The Star Trek movie franchise is at an impasse. The last theatrical Star Trek feature, Star Trek Beyond, came out in 2016. Since theres no Trek film on schedule for next year, itll mean it will soon have been a decade since the last one. Thats the biggest gap between Star Trek films in 45 years. So where did the movie franchise hit a wall? According to a story from Slashfilm, the movie franchise might have lost luster thanks to a Star Trek video game from 2013 that tied into the film Star Trek Into Darkness. The movie ended up a disappointment, but the reception to the game was even worse. That reception may have helped create a negative buzz around the film.
The PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 game, simply called Star Trek, took place in the months between J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek reboot/legacy sequel and its follow-up film, Star Trek Into Darkness. Given how the film actors like Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto voice their characters in the game, its safe to say the game is canon. The game featured the Kelvin universes Enterprise crew facing a classic foe from the original series, the reptilian Gorn. Luckily, an account called Global Gaming on YouTube preserved the gameplay last year. You can check out the full game walkthrough in the video below:
Star Trek the game bombed, both critically and financially. Since it came out days before Into Darkness, some think it created negative buzz for that film before it ever hit theaters. Into Darkness did do decent box office in North America. But it underperformed badly overseas, where Star Trek as a franchise has always struggled. The lone exceptions to that are the U.K. and Germany, where Star Trek was also a hit on TV. It failed to outperform Star Trek 09, which revived the franchise and became the biggest hit Trek film in decades at that point. A third (superior) film came out three years later, Star Trek Beyond. But despite good reviews, the damage from the double whammy of the game/Into Darkness resulted in tepid box office.
The 2013 Star Trek game does have a legacy though. Alex Kurtzman, who was a writer/producer on the J.J. Abrams Kelvin universe films, is currently in charge of the streaming franchise Trek shows. For Strange New Worlds, he reinvented the Gorn species from the 60s show, making them a credible threat to the Federation. Clearly, this is the same instinct for the Gorn with the 2013 game. So far, the Gorn gamble has paid off more on Strange New Worlds than in the game. We might now say that this Star Trek footnote was a bit of a dry run for something Kurtzman executed better a decade down the line.
Content shared from nerdist.com.