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Khan isn’t Captain Kirk’s greatest enemy, Hollywood greed is.

Chris Pine starred as Captain Kirk in a trilogy of Star Trek films from 2009-2016. While Pine enjoyed playing Kirk in the films, he feels like the movies didn’t do enough to cater to diehard Star Trek fans. As the trilogy progressed, Pine felt like the studio was chasing the wrong audience.

Speaking to a crowd at ACE Superhero Comic Con 2024, Pine opened up about the experience.

“It was always about getting the audience and building the audience.” Pine said. “I think what we’ve found is that we’ve captured an audience with the Trek Universe that may not have come to us, but generally speaking it’s the diehards. I think we should make films that appeal to people who want to see the film. I’m sick of trying to please people who don’t want to see what we do.”

According to Pine, part of the problem is that budgets have gone out of control. This incentives studios to overshoot when it comes to box office expectations.

“We’re at a place where to make a film, you make it for like $500 million. That’s half a billion dollars to make these films that you like. For it to be considered successful and everyone to be paid back, you have to make extraordinary amounts of money. The metrics of it don’t seem to make much sense to me.”

What’s Pine’s solution? Better stories on smaller budgets.

“I think we just make a much smaller film that’s more story-driven, more character-based, there’s less shit exploding, and maybe do it that way. Also shoot it on film, not digital. And then you have the fanbase. The fanbase has always been very kind to me. Obviously, there’s the trolls that lurk on the internet that hate everything, but generally I think people really liked [Star Trek].”

In a way, this methodology returns Star Trek to its roots. Don’t forget, before it was the huge franchise it is today, Star Trek was a low-budget television series with rubber costumes and cheap special effects. The audience didn’t care, because they wanted character drive stories and thrilling adventures. According to Pine, the Star Trek films lost their way when it tried to become an expensive Hollywood spectacle.

If Hollywood has a chance of surviving, they should probably listen to Captain Kirk. Commanding the Enterprise isn’t the same as managing a film studio, but I think the Captain is making some good points.

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