Star Trek was never an "action movie franchise"...it is now thanks to JJ Abrams...
Paramount, believing the Star Trek films were stale and didn't have enough fans, set out to broaden it, so they brought Abrams.
Unfortunately "broadening Trek" means dumbing it down, as that is what needs to happen to reach the largest possible audience. But what is the point of doing that if the very nature of Star Trek itself is neutered? Unfortunately Star Trek is an intellectual property to be mined and pillaged as the studio see fit. It becomes, ironically, much like the Borg, losing it's very identity and being assimilated into the collective of the bland, safe, and inoffensive Hollywood summer blockbuster.
It's like what happened when McDonald's started popping up in places where hamburgers weren't a staple...it broadened the hamburger for a larger public, but had to dumb it down into the most bland thing you can imagine in the process.
Abrams' Trek was more like Star Wars than Star Trek...which is ironic considering JJ's next big movie...
True, the Trek series started declining pretty steadily in quality after Wrath Of Kahn...but no matter what their faults, they remained true to the spirit of Trek...the problem isn't the original formula, it works. It works when the scripts are good and the director knows what he's doing, as we saw with WOK.
Star Trek was never meant to be as popular as Star War...it isn't a space opera, it isn't about Top Gun-like dogfights, pew-pew laser combat, and the Joseph Campbellian hero's journey (young Kirk) structure most Hollywood summer action flicks subscribe to. Star Trek was never about that. Trek has (or had) a very specific identity that made it what it is, regardless of how many Joe Six Pack's didn't care for it...it still reached a pretty large audience of dedicated fans.
By trying to broaden the appeal of Trek, they're effectively hooking people who never gave Trek a second glance. Now that it looks and feels like the more popular Star Wars, everyone is hooked. Maybe your wife or your cousin was never meant to like Star Trek...they have reality TV and bad soap operas. Why does Trek have to be liked by every single human being on planet earth? Star Trek '09 is for people who don't like Star Trek! They like Star Wars and will not watch Star Trek unless it looks, sounds and feels like Star Wars...
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