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David Mumpower: Ever since Friday numbers included a dramatic turn from the projected $28 million to $22 million, I have been debating logical explanations for the underachievement. And make no mistake. This is a disappointing total. I've seen some nonsense trying to paint this as a slight improvement over Star Trek. Those calculations isolate the four-day tally of Star Trek Into Darkness against the three-day weekend of Star Trek. If we add in Star Trek's fourth day (as we should), it earned $3 million more, which is 3.6%. That is without box office inflation included.

I do not agree with Matthew about the perception of Star Trek. As I chronicled with the weekend forecast (which I overestimated by $21 million), Star Trek is the best reviewed movie in the franchise. It also has the highest grade on IMDb, a whopping 8.0. Personally, I watch the movie whenever it's on because I think it's one of the smartest scripts in recent memory. Of course, in disagreeing with Mr. Huntley about the perception of Star Trek, I run into another issue. BOP always maintains that the quality of the first film directly impacts the opening weekend performance of the sequel. We know from recent history that the premise is sound. So if all of the measurables for Star Trek are great and the sequel is not savaged by heinous buzz, what happened here?

The answer I would like to give will have to wait a period of time since it is spoiler-ish in nature. What I can say without addressing those specifics is that Star Trek Into Darkness was not given the ubiquitous advertising penetration that is ordinarily the case for a tentpole title. There was almost an arrogance to the fact that fans of the first one were presumed to return for the sequel. They believed that selling a mystery was better business than plainly identifying anything about any character in the film. I say this with complete hindsight right now so I felt a twinge of guilt as I say it. I generally dislike hindsight criticism but since the sequel's performance is so enigmatic, I am paying more attention to the minutiae than usual.

Keeping this in mind, I would ask everyone who has seen the advertising of Star Trek Into Darkness to answer me this question. What is about? The trailers show Kirk and Spock jumping into the water, Benedict Cumberbatch looking like an albino (his natural look, apparently) and Alice Eve in her underwear. Does any of this identify an aspect of the movie that is engaging beyond the fact that it is a sequel to Star Trek? Upon (a LOT of) reflection, I believe Paramount got too cutesy here. In tomorrow's discussion, I will explain exactly what I believe the ads needed that wasn't delivered.

Reagen Sulewski: Perhaps this is coming from someone who was pre-sold, but I thought the ads - the trailer at least - did a good job of showing the exciting aspects of the film (although the Alice Eve moment could have been given a 40's-style splash of "BOOBS!" across the image for how obvious it was as an attempt to sell to nerds). That said, I did have some concerns about how generic the dialog portrayed in the commercials were - "I believe in you, Jim" is not a tagline.

On some level I do wonder if what Jim brought up isn't a factor - there's only so deep that the Star Trek audience goes and it's a Nerd Bridge Too Far for some. The relative lack of under 25 audiences also points to the damage from there not being a new television series for it in over a decade. That's a crucial market segment that just doesn't have a connection to Trek, particularly old-school Trek.

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