The document discusses the 2009 Star Trek movie and how its marketing campaign aimed to rebrand the franchise to appeal to a broader audience. It summarizes the plot and characters of the film and analyzes how the poster and trailer were designed to minimize Star Trek's legacy and focus on action to attract new, younger viewers by highlighting the new cast, visual effects, and J.J. Abrams' direction. Both the poster and trailer were effective at introducing the rebooted concept and characters, and the film was a commercial success, grossing over $385 million against a $140 million budget.

1. In this essay, I will be comparing the effectiveness of both poster and trailer of the
2009 movie, Star trek. I will be talking about what the film‟s selling point was which
was to rebuild the movies franchise, if the marketing exploits the selling point and if
the film was commercially successful. I will also be talking about the how successful
the poster and trailer for star trek was for promoting this rebranding.
Star trek is originally an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by
Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its 6 television series which are the
original series, the animated series, the next generation, deep space nine, voyager
and enterprise. In total 726 Star Trek episodes have been produced across the 30
seasons of the TV series. The first episode of star trek aired on September 8, 1966.
The original series ran from 1966-1969 which included 3 seasons. It didn‟t last long
due to low ratings. The Star Trek franchise has a large number of novels, comic books
and video games. Paramount pictures decided to re-boot the Star Trek series‟ in 2008.
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Simon Pegg all starred in the movie Star Trek in 2009.
J.J Abrahams directed the film. He has also directed other well-known movies such as
mission impossible-ghost protocol, super 8 and clover field. He also directed the
well-known TV series „lost‟ which has won awards such as the 2006 Golden Globe
award nomination for best television drama series. Before he starred in the Star Trek
movie, Chris Pine has starred in movie Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and just
my luck which are two popular films. He had one of the main roles in both of the
movies. He has a lot of family which are also successful actors/actresses. Zachary
Quinto is known for starring in popular TV programmes such as charmed, heroes and
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation before he starred in Star Trek. Simon Pegg is known
for starring in popular movies such as Shaun of the dead, Hot fuzz, Paul and Run fat
boy run. The last two Star Trek films at the box office were financial flops. Star Trek:
Insurrection (1999) and Star Trek: Nemesis (2003) are two previous Star Trek films
that were not very successful. Other films that were successful at the time were
transformers and Iron man.
Star Trek had 3 important selling points. One of them was to have a completely new
cast portraying much-loved characters, this was one of the selling points because the
previous cast members were getting old and they wanted a new group of young and
good-looking cast members to capture the attention of a younger target audience.
Another important selling point was supreme production values, the producers
wanted the visual effects of the movie to look more realistic but in a sci-fi type of way
and better quality compared to the old Star Trek movies. The last important selling
point was the passion and vision of J.J Abrams who was the director of the movie.
Producers wanted to listen to J.J Abrams‟ ideas on how to make the movie a great
blockbuster hit. These 3 important selling points is to create a complete re-invention
of an iconic property. In order to make Star Trek the biggest blockbuster at the time,
they needed to minimise the legacy of Star Trek. Producers didn‟t want people to have
the idea of the new Star Trek movie as another one of those geeky movies because
people think of Star Trek as a movie for geeks but producers don‟t want people to
think that anymore. Furthermore, they also wanted to minimise the context of the film
which is sci-fi. Producers want people to think that the new Star Trek movie will be
more like an action film instead of a sci-fi. They also wanted to get rid of the retro
feeling of the movie. They also wanted to minimise the insularity which are the fan

2. base of the Star Trek movie. The insularity is a group of people who call themselves
„Trekkies‟ and are massive fans of the movie. Producers wanted to minimise the
insularity because they wanted a wider variety of target audience. They wanted a
younger target audience because the „Trekkies‟ were getting old. Overall, they wanted
to get rid of the geek fest side to Star Trek. To make Star Trek the biggest blockbuster
at the time, they wanted to maximise a couple of things to the movie. They wanted a
new cast. They wanted a younger and more attractive looking cast to capture the
attention of a younger target audience. They wanted to maximise the action/visual
effects. They wanted the movie to look more effective with the explosions etc.
Another thing they wanted to maximise was for the movie to include a cutting cool
edge. They wanted to make the movie with a much cooler atmosphere and get rid of
the geekier atmosphere. They also wanted to maximise the ubiquity. They wanted the
state of being everywhere at once. Overall, they wanted to make the movie more
spectacle. The teaser trailer of Star Trek first appeared in January 2008 and the teaser
poster first appeared in November 2008. They released the teaser poster and trailer
early so that fan fanatics and the fan base of Star Trek which are called „Trekkies‟ will
be able to spread the word of the movie to others. They are sure to watch the trailer
and see the movie poster first. The core audience of the movie are 12-34 year old
males. The secondary audience is all adults. The target audience before the movie
were 25+ year old male sci-fi fans called the Trekkies. The mean age of them now is 42
years old. They wanted to maximise the older people who keep the legacy of Star Trek
going on and wanted younger and a new variety of target audience. The target
audience for Star Trek was similar to the target audience for iron man and
transformers which were other big blockbusters at the time. They wanted to capture
the attention to the target audience that are interested in movies such as the ones I
have mentioned. Rather than target a discreet, receptive audience, Star Trek aimed to
reach the maximum number of people possible, by casting the net far and wide. In
order to convert non-Trekkies, the environments and formats for this campaign
mirrored the awe-inspiring scale of the film, dominating the attention. As opposed to
the polarising nature of the series, this film aimed to appeal to everyone. Therefore
the media had to feature universally “cool” and iconic environments and the ability to
promote talk ability.

3. The genre of this poster is best described as sci-fi. I know this because the
background of the title includes a space ship. The man on the right is unique looking
compared to the other two characters; he has more pointy ears which show the
person looking at this poster that he is probably an alien. The title of this film is Star
Trek the future begins. The masthead suggests that it has got to do something about
the future and that it is a new beginning for Star Trek. It also indicates that it has got
something to do with a star and an adventure because of the title „Star Trek‟. The
enigma posed by the title is making the person looking at this poster wonder what
has made the future begin, if there is a reason as to why it has begun. The font of the
lettering suggests that it is like futuristic because it‟s bold and the font is solid like
almost like a part of a space ship. The font is smaller than the image because they
wanted people to see the image before the title because they didn‟t want people to
recognise the legacy of Star Trek. The colour of the lettering signifies that it is
something similar to futuristic items such as space ships. The colour is very similar
to the colour of metal with a hint of blue in the middle. The lettering looks 3D to make
it stand out more. The tagline underneath the masthead has got a simple font with
white writing. It‟s simple and boring but stands out from the different shades of blues
and blacks in the background. The main colours are masculine. Different shades of
blues, black and greys are used. The design of the layout includes the full-bleed
which includes 3 of the main characters. It‟s almost as if there is two parts of the
poster, the full-bleed and the institutions which are separated from each other. The
full-bleed in the poster is the 3 main characters. They are photographed in dark
masculine colours which co notates that it is targeted to males. The background of
the full-bleed is white so that the characters stand out. Significant objects include the
motorbike in front of the masthead. This co notates that they are trying to get away
from the legacy of Star Trek. The characters in the poster show that the one in the
middle is the leader because his image is bigger and the other two are in the back. I
think that the other two characters show that they are his followers because they are
behind him. The facial expressions of the characters suggest that they are determined
because they look serious while looking towards the camera. The clothing their
wearing looks tight and black. The title and tagline work together to tell the person
looking at this that Star Trek has come back with a movie and it‟s a new beginning.
The film seems to be about people that go out to space to do a mission with the help
of aliens. The appeal of this poster is to have a new beginning for Star Trek. This
poster is effective in many ways at supporting the campaign‟s aims because it has
introduced new characters and it‟s trying to get rid of the legacy of Star Trek by
making it look more realistic unlike what they did for the previous movies of Star Trek
where they had the full-bleed as a fictional/sci-fi creature.

4. At the beginning of the trailer, it shows a retro car for a retro feel. If sci-fi watch the
beginning of this they wouldn‟t want to watch it because it‟s retro and old. The car is
almost a way to show that they wanted to get rid of the legacy of Star Trek. The red
car conotates danger and is a unisex colour so both genders will be interested in this.
The main character is shown which conveys the new cast. He is introduced and says
his name which is James Kirk. The well-know character of Star Trek is shown as a
child. This illustrates a new beginning, almost like it is starting again. It looks like an
action film to get rid of the sci-fi feel of the movie. It is set in a desert because it
makes the car with the character stand out more.

5. After the dessert scenes it shows the institutions of the movie. Paramount is shown,
this illustrates that the movie is high budget movie. Another institution show is bad
robot which is J.J Abrams‟ institution.
After the institutions are shown, there is a bridge which separates the scenes in the
dessert to the sci-fi scenes. The sci-fi scenes are more exciting compared to the
scenes in the dessert. A voice over explains what is happening. The effects are very
sci-fi.
There are romance scenes shown to entice girls to go see the film.

6. This is the logo for Star Trek. They put this afterwards with the title because if they
put it in the beginning people wouldn‟t want to watch it because they will think it is
going to be geeky.
This trailer is effective in many ways at supporting the campaign‟s aims because it
shows a new cast and it‟s a summary of what is going to happen in the movie.
I think that the trailer makes me want to go see the movie more and is more effective
because it shows more of what is going to happen in the film and the quick cuts make
it exciting because it creates suspense and the main character is attractive. I think
that the film was a commercial success because the J.J Abrams is a well-known
director so people will know that it will be a good movie. Also, it is a new beginning
for Star Trek and people would want to see how much it has changed. Overall, the
movie was commercially successful because it earned a big amount of money. The
budget was an estimated $140,000,000 and the gross was $385,680,447 worldwide.