From movies online, "After ten movies, five television shows, and too many novels to count, "Star Trek" has run the gamut of Gene Roddenberry's universe. The last series, "Enterprise," went where no "Trek" has gone before, basing its premise entirely on the original Enterprise and its crew, taking us back in time rather than forward. "Star Trek XI: The Beginning" was primed to follow suit with the series, but with "Enterprise" having fallen far short of hopes attached to it, it is almost a harbinger of trouble for the eleventh "Trek" film.
Writer Erik Jendresen told SyFy Portal that while enthusiasm around the project was high because of the exciting premise, the chance to tell the story behind the events that started the Romulan War, the movie is now stuck in studio limbo. Jendresen does not seem happy about the stall, commenting that they were going to finally cover the untold tale. "We [had] a chance here to fill in the canon, and to create a continuum ostensibly from the beginning from 'Enterprise' all the way out to the future."
The latest installment in the movie franchise was intended to be a trilogy that could be likened to the hype and cult level of the "Star Wars" prequels. The three films were to take place in the chronological gap left between the years 2164 and 2233. It would have followed the ancestor of James T. Kirk, Tiberius Chase, through the Romulan War in all its excessive violence that supposedly would have been too graphic for "Enterprise," which would put Jendresen right in his element since he also wrote "Band of Brothers" for HBO. Also, out of the bloody and horrific war was to emerge the United Federation of Planets.
But, why the past tense? This project is trapped in production stasis, but it is far from being officially dead. Though, Jendresen gives the impression that this may as well be the case. The real status of "Trek XI" rests in the hands of the new command at Paramount. The former co-president of the studio David DeLine had been leading the prequel movement. However, once Jendresen finished the script, there was a new man by the name of Gail Berman steering the ship, leaving "The Beginning" lost in the shuffle. Neither Berman nor Paramount is abandoning the trilogy proposal, but they are trying to explore all their options for the next step made by one of the largest franchises in entertainment history.
The last "Trek" movie to hit theaters, "Nemesis," pulled in $67 million worldwide. Since that was back in 2002 and this is first time in a long time that the franchise can't claim at least one running television show, another "Trek" film is sure to be on its way soon enough. Whether or not it will be "The Beginning" is just too soon to tell. But, the concept of this trilogy is different and significant enough, delving into an untapped region of this universe's history with Kirk's ancestor leading the way, that it may be the smartest way to invigorate the existing fans and beam up some new ones."
3 comments:
"the chance to tell the story behind the events that started the Romulan War"
WHO CARES! WHO CARES! I can't believe how annoying all this is. We're not graduate students studying Federation history. We want to see a good Trek flick! The only Trek movie that even remotely follows this "historiography" scheme is VI, and it's a gimmicky story that works because it's a device to say goodbye to seven characters we'd come to love over 25 years. Take out Kirk etc. and Nicholas Meyers' brain and you've got nothing. (And you notice Scott Bakula's not in it.) Nobody came out of VI saying, "I'm so relieved that I finally know what happened at Camp Kidomer."
Who ARE these idiots?
I have a maxim I use for myself which is “nobody is as interested in my mix tapes as I am,” and I coined it to remind me not to go off answering questions nobody asked, that I nevertheless have the answers to. It seems to me Hollywood has tipped headlong into that very habit, so that now phrases like “so we get to find out how that happened” from writers and producers are as common as actors on a talk shows describing their new movie as “the ride of you life.”
So the writers and producers are burrowing around in the history of a given franchise thinking that everybody is as interested as they are in answering these questions, when they’re the only ones getting paid to do it. And all we really want is a good Trek movie.
In the days before Episode I, somebody (me) speculated that the SW prequels were going to lead to a rash of prequels, just like the sequels did. And naturally all heard the call of Lucas, missing the fact that the SW history was the one example of cinematic background people were actually waiting for.
As much as I admire Star Trek: The Motion Picture for trying to make Trek into a legit sci-fi cinema project (and that really is what they were trying to do, with all the NASA advisers and everything) it's clear from what happened next that they had lost their way.
Not that it's their fault. It takes a very smart person to look at something (particularly the thing that you yourself initially created) and meaningfully ask, "what is this thing anyway? Why do people like it? What's it for?" And I have to admit that Nick Meyer and Harve Bennett asked and answered these questions succssfully in 1981 when control of Trek was taken away from Roddenberry and given to them.
Although "Khan" isn't my favorite Trek movie it's obviously a great example of people understanding what they're doing and why people will like it. These guys today don't understand this at all...they've been in their Paramount/internet/geek/cocaine/convention echo chamber too long.
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