suedescripture:

Paramount, like most of the bigger studios, has several franchises. Transformers made four too many movies, and has another in the pipeline (STOP). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a thing that happened (was panned to hell). Mission Impossible being the big one that won’t die (I don’t care). Their respectively cumulative worldwide gross is as follows: Transformers franchise – $4.38B, TMNT (2014) – $493.3M, and MI franchise:

$3.21B.

Who watches these? I’m gonna take a wild guess, largely male, age 12-35. That’s the demographic. And you know what? I don’t even have cable anymore, and yet I have not been able to exist at any point in the last decade without seeing some kind of advertisement for one or more of these. On the internet, on a YouTube video, on a friends TV, all over Twitter, on the side of a bus stop, in an electronics store, etc.

Paramount knows how to push its product. They push every other property they own like its going out of style. The last Transformers movie came out a month prior to Star Trek Beyond, and it had advertising pre-loaded and weaponized for months prior to its release. We only started seeing any hype AT ALL for Star Trek Beyond just a few weeks before, minus one small teaser at CC because some idiot somewhere decided that secrecy was going to be the big hook. And this was for the BIG 50TH ANNIVERSARY that was supposed to be such a big deal, the reason we rushed production on this thing in the first place, but you couldn’t actually like, advertise it? What, was that department on a group vacation from the last month of Transformers push? Besides the BIG EVENT you oversold and turned away hundreds of paid ticket-holding superfans from. That was a massive douchmove, and we haven’t forgotten it.

Paramount has a long, disappointing history of failing Star Trek as a franchise, especially with regards to marketing. Maybe it’s because they don’t really get who the demographic is. Because while we might overlap with the above players a little bit, Star Trek has a much larger, older crowd of women with money we will happily throw several handfuls of to see movies. And yes, while you and I supreme Trekkies are sitting here counting the minutes until somebody fucking fixes this shitstorm Paramount started, there are in fact casual viewers who maybe don’t eat sleep and breathe Trek everyday, but would happily pull out their wallets if they only knew it was coming out (my mom, 60 something, quite enjoys all the geek movies but won’t call herself one). And Paramount marketing takes a vacation that week. Every time. And in this day and age, Hollywood has decided that the first week of release is literally the only one that matters.

By the way, did you see those numbers I posted up there? Those are B’s. Billions. Paramount, let’s not fucking pretend you don’t have the money to spend on an already signed actor’s contract, okay? Or that you don’t have ample overseas investors either, we didn’t miss that this last time out. You line Tom Cruise’s toilet in gold every single time he takes a shit. You aren’t hurting for cash. If you’re so butthurt about selling off your Marvel properties that are now making you so insanely jealous, do as they do. You gotta spend money to make money. And you don’t do that by recasting and alienating an already dedicated fanbase.

Hey, remember these commercials? I do. DO YOU KNOW HOW HAPPY THEY MADE ME? I hate the company they are for (hence no more cable tv), but every time I saw them, I wanted to see more Trek! Isn’t that an amazing concept? I don’t see why you can’t go balls to the wall on this franchise like you do every other.

Trek reboot has its problems. All of the Treks do, let’s be totally honest. But one of those problems is not its cast. Its cast is, in fact, the one beautiful cohesive thing that holds it together and makes us, the people waving cash and saying “take my money”, come back each time.

Give me my fucking captain back.