JJ Abrams Star Trek Reboot: The 10th Anniversary

[John Marston]

this movie came out on May 8, 2009. Many predicted failure for this movie. Star Trek Nemesis was a massive bomb and Star Trek has a film franchise especially looked dead and buried. Then news came out that the film had a 150 million budget, which then caused people to absolutely think this movie would fail especially since Star Trek movies always did terribly overseas. Then Paramount moved the release date from December 25, 2008 right after they released the first teaser trailer to May 2009 which had people questioning what Paramount was thinking putting this into the summer season. Then in November 2008 Paramount released a second trailer which was basically a bunch of randomly edited clips and made it look like a typical action movie and nothing like Star Trek which got a mostly negative response. 

 

 

then in March 2009 Paramount released this trailer which seemed to change the course of this film

 

 

 

This trailer was overwhelmingly well received and had people anticipating the movie now greatly.  Then Paramount put out TV Spots with this tagline

 

"This is not your father's Star Trek."

 

With this tagline, along with other things like "Sabotage" by The Beastie Boys playing during the film, we got a modern reboot of Star Trek 10 years ago thanks to director J.J. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman to bring Star Trek into more modern times and reinvigorate the franchise. 

 

Then the movie screened and got overwhelmingly positive reviews. Finally the movie opened on May 8 and opened to a whopping 79 million which shocked loads of people. What was even more shocking is that the film had staying power and received a 3 multiplier and ended up with over 257.7 million domestic. Outgrossing films many expected to come on top like X-Men Origins Wolverine and Terminator Salvation. 

 

 

Overseas though the film, like all the other Trek movies still didn't too hot, Making only 127 million and brought the final total to 385 million on a 150 million budget but that was definitely enough for success and the film also did extremely well on DVD/Blu ray. Basically this movie kind of replicated what happened with Batman Begins in 2005.  Though definitely defying way more lower expectations

 

 

so it looked like Star Trek was back and was now going to be a powerful force at the box office. A sequel was scheduled for 2012 but thanks to JJ Abrams working on Super 8 and Paramount wanting to wait for him to bring him back, it got delayed to May 2013.  A full four years after part one and had many high expectations this time around. Many thought it could strongly increase from Part 1 both domestically and overseas thansk to the extreme good will from the first film and 3D being introduced overseas. It didn't quite work out that way as the sequel decreased domestically which shocked loads of people. Overseas it did better than any other Trek movie before and made over 238 million and 467 million worldwide which allowed the film to be decently profitable at the end but definitely way less than expectations. A second sequel followed three years later in 2016 but decreased at the domestic box office more and ended up below 200 million overseas and thanks to an 185 million budget, ended up being a financial flop. 

 

 

There were talks of a fourth film anyway that persisted to early this year but apparently it has been shelved and likely won't happen with the Kelvin timeline cast. So the Chris Pine/ Zachary Quinto led Star Trek seems dead for now. But at least they managed to get three films out of it. More than many originally thought. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2019 by John Marston

[HouseOfTheSun]

I loved all three of these. Even darkness. 

[Darth Lehnsherr]

Rewatched this film a couple of days ago. Still freaking fantastic with some obvious leaps of logic that I've come to expect from JJ Abrams films. But yes such a shame that the series never really took off box office wise afterwards. Giacchino's Star Trek theme is still fantastic too.

[filmlover]

This is now 10 and Up will be turning 10 in three weeks. I feel old.

[Maxmoser3]

I remembered Darkness run more. This one I don’t remember the marketing for This one but the summer of 2009 was insanely crazy!  How many people remembered Terminator Salvation was projected to be one of the biggest films of the summer? 

[Ninenin]

On 1/17/2020 at 5:04 PM, Maxmoser3 said:

I remembered Darkness run more. This one I don’t remember the marketing for This one but the summer of 2009 was insanely crazy!  How many people remembered Terminator Salvation was projected to be one of the biggest films of the summer? 

Marketing for ST09 was brilliant. Trailer 3 really sold it imo. Such an awesome year for Sci fi with D9 and Avatar too

[lilmac]

Like OP mentioned, Nemesis was a failure, as were many of the later films. JJ’s trilogy was not. Looks like a success to me.