JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Together

[slappy]

I've heard reports that one thing that frustrated JJ Abrams was the lack of a unified vision of Trek overseeing the whole franchise. He had problems with the TV and movie divisions being separate and the video game that came out. Alot of people were upset that he wanted the merchandise for the old series discontinued, but he was mostly right.

Trek won't ever get to be as big as, say, Star Wars or Marvel because they're all over the place. You have the thing split up into different divisions and nobody knows what's what. People always say "hey the TV and movie stuff is separate and that's just how it is". But this is still the same company! It's Viacom. They can make it happen if there's the motivation to do so.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

I've heard reports that one thing that frustrated JJ Abrams was the lack of a unified vision of Trek overseeing the whole franchise. He had problems with the TV and movie divisions being separate and the video game that came out. Alot of people were upset that he wanted the merchandise for the old series discontinued, but he was mostly right.

Bad Robot also ordered that all Abramsverse novels (there were four of them just ready for release) be cancelled, so I'm mad at him for that too.

 

[svenden]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

I think its fair criticism. Certainly about having a unified vision. I would disagree, however, that a unified vision means having a unified story/set of characters/canon.

Seems to me the comics are a good study in this regard. Comic books themselves have a long standing tradition of reinvention and redefinition of both characters (e.g. Thor changing genders) and storylines (e.g., Batman's multiple origin stories). It is worth noting that Marvel and DC are taking different approaches to their cinematic universes. Marvel is keeping TV and Film within the same CU, whereas DC is keeping the two separate (even having, potentially, two different Flashes at the same time in a few years). Remains to be seen how that works out for them.

I would also say that Bad Robot kind of painted themselves into a corner with the choice to split into an alternate timeline for his movies. You can't just ask fans to forget about what had come before (which is kind of the message if you discontinue all merchandising around 'legacy' Trek). What we need is someone in charge with the vision for how to two can coexist.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

Star Trek will never be as big as Marvel and Star Wars because it's intended for a smaller niche. Taking away the merchandise that appeals to that smaller niche while trying to broadcast it to a larger niche is kind of a middle finger to that smaller niche.

 

[T'Girl]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

Perhaps Mr. Abrams should concentrate his attentions on his alternate reality Star Trek movies, and allow the other aspect of Trek to progress as they will without his input.

 

[BigJake]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

From my standpoint as someone who didn't care for Abrams' vision I'm glad he was frustrated, because a unified switch of the property over to NuTrek would have essentially ended even the vestigial forms of the Trek I was interested in, and we probably wouldn't even have the possibility of fan projects based on other visions now. From a marketing and franchise-building point of view he might well be right, but I'm glad that it's Star Wars and not Star Trek where we'll probably see that actually happen, because he's better suited to it.

 

[Vandervecken]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

Star Trek will never be as big as Marvel and Star Wars because it's intended for a smaller niche. Taking away the merchandise that appeals to that smaller niche while trying to broadcast it to a larger niche is kind of a middle finger to that smaller niche.

More like impaling than a proctological exam.

 

[Amaris]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

I understand his frustration, and yes, I love the new films. The overall franchise regarding the Star Trek universe has the potential to be massive, and varied, but the individual pieces are disjointed (IMO), so that there isn't really a smooth integration of properties like there is with the Star Wars universe. Think about it: a new Star Wars film comes out, there are books, toys, comics, spin-off cartoon series, all under the same banner, unified in the same goal.

Star Trek, on the other hand, is piecemeal at best. There might be a promotion here, a toy or comic book there, but the merchandising power is far inferior to the Star Wars model. If I were in charge of a longstanding franchise, I too would want to unify it and streamline it. Some fans will complain, but fans will complain anyway. Look at the fans who complain about Star Wars, and then go out and buy the merchandise anyway.

Now I go into opinion/theory, where I think part of it is because acknowledging that Star Trek needs a marketing overhaul also implies that it's all about the money. Star Trek still has this "Gene's Vision" cloud of obfuscation about it, and the idea that such a "vision" must be supported by marketing departments, and accountants looking at sales figures, turns some people off from the idea. This notion, should it exist, needs to go. Whatever it means to the individual, Star Trek was designed to make money.

Still, I think Abrams is right, and that Trek needs a more unified, seamless marketing program that effectively streamlines and distributes IP licenses more efficiently, and more prolifically. If that means no more old designs released, so be it, but I doubt that would be the case. I think the idea is more that the current thing is emphasized until such time as maximum market satiety has been reached, at which point things return to general merchandising once more. That's how Star Wars has done it for decades, and they're most certainly not hurting for money.

 

[BigJake]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

I think there is absolutely zero chance that whatever powers-that-be resisted a full marketing overhaul Because Gene's Vision. There just is no way that happened.

 

[Amaris]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

I think there is absolutely zero chance that whatever powers-that-be resisted a full marketing overhaul Because Gene's Vision. There just is no way that happened.

The powers-that-be wouldn't, but the people who buy the merchandise could. That is whom I speak about here.

 

[BigJake]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

^ I thought the people who cared about Gene's Vision were supposed to be irrelevant to NuTrek which would have a market with or without them?

Fandom couldn't have resisted any push toward a full-scale rebranding except to either complain on the Net or vote with its dollars... and the latter probably for something non-Trek since that kind of rebranding strategy probably would have had to bring the legal hammer down on stuff like the crowd-funded fan projects we're seeing now.

 

[Amaris]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

^ I thought the people who cared about Gene's Vision were supposed to be irrelevant to NuTrek which would have a market with or without them?

Fandom couldn't have resisted any push toward a full-scale rebranding except to either complain on the Net or vote with its dollars... and the latter probably for something non-Trek since that kind of rebranding strategy probably would have had to bring the legal hammer down on stuff like the crowd-funded fan projects we're seeing now.

Not necessarily, regarding crowd funding fan projects. For example, Lucas let fans create Star Wars projects of their own, even promoting them in some cases. Whether Disney has any predilection towards such a thing remains to be seen, but it's in the eye of the IP holder, and while CBS/Paramount has been draconian in the past, we've seen them be fairly hands off, considering the million dollar projects that are being made by the fans.

 

[BigJake]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

We're seeing them being relatively hands-off in our timeline where there wasn't a coordinated discontinuation of old Trek product and a unified push for the new Abrams brand. Their being hands-off in a different timeline where Abrams got what he wanted seems a lot less likely to me.

At any rate I'm not into this suggestion that the fans have some sort of responsbility to put Gene's Vision behind them and Get Behind the New Thing. Fans aren't working for the frakking studio and they have only one responsibility, to like what they like. If some guy likes what he thinks of as Gene's Vision that's his business.

 

[Terok Nor]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

As far as I'm concerned all the tv shows and movies are part of the same thing, even the Abrams movies. I've never considered books, comics, computer games or anything else that didn't occur on tv or in the movies to be canon.

Pine, Quinto and Urban are perfect in the roles of Kirk, Spock and Bones. I never thought anyone could ever play those roles as they were so iconic and so Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley but they're doing a fantastic job so far. All that said, I'm not a fan of the JJ Abrams version of Star Trek. The movies were never all that intelligent but both Abrams movies have been dumb action flicks that don't represent Trek at its best to me.

I'm not really all that crazy about it being set in an alternate reality either. In a way I can disconnect from Abrams films since they're not in the classic Trek reality but I wouldn't want this alternate universe to be the one Trek stays in. I hope it returns to the Prime universe at some point.

 

[Amaris]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

We're seeing them being relatively hands-off in our timeline where there wasn't a coordinated discontinuation of old Trek product and a unified push for the new Abrams brand. Their being hands-off in a different timeline where Abrams got what he wanted seems a lot less likely to me.

It may seem that way, but there's no way to know either way, since his plan wasn't successful. I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I understand where someone may not wish to do so in light of CBS/Paramount's past actions.

At any rate I'm not into this suggestion that the fans have some sort of responsbility to put Gene's Vision behind them and Get Behind the New Thing. Fans aren't working for the frakking studio and they have only one responsibility, to like what they like. If some guy likes what he thinks of as Gene's Vision that's his business.

I never said they had any sort of responsibility to do anything of the sort. All I offered was the possibility that the merchandising aspect of the franchise may suffer because of how fans approach Star Trek compared to how fans of Star Wars approach things.

 

[Frontier]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

I stopped listening when you said "JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right"...

No, but in all seriousness: Trek used to be unified. And it got as big as it could be. And it had a lot of unity and inter-mixing and more merchandise than you could shake a stick at. It's only been split up in the last less than a decade. And we can't really tell what effect that's had on it so much because so much has changed in how we consume media since Enterprise ended.

No, JJ Abrams didn't have anything right. Nothing about JJ Abrams and Star Trek go together. The man is a multiple-times-admitted not a fan. He can't even grasp what makes Trek great. Never could, never will. I'm so glad Star Wars took him because he's made for them and not for us.

Do I think Trek needs to get a more unified voice once again? Sure do. But not under Abrams, and not under anyone who wants to change Star Trek into Marvel or Star Wars. Because it's neither of those things. Never can be, never should be, never will be. And the fact they're trying so hard to push things that way for a purely profit motive is sad. Especially since if they could get someone, anyone, in creative control who grasped what Trek really is at the helm, they could have a profitable franchise without trying to re-make it into something else.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

Fairly sure that Star Trek - notwithstanding Gene's self revising history - was always produced with profit being the first and foremost concern. It ain't a charity documentary.

The reason Trek doesn't have a unified multi media platform vision is that those are freaking hard to pull off and even harder to maintain. There aren't a million Disneys out there for a reason. Disney is a magnificently well organized entertainment company with hordes of talented people willing to commit to a singular vision.
If Disney owned Trek you bet your bippy there would be one vision, one timeline, and a gazillion TV shows, movies, novels, comic books, and tons of we quality merchandise.

People forget that both Marvel and Star Wars were disjointed, uncoordinated entertainment properties until Disney acquired them.

 

[BigJake]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

^ Quite true. (Although I think Lucasfilm was pretty cohesive about the Star Wars franchise in the pre-Disney days. Terrible as time wore on, but cohesive.)

All I offered was the possibility that the merchandising aspect of the franchise may suffer because of how fans approach Star Trek compared to how fans of Star Wars approach things.

I'm confused. In what way exactly can we a) claim that a fan who's super into "Gene's Vision" is making the merchandising aspect of the franchise suffer by buying the stuff they prefer, and b) not be placing the responsibility for how merch is being run on the fan? That doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Amaris]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

^ Quite true. (Although I think Lucasfilm was pretty cohesive about the Star Wars franchise in the pre-Disney days. Terrible as time wore on, but cohesive.)

All I offered was the possibility that the merchandising aspect of the franchise may suffer because of how fans approach Star Trek compared to how fans of Star Wars approach things.

I'm confused. In what way exactly can we a) claim that a fan who's super into "Gene's Vision" is making the merchandising aspect of the franchise suffer by buying the stuff they prefer, and b) not be placing the responsibility for how merch is being run on the fan? That doesn't make sense to me.

Again, offered as a possibility only, that perhaps some didn't like the idea of a unified merchandising platform is because there are fans, many fans, that feel "Gene's Vision," as it were, wasn't about profit. The notion that a mass marketing front unified for all of Trek might dissuade them from parting with their money as a response. Again, just a possibility.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: JJ Abrams Was Kinda Right About Trek Needing To Get Its Act Togeth

The fans I know who believe in Gene's Vision to any degree are all consumers of various kinds of Star Trek paraphernalia. They all chip into the Star Trek hat, and they always have.

What's interesting to me is that TPTB haven't always been ahead of curve when it comes to predicting just what merchandise it is that fans want to consume. Two related examples that come to mind are the Franz Joseph works, the Booklet of General Plans (USS Enterprise blueprints) and the Technical Manual. Those were unqualified hits in their day, but it wasn't really evident at the outset just how huge they would be.

http://www.trekplace.com/fj-timeline.html