It's a little more complex than that. The idea of having the original characters played by younger actors was first proposed in 1991, when the actors were pushing 60 (Nimoy and Shatner are now in their 80s). They wanted to do a "Starfleet Academy" movie where the original actors would have cameo apperances talking to a group of graduating cadets, and then it would flashback to young Kirk, young Spock, etc., and pass the torch to the new actors. The idea was vetoed and we got Star Trek VI instead. Then, the Next Generation ended its run on TV and the idea was THEY would succeed the original cast, thus we got the disappointing "crossover" movie Star Trek Generations (which basically gave older Scotty and Chekov nothing more than glorified cameos), and there was expected to be a long line of Next Generation movies but they kept declining in revenue so it came to a screeching halt after 4 movies. Then they finally fired Rick Berman, and the result was they decided to an "in universe reboot" in 2009 and come up with "Evil Romulan from the future goes back in time and alters the past" premise, so they could hire younger actors but not have to stick to the established chronology of their back stories. I think it was a good idea given that they were basically painted into a corner, but unfortunately they squandered the opportunity they had to come up with some really interesting new stories.
>> First Contact, okay, best TNG movie by default <<
I agree with you (only because the other TNG movies were worse, although I thought Nemesis was OKAY and not the worthless garbage people made it out to be). Still, Field hates FC with a passion so he's not gonna like that comment. ;-)
>>> Back to Star Wars, the Ewoks may have been stupid (that Stormtrooper Armor is sure useless!) but ROJ is piece of gold compared to the prequels. It’s amazing how Lucas tried so hard to destroy what he created. <<<
It's true, I grew up on the original Star Wars trilogy and ROJ was considered the weakest of the three (especially pandering to kids with the goofy Ewoks), but it looks like a masterpiece next to the prequel films. The weird thing is even the most ardent Star Wars fanboy will now admits the prequels sucked, but Lucas KEEPS making money with them anyway. He re-released "The Phantom Menance" in 3D a few years back and the fanboys flocked to see it in theaters, as if 3D would somehow magically make Jar Jar Binks into a good character. It sickens me that people continue to reward Hollywood for films they know are lousy. I bet the Blu-Ray editions of those movies made lots of $$$ too. No wonder they have no motivation to do better.
>>> I have no idea what’s up with the new ones, I wish I could say I’m optimistic. <<<
J.J. Abrams has basically turned Star Trek INTO Star Wars (the most recent Star Trek film was certainly the most "Star Warsish" of the 12, and mostly reliabed on one-liners, fist fights, and shoot 'em chase scenes, so I'm actually glad he's defected to Star Wars and can go mess with that universe instead of screwing with Star Trek anymore. I imagine anything would be better than the Star Wars prequels, but given what Abrams has done lately, I'm not so sure anymore.
Star Trek also has new writers that have been hired for the 50th anniversary movie in 2016, so there's hope. I read the other day that the guy who wrote the last movie (Bob Orci, an insane liberal 9/11 truther) wants to DIRECT the next Star Trek movie now. My response would be HELL NO. The sad thing is Hollywood will continue to promote people who gives us mediocre crap as long as it makes money. Certainly Orci isn't entirely to blame for Star Trek Into Darkness, but he shares a big chunk of the blame for giving us a generic action movie and Khan In Name Only after having four years to come up with a good story. He shouldn't be rewarded after what happened.
>> Me too, but I’m not. I can smell the poop from here. <<
A similar situtation is going on with DC comics now. They're struggling to keep up with Marvel's endless Superhero movies. DC's "rebooted" Superman movie from summer 2013 got lousy reviews. It was basically a lazy remake of Superman II turned into a Transformers type movie with fake video-game like fighting sequences. So what does Warner Bros. do? Keep the same writer and directing team, and give them the go-ahead to make a "Batman vs. Superman" movie. I can already smell the cr@p from here. I got bored with the Nolan Batman movies, but I fear these new films will be so bad than the Nolan films will honestly look the masterpieces that their deluded fanboys claim they are.
I got one for you.
I like the followup movie The Bourne Legacy 2012 WITHOUT Matt Damon. It costars an older and good looking Rachel Weisz as a bi-chemist working on testing related to drugs making human killers.
Recall a young Rachel Weisz playing a similar role as a scientist in Chain Reaction 1996 with young Keanu Reeves which was 16 years before this one. I always got a kick out of that one.
This one was a fun movie.
This Bourne movie has Great Drone scene using Hellfire missiles to take out the programs agents after the program is turned off.
Nemesis was better than Insurrection I guess, that one was more like a bad TNG epsiode than a movie.
But still, pretty dumb. An emo clone of Picard raised as a slave in a mine takes over the Romulan Empire and plans to steal Picard’s blood, attack the Federation even though he has no reason to dislike them, and rape Troi because she’s the first human woman he’s ever seen? Are you serious? And Data’s death seemed tacked on for no reason. Did they plan to save his brain and put it in his retarded brother if there had been another movie?
If they wanted an evil version of Picard, how about the using the Mirror Universe? The evil Picard from the other universe (who would have been born a slave since DS9 had the evil Empire be conquered as a result of Kirk’s speech to Evil Spock) could have come over and tried to take his place or something, that at least halfway makes sense.
As for Rick Berman he should be murdered for bungling Enterprise and allowing Voyager to be mediocre at best with the terrific premise it had.
That would have been cool. But the Star Trek 6 we got ended up being one the better movies.
I also read about another rejected movie idea that would have showed an ancestor of Kirk during the Earth-Romulan war that SHOULD have been the main focus of "Enterprise". I would have liked that better than an uninspired reboot, but their main aim was to wring more cash from the public by exploiting popular established characters, and they succeeded I guess.