited the tricorder's mapping capability as one inspiration in the development of Keyhole/Google
Earth. The Tricorder X Prize, a contest to build a medical tricorder device was announced in 2012. Ten finalists were selected in 2014, and the winner was to be selected in January 2016. However, no team managed to reach the required criteria. Star Trek also brought teleportation to popular attention with its depiction of "matter-energy transport", with the famously misquoted phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" entering the vernacular. The Star Trek replicator is credited in the scientific literature with inspiring the field of diatom nanotechnology. In 1976, following a letter-writing campaign, NASA named its prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise, after the fictional starship. Later, the introductory sequence to Star Trek: Enterprise included footage of this shuttle which, along with images of a naval sailing vessel called Enterprise, depicted the advancement of human transportation technology.
Beyond Star Trek's fictional innovations, its contributions to television history included a multicultural and multiracial cast. While more common in subsequent years, in the 1960s it was controversial to feature an Enterprise crew that included a Japanese helmsman, a Russian navigator, and a black female communications officer. Captain Kirk's and Lt. Uhura's kiss, in the episode "Plato's Stepchildren", was also daring, and is often mis-cited as being American television's first scripted, interracial kiss, even though several other interracial kisses (e.g. on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) predated this one. Nichelle Nichols, who played the communications officer, said that the day after she told Roddenberry of her plan to leave the series, she was told a big fan wanted to meet her while attending an NAACP dinner party:
I thought it was a Trekkie, and so I said, 'Sure.' I looked across the room, and there was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walking towards me with this big grin on his face. He reached out to me and said, 'Yes, Ms. Nichols, I am your greatest fan.' He said that Star Trek was the only show that he, and his wife Coretta, would allow their three little children to stay up and watch. [She told King about her plans to leave the series.] I never got to tell him why, because he said, 'You can't. You're part of history.'
— Nichelle Nichols, Detroit Free Press (2016)
After the show, Nichols used this public standing to speak for women and people of color and against their exclusion from the US human space program;
NASA reacted by asking her to find people for its future Space Shuttle program. Nichols proceeded and successfully brought the first non-white people and women into the US space program, working in this quality for NASA from the late 1970s until the late 1980s.
In 2020, the US effort to develop a vaccine to protect against COVID-19 was named Operation Warp Speed, which was suggested by a Star Trek fan, Peter Marks. Marks leads the unit at the Food and Drug Administration which approves vaccines and therapies.
Leonard
Nimmoy and William Shatner as Dr Spock and Captain James T
Kirk
CORPORATE OWNERSHIP
Star Trek began as a joint-production of Norway Productions, owned by Roddenberry, and Desilu, owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. The profit-sharing agreement for the series split proceeds between Norway, Desilu (later Paramount Television), William Shatner's production company, and the broadcast network, NBC. However, Star Trek lost money during its initial broadcast, and NBC did not expect to recoup its losses by selling the series into syndication, nor did Paramount. With NBC's approval, Paramount offered its share of the series to Roddenberry sometime in 1970. However, Roddenberry could not raise the $150,000 (equivalent to $1,176,864 in 2023) offered by the studio. Paramount would go on to license the series to television syndicators worldwide. NBC's remaining broadcast and distribution rights eventually returned to Paramount and Roddenberry sometime before 1986, which coincided with the development of what would become The Next Generation.
As for Desilu, the studio was acquired by Gulf+Western. It was then reorganized as the television production division of Paramount Pictures, which Gulf+Western had acquired in 1966. Gulf+Western sold its remaining industrial assets in 1989, renaming itself Paramount Communications. Sometime before 1986, Sumner Redstone had acquired a controlling stake of Viacom via his family's theater chain, National Amusements. Viacom was established in 1952 as a division of CBS responsible for syndicating the network's in-house productions, originally called CBS Films. In 1994, Viacom and Paramount Communications were merged. Viacom then merged with its former parent, CBS Corporation, in 1999. National Amusements and the Redstone family increased their stake in the combined company between 1999 and 2005.
SPLIT OWNERSHIP 2005–2019
In 2005, the Redstone family reorganized Viacom, spinning off the conglomerate's assets as two independent groups: the new Viacom, and the new CBS Corporation. National Amusements and the Redstone family retained approximately 80% ownership of both CBS and Viacom. Star Trek was split between the two entities. The terms of this split were not known. However, CBS held all copyrights, marks, production assets, and film negatives, to all Star Trek television series. CBS also retained the rights to all likenesses, characters, names and settings, and stories, and the right to license Star Trek, and its spin-offs, to merchandisers, and publishers, etc. The rights were exercised via the new CBS Television Studios, which was carved out of the former Paramount Television.
Viacom, which housed Paramount Pictures, retained the feature film library, and exclusive rights to produce new feature films for a limited time. Viacom also retained home video distribution rights for all television series produced before 2005. However, home video editions of the various television series released after the split, as well as streaming video versions of episodes available worldwide, carried variants of the new CBS Television Studios livery in addition to the original Paramount Television Studios livery. It was unclear who retained the synchronization or streaming rights.
Rights and distribution issues, and the fraught relationship between the leadership at CBS, Viacom, and the National Amusements' board of directors, resulted in a number of delayed and canceled Star Trek productions between 2005 and 2019. Additionally, the development and release of the new Star Trek film, in 2009, was met with resistance by executives at CBS, as was Into Darkness (2013) and Beyond (2016), which affected merchandising, tie-in media, and promotion for the new films. During this period, both CBS and Viacom continued to list Star Trek as an important asset in their prospectus to investors, and in corporate filings made to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
CURRENT OWNERSHIP
While several attempts were made to merge Viacom and CBS, power struggles between the major stakeholders of the companies prevented this from happening. In 2019, after the resignation of CBS CEO Leslie Moonves, negotiations to merge CBS and Viacom began in earnest. These negotiations were led by Shari Redstone, chairman of National Amusements, and Joe Ianniello, CEO of CBS. On August 13, 2019, CBS and Viacom boards of directors reached an agreement to reunite the conglomerates as a single entity called ViacomCBS. National Amusements' board of directors approved the merger on October 28, 2019, which was finalized on December 4, bringing the Star Trek franchise back under one roof. ViacomCBS was renamed Paramount Global on February 16, 2022.
Chris
Pine - plays Captain James T Kirk
DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
As early as 1964, Gene Roddenberry drafted a proposal for the science fiction series that would become Star Trek. Although he publicly marketed it as a Western in outer
space - a so-called "Wagon Train to the stars" - he privately told friends that he was modeling it on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale.
Most Star Trek stories depict the adventures of humans and aliens who serve in Starfleet, the space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada of the United Federation of Planets. The protagonists have altruistic values, and must apply these ideals to difficult dilemmas.
Many of the conflicts and political dimensions of Star Trek are allegories of contemporary cultural realities. The Original Series addressed issues of the 1960s, just as later spin-offs have tackled issues of their respective decades. Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology. Roddenberry stated: "[By creating] a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network. If you talked about purple people on a far off planet, they (the television network) never really caught on. They were more concerned about cleavage. They actually would send a censor down to the set to measure a woman's cleavage to make sure too much of her breast wasn't showing."
Roddenberry intended the show to have a progressive political agenda reflective of the emerging counter-culture of the youth movement, though he was not fully forthcoming to the networks about this. He wanted Star Trek to show what humanity might develop into, if it would learn from the lessons of the past, most specifically by ending violence. An extreme example is the alien species known as the Vulcans, who had a violent past but learned to control their emotions. Roddenberry also gave Star Trek an anti-war message and depicted the United Federation of Planets as an ideal, optimistic version of the United Nations. His efforts were opposed by the network because of concerns over marketability, e.g., they opposed Roddenberry's insistence that Enterprise have a racially diverse crew.
STAR TREK UNIVERSE 2017 >>>>>
CBS turned down several proposals in the mid-2000s to restart the franchise on the small screen. Proposals included pitches from film director Bryan Singer, Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski, and Trek actors Jonathan Frakes and William Shatner. While CBS was not creating new Star Trek for network television, the ease of access to Star Trek content on new streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video introduced a new set of fans to the franchise. CBS eventually sought to capitalize on this trend, and brought the franchise back to the small screen with the series Star Trek: Discovery to help launch and draw subscribers to its streaming service CBS All Access. Discovery's first season premiered on September 24, 2017. While the first three seasons of the show are shown in the United States exclusively on the service, which changed its name to Paramount+, Netflix, in exchange for funding the production costs of the show, owned the international screening rights for the show. This Netflix distribution and production deal ended right before the fourth season premiere of Discovery in November 2021. Discovery has since been exclusive to Paramount Global owned platforms.
In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of Discovery, Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the Star Trek franchise beyond Discovery to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. Kurtzman wanted to "open this world up" and create multiple series set in the same universe but with their own "unique storytelling and distinct cinematic feel", an approach that he compared to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, the franchise would not tell a single story across multiple series, allowing audiences to watch each series without having to see all of the others. CBS and Kurtzman refer to this expanded franchise as the Star Trek Universe.
The second series of the expansion of the Star Trek Universe, Star Trek: Picard, features Patrick Stewart reprising the character Jean-Luc Picard from The Next Generation. Picard premiered on CBS All Access on January 23, 2020. Unlike Discovery, Amazon Prime Video streams Picard internationally. CBS has also released two seasons of Star Trek: Short Treks, a series of standalone mini-episodes which air between Discovery and Picard seasons. A new live-action series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a spinoff of the second season of Discovery and prequel to the original series, premiered on May 5, 2022. Lower Decks, an animated adult comedy series, was released on August 6, 2020, on CBS All Access. Another animated series, Star Trek: Prodigy, premiered on the rebranded service Paramount+ first on October 28, 2021, and on December 17, 2021, on Nickelodeon. Prodigy is the first Star Trek series to specifically target younger audiences, and is the franchise's first fully computer animated series. Star Trek's television presence would reach a new peak in 2022, with five Star Trek series airing simultaneously that year.
The Star Trek: Picard series finale aired in April 2023. Discovery's series finale aired in May 2024.[60] A Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series is in pre-production to take the place of one of these series. Star Trek: Prodigy was removed from Paramount+ in June 2023. The series was picked up by Netflix, and season 1 was made available on December 25, 2023. A second season aired later in 2024.
Paramount is also planning to create television films for Paramount+ every two years. The first of these movies, Section 31, stars Michelle Yeoh, reprising her role as Empress Georgiou from Discovery, and was given a release date of January 24, 2025.
STAR TREK BEYOND 2016
Star Trek Beyond is a 2016 American science fiction action film directed by Justin Lin, written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, and based on the television series Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry. It is the 13th film in the Star Trek franchise and the third installment in the reboot series, following Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto reprise their respective roles as Captain James T. Kirk and Commander Spock, with Pegg, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldaña, John Cho, and Anton Yelchin reprising their roles from the previous films. Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, and Lydia Wilson also appear.
Principal photography began in Vancouver on June 25, 2015. The film premiered in Sydney on July 7, 2016, and was released in the United States on July 22, 2016, by Paramount Pictures. The film is dedicated to the memory of Anton Yelchin, as well as to actor Leonard Nimoy, who died during pre-production. The film grossed $343.5 million at the box office, and received positive reviews from critics. At the 89th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. A sequel is in development.
PLOT
The Federation starship USS Enterprise arrives at starbase Yorktown, for resupply and shore leave for its crew. Struggling to find meaning in the middle of their five-year exploration, Captain James T. Kirk has applied for a promotion to vice admiral, while recommending Spock as his replacement. Meanwhile, Hikaru Sulu reunites with his family, Montgomery Scott works to keep the ship operational, and Spock and Nyota Uhura have ended their relationship. Soon, Spock receives word from New Vulcan that Ambassador
Spock - Spock's alternate-universe counterpart - has died.
Enterprise is dispatched on a rescue mission after an escape pod drifts out of a nearby uncharted nebula. Its occupant, Kalara, claims that her ship is stranded on Altamid, a planet in the nebula. Upon arrival, a massive swarm of small ships ambushes the Enterprise and quickly begins to tear it apart. The swarm's leader, Krall, and his crew board the crippled Enterprise, capture and kill many crew members, and attempt to capture the Abronath, a relic recovered during a recent mission. Kirk orders the crew to abandon ship, leaving the disintegrating Enterprise saucer section to crash land on the nearby planet Altamid.
On the planet, Krall captures Sulu, Uhura, and other survivors. Kirk and Pavel Chekov, accompanied by Kalara, locate the Enterprise's saucer section. Knowing that Kalara knew they would be attacked, Kirk tricks her into revealing herself as Krall's spy. She is killed when Kirk and Chekov escape Krall's soldiers and flip the Enterprise saucer, crushing her. Elsewhere on the planet, Dr. Leonard McCoy and a wounded Spock search for other survivors. Spock tells McCoy that he ended his relationship with Uhura and is leaving Starfleet to help the Vulcan survivors and continue the late Ambassador Spock's work. Jaylah, a scavenger who previously escaped Krall's encampment where her father was killed, rescues Scotty and takes him to her makeshift home, the grounded USS Franklin, an early Starfleet vessel reported missing over a century earlier. Scotty is reunited with Kirk, Chekov, McCoy and Spock. Krall coerces the captive Enterprise crew to hand over the Abronath, then uses it to complete an ancient bioweapon. With the device complete, Krall intends to kill Yorktown's inhabitants, then use the base to attack the United Federation of Planets. Kirk and the others free the crew as Krall launches into space with the bioweapon, leading his drones to Yorktown.
The Enterprise survivors power up the Franklin and launch her in pursuit of Krall. Theorizing the swarm's system may be vulnerable to high frequencies such as VHF or radio, they jam and destroy the swarm by broadcasting the song "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys. Krall is chased by the Franklin through Yorktown. Uhura, Kirk and Scotty discover from the Franklin's logs that Krall is actually Balthazar Edison, Franklin's former captain. A pre-Federation human soldier, Edison rejected the Federation's principles of unity and cooperation with former enemies like the Xindi and the Romulans. When he and his crew were stranded on Altamid by a wormhole, the survivors used the extinct natives' technology to prolong their lives at the cost of the others and re-purposed the ancient race's dormant mining drone workers into the swarm. Thinking the Federation had abandoned them, Edison planned to destroy the Federation and resume galactic conflict. Kirk pursues Edison into Yorktown's ventilation system, where Edison activates the bioweapon. Before it can spread, Kirk ejects it and Edison into
space, where the weapon disintegrates Edison. Using a commandeered alien ship, Spock and McCoy save Kirk moments before he is also blown into space.
In the aftermath, Commodore Paris closes the files of Captain Edison and the USS Franklin crew. Though offered the promotion to vice admiral, Kirk decides to remain as a captain; Spock, after finding a photograph of Ambassador Spock's Enterprise crew, chooses to remain in Starfleet and renews his relationship with Uhura. On Kirk's recommendation, Jaylah is accepted into Starfleet Academy. As the crew celebrates Kirk's birthday, they watch the construction of their new ship, the USS Enterprise-A—and resume their mission.
CAST
- Chris Pine as Captain James T. Kirk, commanding officer of the USS Enterprise
- Zachary Quinto as Commander Spock, first officer and science officer
- Karl Urban as Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy, chief medical officer
- Zoe Saldaña as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, communications officer
- Simon Pegg as Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, chief engineer
- John Cho as Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, helmsman
- Anton Yelchin as Ensign Pavel Chekov, the ship's navigator and tactical expert..
- Idris Elba as Captain Balthazar Edison / Krall, former commander of the USS Franklin,
a mutated alien creature
- Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, an alien scavenger.
- Joe Taslim as Anderson Le / Manas, Krall's henchman and former first officer who was also transformed.
- Lydia Wilson as Jessica Wolff / Kalara, Krall's henchwoman and former science officer who was also transformed.
- Sara Maria Forsberg voices Kalara during the translation scenes
- Deep Roy as Keenser, Scotty's assistant
- Melissa Roxburgh as Ensign Syl
- Shohreh Aghdashloo as Commodore Paris, commanding officer of Starbase Yorktown
- Greg Grunberg as Commander Finnegan, Yorktown first officer
- Danny Pudi as Fi'Ja[
- Kim Kold as Zavanko
- Anita Brown as Tyvanna
- Doug Jung as Ben
- Dan Payne as Wadjet
- Shea Whigham as Teenaxi Leader
Leonard Nimoy appears in a photo cameo appearance as Spock Prime, alongside George Takei, Walter Koenig, William Shatner, James Doohan, DeForest Kelley, and Nichelle Nichols as the Prime versions of Sulu, Chekov, Kirk, Scott, McCoy, and Uhura, respectively. Jeff Bezos cameos as an alien Starfleet official. Carlo Ancelotti has a brief cameo as a doctor at Starbase Yorktown.
PRODUCTION COMPANIES
- Paramount Pictures
- Skydance
- Alibaba Pictures
- Huahua Media
- Bad Robot
- Sneaky Shark Productions
- Perfect Storm Entertainment
BOX OFFICE AND CRITICS
Star Trek Beyond underperformed financially at the box office. Scott Mendelson of Forbes observed that one factor contributing to the film's underperformance was its untimely release in a crowded summer in which it was surrounded by other films like Ghostbusters, Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad. He also noted that had Paramount released the film for the Star Trek's 50th anniversary on September 8, the film could have benefited from that occasion, as demonstrated in October 2012 when MGM released the
James Bond film Skyfall (which went on to gross over $1 billion) for that series' 50th anniversary.
Star Trek Beyond grossed $158.8 million in the United States and Canada and $184.6 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $343.5 million, against a production budget of $185 million. It had a global opening of $89.2 million and an IMAX opening of $11.6 million on 571 IMAX screens. Industry analyst Danny Cox had previously estimated that in order for the film to break even, it would have to earn $340–350 million worldwide, and ended losing an estimated $50.5 million.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 86% based on 317 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Star Trek Beyond continues the franchise's post-reboot hot streak with an epic sci-fi adventure that honors the series' sci-fi roots without skimping on the blockbuster action." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, down from the first two films' "A".
Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out of 4 and said, "Even with its big-screen pyrotechnics and its feature-length running time, Star Trek Beyond plays like an extended version of one of the better episodes from the original series, and I mean that in the best possible way." Scott Collura of IGN awarded the film 8.4/10, describing it as being: "terrific, a fun and exciting entry in the series that balances subtle fan service while also feeling fresh and modern; Star Trek Beyond is the perfect way to celebrate the series' 50th anniversary." David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter said the screenplay by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung "injects a welcome strain of humor that's true to the original Gene Roddenberry creation, delivering nostalgia without stiff veneration", and went on by saying, "While Beyond won't unseat 1982's thrilling The Wrath of Khan as the gold standard for Star Trek movies, it's a highly entertaining entry guaranteed to give the franchise continuing life."
Owen Gleiberman of Variety, in an otherwise positive review, described the film being "a very familiar, old-fangled, no-mystery structure, and that's because it's basically the Star Trek version of an interplanetary action film, with a plot that doesn't take you to many new frontiers." Furthermore, he called Star Trek Beyond "a somewhat diverting place holder, but one hopes that the next Star Trek movie will have what it takes to boldly go where no Star Trek movie has gone before." Mark Hugues of Forbes said, "Star Trek Beyond is the third-best Star Trek film of all time, creating the sort of emotional connection and familiar, powerful characterizations we loved in the original series while delivering top-notch action and the best Star Trek movie villain since First Contact's Borg Queen."
The film was also met by critics who were less taken with the film. James Berardinelli of Reelviews gave 2½ stars out of 4, writing: "Star Trek Beyond is a Star Trek movie, although not an especially good one; The action sequences are frenetic, kinetic, and, at times, incoherent. This isn't unexpected; it's Lin's trademark. But the plot, credited to Simon Pegg & Doug Jung, is pure Trek. Unfortunately, it's also instantly forgettable." Dave Robinson of outlet Crash Landed writes that "Star Trek Beyond fails to push beyond its own roots and becomes just another very safe sci-fi popcorn movie in an increasingly crowded market, that will likely have you leaving the theatre feeling exactly as you entered." Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a C+ and wrote, "[w]ith Beyond, it feels like just another summer tentpole with not enough going on underneath the tent."
George Takei, the actor who played Hikaru Sulu in The Original Series, criticised the decision by the writers to make the character gay. The actor said "I'm delighted that there's a gay character, unfortunately, it's a twisting of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's creation, into which he put so much thought. I think it's really unfortunate." Takei claimed this would make Sulu appear to have been closeted, and he requested instead for a new character to be introduced. Simon Pegg responded by saying the move was intended as a tribute to George Takei's status as an LGBT activist.
SEQUEL 2025 >>>>
While promoting Beyond, Abrams revealed that a fourth film in the reboot series would see Chris Hemsworth reprising his role of George Kirk, father of Pine's James T. Kirk, from the prologue of the first reboot film. Paramount Pictures officially announced the fourth film in July 2016, with J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay set to write the screenplay. In December 2017,
Quentin Tarantino approached Abrams and Paramount about an idea he had for a new Star Trek film, and a writers room was hired consisting of Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, Drew Pearce, and Megan Amram. Smith was chosen to write the film's screenplay at the end of the month, based on Tarantino's idea. S. J. Clarkson entered talks to direct the Beyond sequel in April 2018, but contract negotiations with Pine and Hemsworth ended in August with the pair leaving the project. The film was cancelled by January 2019 and Clarkson moved on to other projects. In January 2020, Tarantino said he would not direct his proposed film.
Noah Hawley was hired to write and direct a new Star Trek film for Paramount in November 2019, based on his own vision for the franchise. This project was "very close" to production beginning in August 2020 when it was placed on hold by new Paramount Pictures president Emma Watts, whose top priority at the studio was to figure out the direction of the Star Trek franchise. Watts had several options, including Hawley's film, a new Beyond sequel attempt, and Tarantino's project with a new director. In March 2021, Paramount set Star Trek: Discovery writer Kalinda Vazquez to write a new Star Trek film based on her own original idea, while a separate script was developed by Beer and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. The studio scheduled the latter film for release on June 9, 2023, and hired Matt Shakman to direct it in July. Work was expected to move at "warp speed" ahead of a filming start in early-to-mid 2022, with Abrams producing. In November 2021, the film's release was pushed to December 22, 2023. The script was being re-written by Josh Friedman and Cameron Squires. Abrams and new Paramount Pictures CEO Brian Robbins announced in February 2022 that the main cast from the previous three Star Trek films would return, including Pine, Quinto, Pegg, Urban, Saldaña, and Cho. The announcement came as a surprise to the actors as negotiations had not yet begun for their return.
Shakman left the film in August 2022 after joining the Marvel Studios film The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), and it was removed from Paramount's release schedule soon after. In January 2024, the studio was revealed to be expanding its Star Trek film slate to have multiple films in development, inspired by the success of the multiple Star Trek series on the streaming service Paramount+. The in-development Star Trek 4 was described as the "final chapter" in the main film series at that time. Steve Yockey was writing a new draft of the script by the end of March 2024.
REFERENCE
https://www.
|