Fans have a hard time admitting a basic thing about movie production and that's the studios are more interested in roping in the casual viewer than they in pleasing the hardcore fan. The fan is going to show up regardless to provide a sci-fi/comic-book movie with it's base amount of income but they need the casual viewer or movie-goer to bring in the balance of the money for them. The casual viewer, that may or may not have watched previous movies or be knowledgeable about what happened on TV series or from the comic books, is going to come and watch for something familiar and comfortable that they know from the background of pop-culture. That's why with any Superman film the main go-to villains will always be Lex Luthor and General Zod, and not Brainiac or Darkseid. Same with Batman, where no matter how many times these movies are made, the villains will invariably be The Joker, Catwoman, and the Penguin/Riddler. That Christopher Nolan actually went with Scarecrow and Bane in two of the movies was astonishing, but it'll be a cold day in hell before Clayface or Killer Croc gets into a Batman movie. It's also why, no matter how many times SpiderMan gets re-made, they'll always do an origin story, because they can't risk that the casual viewer saw any of the previous movies and is already familiar with the Peter Parker history.
And now we see they've done the same with Star Trek. Garth Of Izar or Gary Mitchell would have been far too risky for them to build a new movie around. Khan though, as an already known entity from the 1984 movie, was a safe choice. They knew that the previous Khan movie had already laid the groundwork for something the casual viewer would recognize and had produced solid profits during it's own release (and even more over the last thirty years), so it makes all kinds of business sense to re-do Khan all over again and watch money-making history repeat itself. The thing that has to be remembered is that, despite all their self-congratulatory bullshit that they repeat endlessly, Hollywood producers and directors for the most part aren't interested in breaking new ground, or doing something genuinely revolutionary. They're as hidebound and conservative and subject to strict orthodoxy, and as desperately reliant on proven formulas, as any other group or association out there. What's safe will make money, and that's the primary consideration behind everything they do. Taking risks might affect the cash flow so risks will not be taken. That's how directors and producers like Abrams or Michael Bay keep themselves working. They're the safe alternative with proven track records of revenue generating. And writers like Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci are the same. They write things that meet the requirements of the profit-generating formula, and that's all that the producers really want from them. Safe means that their investment is returned to them, and that they'll make a ton more as profit. That it's good for the franchise or shows any respect for the canon that it's based in really isn't a consideration for any of them. They're happy, the casual viewer that provides them with the icing for the cake is happy, and the cycle repeats itself all over again with the next genre franchise they move on to. The real fan might be massively disappointed with the way they and their favourite fictional universes are being treated but, as they're going to show up the next time anyway no matter how hard they're repeatedly hit in the head with a 2 x 4, that's just the way it is so too bad for them. And the producers can always also hold up a huge whammy that justifies their business and creative approach. Joss Whedon produced and directed Serenity to provide closure for the fans of Firefly. The fans were ecstatic and went home happy. Too bad no one else cared though. With an expectation that anyone who saw the film had to be familiar with Firefly, the casual viewers stayed away altogether and, regardless of being a massive fan favourite and well regarded by the critics, the film barely made back it's production
costs.
Anyone who thinks that JJ Abrams is going to do anything that improves Star Wars is fooling themselves badly. If his SW is anything like his ST has been, all that's going to happen will be that another threadbare story packed with cardboard characters and absolutely vapid dialogue will be covered up by incredibly expensive CGI and other SPFX. And it won't be any different at all from what would have happened if George Lucas had remained in charge. From what I think about Abrams' ST is that SW won't be pulled up in quality, rather that SW will be pulled
down to what Abrams' has done to ST. A real rejuvenation of Star Wars would have happened if a director/producer like Guillermo Del Toro, or Zack Snyder, or even Brian Singer, had been hired to take over the franchise; something genuinely revolutionary would be if they hired some of the directors who've been working for HBO on things like The Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, or Game Of Thrones. But with JJ Abrams now in control? No way. What's he's going to do to Star Wars will probably make people wistful and longing for what was "accomplished" in Episodes One thru Three by George Lucas and, on every meaningful level of quality (except for profit-making), Lucas didn't accomplish much with those three films. We certainly won't be getting anything out of Abrams as magnificent on the level of The Empire Strikes Back reached and, by the time it's all said and done, we'll be lucky if what gets produced even meets the bottom-dwelling standards of The Phantom Menace.
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