But I haven't seen any real discussion of that, rather discussion why the new Trek movies are bad, and considering that JJ's Trek movie were very successful, that discussion seems irrelevant, or at least needs to be more nuanced.

I haven't seen Beyond, but my guess is that it's less of a homage to TOS than the first two, and more a movie that tries to stand on its own, which is why it's less successful.

IP owners don't care about fans.
IP owners only want more $$$
IP owners restrict fare use for fan made products.
IP owners will loose and so do the fans.
Star Trek = RIP. Enjoy the classics

I guess it's the same problem that every series/franchise has when it's undergoing some dramatic changes. See the Stargate Universe example I made earlier. You could watch how every single episode had less viewers than the episode before. Fans were extremely disappointed because SG:U wasn't Stargate anymore, but some kind of Battlestar Galactica. That's not what you want to see when you watch Stargate. And people who didn't like Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis, never gave SG:U a chance, because they didn't like Stargate. How could they know that it wasn't Stargate anymore, when some high educated and overpaid idiots decided to call it Stargate? You don't read up on every single TV show. Especially not on franchises you don't like.

There's another good example. In Germany we have a very, VERY, VERY famous TV series called "Tatort", a police/crime drama (read the first paragraph to get an idea what it is). It's quite a unique series, because different TV stations have different police teams, so it's basically like... 10 (?) different series!? It exists since 1970 and there are more than 900 episodes already (one episode is ~90 minutes). People love it!

Anyway... Since there are so many different teams with basically their own series, you can't say exactly how a Tatort has to be. Some are more like a comedy show, some are more serious, some are a bit more action focussed. But most of them have one thing in common: When it comes to police work, they try to stay close to reality. Until Til Schweiger, a very popular actor got the role of a police officer in Tatort...

The first thing Til Schweiger said was that he doesn't like the opening and the theme of Tatort. You know what? He's right! This thing looks as if it is 45 years old! Oh, wait... it is O.O People already hated him for that comment. The next thing he said was, that he wants to do action movies and not the typical Tatort. People hated him even more. They said: If you want to do action movies, don't do Tatort. Tatort isn't made for action movies.

Well... Tatort is popular and Til Schweiger is popular. So people watched his first Tatort. 12.57 milion people watched it (Germany has a population of 80 milion, so that's pretty awesome). The second Tatort with him was watched by 10.12 milion people. The third by 8.24. The fourth by 7.69. A Tatort doesn't have only 7.69 milion viewers. That's a very bad audience rate for Tatort! He lost almost 5 milion viewers in only 4 episodes. Why? Because his Tatort looked like this:
pic1
pic2
pic3

Normally, Tatort looks like this:
pic1
pic2
pic3

I liked Schweiger's movies. But they're not Tatort. That's why they're losing viewers with every new episode. And that's why the viewers rate dropped from a record (12.something milion was a record back then) to a "flop" (7.something is REALLY bad!). Tatort fans don't like action movies. They like stuff like you can see in the second bunch of pics. And action fans don't watch Tatort, because... Well, because Tatort is kinda boring if you're into action.

Do you really think that "casual viewers" (people who just want to watch a good movie in cinema) read up on the movies if they're "enough of a homage" to the old Star Trek? I guess it's more like

Dude1: "Hey dude, let's go to the cinema"
Dude2: "What's coming in the cinema tonight?"
Dude1: "Uhm... ... ... Star Trek"
Dude2: "Nah, I don't like Star Trek. My brother watched it 20 years ago and I hated it."

They won't watch it, because Dude2 doesn't like Star Trek. He never liked it. Pair this with Star Trek fans breaking away because they don't like the new Star Trek. What do you get? Another Stargate Universe or action Tatort.

Old franchises are pretty complicated. You'll always have a huge number of people who never liked it and you'll always have to fight with fans breaking away because they don't like it anymore. And if you do something so different from the old series that you have to create an alternate timeline, you're screwed. My opinion. Sadly, people don't say why they're not watching the new movie in the cinema, so we'll never know for sure.

I haven't seen the third movie yet but it seems to me the reason it's not doing as well is because nearly everyone I know who watched the second movie hated it, which poisoned the well for whatever movies would be coming next. When the first movie came out, people who didn't like Star Trek said, "Oh, I like this. I like Star Trek now!" Then they waited like six years (an eternity in the current filmmaking climate) to do a sequel and that sequel managed to piss off both Trekkies and new fans. So the core fans are now looking to the new TV series for hope and the casual movie fans have reverted to the old status quo of not caring about Star Trek.

This is totally untrue for the general audience. With a 7.8 on IMDB and 90% approval from the audience on Rotten Tomatoes, it's obvious that it's really just a very, very loud minority that hated that movie.

Really, I don't think the reason for the flop is anything specific to Beyond, or the new Trek movies at all. This year has been just going this way, with mostly dissappointing box office results, especially for seuqels and reboots. Unless I'm missing something, the only three films in this category to make more money than their predecessors this year are Civil War, Batman v Superman and, yes, London has Fallen. And erven Civil War is only on that list because it's sort of cheating, as it's really more of an Avengers movie than Captain America.

Just seen third movie. Very good Star Trek movie and all the references about about it being the clone of Fast and Furious are totally missed. This is very much similar storywise to Star Trek: Nemesis.

I think they managed to bring back the original Star Trek with a bit more action. I love it. Fact is the first Star Trek series was very much action oriented with a lot of storytelling. I think this is the same although they might have overdone with special effects. Kirk is essentially the same macho guy as in original. The same for other main characters. 8/10 for me.

Some probably want, others probably don't want. It's an illusion that there can be one Star Trek for everyone. We should acknoledge this and split.

A low (but not too low) budget series to show rag-tag culturally diverse people dealing with complicated socially relevant sci-fi matters including a bit of action here and there and of course with excellent actors for people like you and me on the one side...

...and on the other side big budget movies full of action made by talented directors and known artists showing to a paying audience all over the world the newest advances in computer technology when blowing up galaxies and telling a bit of a story on the way.

I think this would be a very prosperous way accomodating to most audiences. I hope it will be done like this.

Replace captian kirk with female borg sex slave.
Put captain kirk on the front of a klingon star ship

I still haven't seen Beyond despite being a Star Trek fan. Somehow, I feel completely indifferent about this movie. I think the main reason is that I didn't enjoy Into Darkness, which was just a huge mess. The awful first trailer for Beyond didn't help either. In any case, Star Trek, to me, has always been about the TV shows. Trek on the big screen doesn't seem to work - most of the movies, old and new, have been fairly bad or just okay. If Star Trek has a future, it lies within the new show, I think.

But the thing is, Into Darkness was more successful than the first JJ Abrams Star Trek, so at the very least you have to assume that people loved the first one. It's a good question of whether that's because of pent up demand for a Trek movie or because of new fans, but I think that there's no doubt that a lot of people liked the movie, and I'm guessing that a large part of these people were Star Trek fans.

No, but Star Trek fans do, and I think that they were a very large part of the audience that loved JJ Abrams' movies. Star Trek and Into Darkness were homages to TOS. They were IMO good homages. Not perfect, but enjoyable movies at that level coupled with a good popcorn flick. I'm sure that a lot of other Star Trek TOS fans feel this way, and to them (us? I'm not sure yet), the new Trek might not yet stand on its own.

I can't disagree. However, it feels like Star Trek keeps getting pooed on because executives make too big of risks on it. Wrath of Khan was an $11 million movie and made just under $100 million. Star Trek 4 cost $25M and made $133M. Crappy Star Trek 5 cost $28M and made $70M.

The new series
$150M/$258M
$190/$229M (Star Trek 4 made more $, especially considering inflation and % margins)

The new big Star Trek movies are fun. I enjoy them. But they aren't the stead cash-cows that a decent not-horribly-high-budget show could produce. It's nice to pop $100M in a year, but when one movie net negative, it's like we wait 10 years to see anything about Star Trek and the executives think that Trekkies just aren't shelling out money so they don't give them anything.

Any trekkie will say that we want more. Lots more. And are willing to pay to see something good. But it doesn't need to be $190M good. We're happy with decent sets and decent effects and thrilling moments where we wonder if the phasers are good enough to get through just one more Klingon.

In the end, I don't care much. I have what has been made and I enjoy watching them still. And whatever comes up next on CBS pretty soon, I hope they carefully consider their path wisely. Time will tell if we like it.

I'm not sure why your only giving the domestic (USA) box office here. The new movies are making a lot worldwide, Into Darkness in fact made more outside US than domestic. Total gross for the first one was 385 million and for Into Darkness it was 467 million.

Now, I don't disagree with the whole "we don't need Star Trek to be a 180+ million $ blockbuster" line of thinking, in fact I agree, but the fact is that untill Beyond's dissappointing results (in the midst of an overall dissappoiting year) it looked like the new blockbuster model is working pretty damn good for Trek.

I've enjoyed the new movies, though personally as a fan of the original series, TNG, DS9 particularly I don't see the new movies as really being the same thing at all. Even with some of the same characters and traits for those characters the world they are in is so different that alternate timeline doesn't even seem to fit as a rational explanation. So IMO it's trekish without really being Star Trek. With that said though I have still enjoyed them as their own beast without trying to fit them into the entirety of the Trekiverse.

I'm hoping the show will be better, that is more like the old television series'. If more movies get made I'll be sure to see them at some point but wouldn't be disappointed if they were scrapped either. I don't have a large desire to see the new movies continue, but will be happy if they do just in the sense that more people will get to enjoy Star Trek in some form and may look back to where they came from.

I don't care as long as they don't continue the story of the latest good crew with Captain Archer and T'Pol and friends via series or film.
Or if they create a new one in the vein of Roddenberry's vision.
The current destruction of Star Trek is horrible. Be it by JJ Abrams who did not even watch all Star Trek before directing the first movie or the story writers who somehow say that all of Star Trek story did not happen because something with time. Basically, thanks for being shit on, Paramount. Did you go to story creation school? The first thing they tell you there about endings is to not do the "it was all a dream" one (looking also at you, Monkey Island 2).
The only good thing coming out might be that VR bridge simulator. But even that looks like it's better understood by indie devs with https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leafygames/pulsar-lost-colony what Star Trek is all about. In the meantime, I will probably play No Man's Sky...