I found myself greeting with a sigh of relief the recent announcement that, following Paramount's merger with Skydance, the not-so-anticipated fourth installment of J. J. Abrams' Star Trek films set in the so-called Kelvin timeline would not be happening. After the third installment, Star Trek: Beyond in 2016, I really felt like that branch of the franchise had run out of gas, and I wasn't at all eager for a next voyage. It was also obvious that Paramount shared the sentiment eight years ago, when the third film was dumped into theaters with almost no promotion.
Looking back, Star Trek (2009) was an enjoyable romp that brought a new perspective to the beloved characters that had been with us more than four decades. And a surprise cameo by Leonard Nimoy was an added bonus. To be sure, the casting of Chris Pine as Capt. Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock was brilliant, because their acting styles mirror their predecessors. Pine, like William Shatner, always plays the same character, regardless of the role he is cast in, and in which he is cast, essentially some version of himself. This worked in the case of Capt. Kirk, because Pine naturally projects something not unlike Shatner's swagger. Conversely, Quinto takes a deeper dive into his characters, immersing himself into them, much the way Nimoy did.
Things took a decidedly darker turn in Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), which attempted to re-imagine Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) as a non-stop action thriller and a total waste of talent for Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan. In the end, relentless action provided all-too-thin cover for an even thinner story, shot through with blatant ripoffs of the classic 1982 film. This was truly the Kelvin timeline's lowest ebb.
While bringing in a new director, Justin Lin, to helm Star Trek: Beyond (2016) was a good move, it was too little too late. The damage had already been done with its predecessor. To his credit, Lin did try to slow the pace down a bit in an attempt to make the film somewhat more character driven, but the moments intended to evoke an emotional connection with the characters felt contrived and ultimately fell flat. The best of these was when Quinto's Spock received a box of personal effects belonging to Leonard Nimoy's Spock, including a photo of the original cast from one of their latter films. This acknowledgement of the passing both of Nimoy and his version of Spock made me feel a nostalgic connection not for the current cast playing those characters, but for their predecesors, who had last appeared together, save for assorted cameos, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) a quarter-century earlier and several of whom had already passed away by that time.
So, now that the Kelvin timeline officially closed, what's next for Star Trek's feature film franchise? There's no substantive information on that at this time, probably because the powers that be at Paramount/Skydance hasn't yet figured out what they want to do with it. It appears there will not be overlap between the streaming TV shows on Paramount+ and any future feature film projects. This is fortunate, given the travesty that was Star Trek: Section 31 (2025). The less said about that one the better. It may well preclude the return of Scott Bakula's Jonathan Archer character from Star Trek: Enterprise, which he had been campaigning to reprise in an origin story for the United Federation of Planets.
My hope is that whomever is in charge of the feature film arm of the franchise will take some time to seriously consider what makes Star Trek unique and leverage those strengths into something special, instead of repeating the mistakes Abrams made by trying to make Star Trek into an amalgam of the other franchises with which he had been involved, namely Star Wars and Mission: Impossible. While Star Trek is one of Paramount's biggest cash cows, history has shown its richest yield comes when it is nurtured and respected. Squeezing it for all it's worth will only result in a law of diminishing returns.
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