Remember when Mike Tyson fought Woody Allen in the ring and Allen beat Tyson into a bloody pulp ? Allen didn't even have to do a thing, he just stood there and Tyson folded like playing card castle. And the media called out Allen for being such a ruthless bloodthirsty monster. Allen demolished Tyson in ways that were not imaginable previously, it broke Tyson's career, it broke boxing, you couldn't mention boxing to some people or they would break out in tears remembering how by doing absolutely nothing Allen pounded a human being so thoroughly into the dust it completely changed everything.
Ridiculous, of course to imagine Woody Allen just standing there and Tyson going going down the same way soccer players feign injury sounds ridiculous, and the idea that the world watched and believed it sounds even more incomprehensible.
Hold on, there is a point to this little allegory.
Back in 1977 Mabel and Otis went to the movie theater. And they spent about 15 minutes staring at the screen, casting glances at each other and asking themselves what the hell was happening on the screen. Mabel and Otis were no foreigners to cinema. They had watched musicals, westerns, comedies, drama over the years. They were not crazy old coots either, maybe late 40's, but that Star Wars thing was just alien to them.
The kids, they loved it.
Star Wars didn't come out of nowhere. It came from late night reruns of old horror and Sci-Fi films, it came from Famous Monsters of Filmland, it came from Led Zeppelin and Hawkwind, it came from Tolkien and Star Trek. The kids got it, Mabel and Otis were lost.
The industry wasn't lost either. They embraced this new movie by making their own versions like Star Crash and Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Battle Beyond the Stars etc.
It's obvious the industry approached it from the angle of the corporate suits : "Make more Star Wars !" They didn't quite understand what made Star Wars special, they just figured those kids wanted spaceships and weird stuff happening on screen, everything that unsettled Mabel and Otis or the suit. Again, only the kids "got it"
It took the industry a while to get up to speed and learn to make better movies. They also discovered that teens and young men in their 20's were a goldmine. So they threw Mabel and Otis under the bus and created the era of the blockbuster.
Our teens grew up on this diet until they were themselves the same age as Mabel and Otis, they were insiders to the movie world, they understood the references, they had it all figured out and everything was comforting familiarity.
It was a glorious time where a 40-something could still pretend he was a teenager and he was on top of the world until his world fell apart in 2015.
He went to the cinema to see Star Wars and for a long time he couldn't grasp what was happening. He was even more lost than Mabel and Otis. Where was Luke ? Where were the familiar tropes ? Why was there a chick front and center ?
Suddenly he figured out what had happened. The world had changed. Hollywood had been invaded by third wave feminists trying to promote cultural Marxism by way of gender politics. They applied post colonial deconstruction to introduce a black guy !!! The comfortable world of blockbusters was taken away from the "One true fans" to promote a hideous political agenda !
Sounds incredibly plausible right ? Well, it's about as realistic as buying the idea that Woody Allen would thrash Mike Tyson in a straight fight.
Ask the feminists what they think of The Force Awakens and they will tell you that it's just a late middle-age corporate's idea of what the "young hip crowd would love to see." That the execution is horrible is clear for everyone to see, but rather than admit it's just Hollywood's standard procedure the middle-age guys suddenly felt they were being attacked at their core being.
The reality is that for the longest time a huge chunk of the movie industry and related merchandise was aimed squarely at boys age 7 to 57.
We can reduce it to cultural impact. If the Renaissance was a well aimed volley of cannon fire that woke up Europe, the impact of pop culture makes all previous asteroid impacts on our planet feel like a wet firecracker.
Mc Donalds, Donald Duck and Superman won the culture wars by such a wide margin, there was no chance that Lenin or Marx could ever hope to make a stand.
What about Anime you ask ? Well it all began when they copied Disney, so there.
You can't have an unending stream of pop culture slowly taking over every aspect of daily life and not expect it to bleed over into other socio-cultural groups. Most importantly that other half of the world's population aka Girls and minorities.
Back when The Empire Strikes back hit screens, girls were reluctant participants, dragged against their will by eager boyfriends, bored out of their minds, until they had a chance to go back to do whatever it is that girls do.
Fast Forward a few decades and girls are embracing pop culture and because the industry cares about money they always look for ways to make more of it.
For years it was common wisdom that girls were not interested in pop culture unless it was some watered down Barbie version, but She-Ra and other Jems did plant seeds.
It's out there, girls in social media want to see the same kind of action heroes as the boys do. They are no longer playing with barbie dolls, they want Wonder Woman's sword.
Ditto for minorities. For a long time everyone knew that the fare the white middle class kids were consuming didn't sell. But that didn't mean they didn't have an appetite for pop culture, it's just that they couldn't find the right kind to latch onto. Sure they had Uhura and Lando but their pop culture came from a very different angle and it wasn't Shaft or Dolemite as some of you may think.
It came via kung-fu movies and a slow march towards more and more minorities on screen.
Just like Led Zeppelin, Tolkien and D&D prepped kids for Star Wars, girls and minorities also picked up pop culture by osmosis and the industry, always ready to make a buck noticed the trend, they saw that they were slowly participating in mainstream pop-culture. The industry reacted by sending out feelers and they were embraced wholeheartedly.
And when it comes to performing, Hollywood gets it completely wrong. It's not some feminist-marxist plot ! It's pure capitalism sold to you by old and middle-age corporates who barely understood pop culture to begin with, but were eager to sell it to people at any cost.
That's why Star Wars sequels kinda suck. They don't have a clue how to make it look normal and organic and if you are a middle-aged dude it's easy to feel trampled all over your teenage feelings and assume the answer must be a political one.
And so we arrive to Star Trek. They are eager to sell you more Trek, updated for today, but just like they made Battle Beyond the Stars to appeal to kids because it's all just a matter of throwing in some random chick and make her front and center, right ? Nobody's gonna notice anyway, they clap like seals about to get a fish anyway.
That's why Star Trek is now so different. It's not a plot, it's just corporate mandate and a ton of people working in Hollywood aren't half as good as they believe they are so you get disappointing results.
My guess is that it will take another iteration cycle or two. Star Wars was possible thanks to a few visionaries, and the people who grew up on Star Wars are now the middle-age moviemakers. Give it time and others will join and start to make movies with their own voice and perspective, a little better than some cheap knockoff.
Star Trek will reconcile itself with its previous version and some day we'll understand that people don't really care that the Enterprise shouldn't be updated because "modern crowds don't understand" they will some day say "Hey, that cool sixties one is OK, let's just have it happen in broader more interesting stories.
Trek will be back because it's a very human show, it's about our better nature and those are things that no level of being a rabid edgelord can take away from us.
It will be back better than ever, diverse, surprising, amazing and fun.
Just don't believe the obvious stupid idea that Woody Allen can beat Mike Tyson into pulp and you'll go a long way my son.