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Max Braden: I swear I'd heard some negative reviews but overall that doesn't seem to be the case, so it's not as if there was something specific keeping audiences away. Except for one: I'm watching the predecessor Star Trek on TV right now, and the lens flare is worse than I remembered. I wouldn't fault a portion of the audience thinking they don't want to go through that again. $84 million is a nice big number, but I can imagine some people were left wondering "If Iron Man can do it, why can't we?"

Jim Van Nest: Is it possible that Star Trek is simply a niche market (granted...a very large niche market...but niche nonethelss)? And that it pulled in as much as it could? I, for example, do not care for any version of Star Trek. I haven't seen the 2009 film and don't plan to see this one. This isn't an indictment of the films...I just don't care. I'm wondering if Into Darkness's total isn't as simple as the series maxing out on its audience.

Jay Barney: I think the soft start to into the Darkness can best be explained by the deflated box office numbers for the year. First, let’s keep the weekend number in perspective here, and it is not the disaster that some people are saying. The amount of money that Star Trek made on Thursday and Friday was not good, especially against the ramped up expectations. It seemed everything was going for it. The overseas markets have been embracing the film about in line with Paramount’s expectations, and the press going into this weekend was stellar. You couldn’t log onto the Internet without seeing some Star Trek related ad. I think part of the problem became the last minute push to raise expectations into the $100 million range. A lot of us expected a huge weekend, in some cases wanted one, but the numbers just aren’t there.

The weekend number is raises a lot of questions, but disasters fall more in the line of Jack the Giant Slayer ($195 million budget, $65 million domestic take) Battleship ($209 million dollar budge, $65 million dollar take) or John Carter ($250 million, $73 million domestic) than what we are seeing here. Star Trek is miles beyond these types of performances. We should keep things in perspective.

Unfortunately, this opening means that Star Trek must rely on overseas revenue more than expected to make money. It should do okay overseas, which was part of the original marketing plan, but that still does not explain the soft opening here.

It comes down to this…we are seeing some deflation at the box office. Films have become frontloaded in a way that seeing them early is an event. Titles like Iron Man 3 and Gatsby had great openings, but if you look at the entire year, Star Trek fell to what has been happening to a lot of other movies. It is tragic, too, because when such a beloved franchise puts out a superior product, you would think it would be embraced.

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