It’s the great “what-if” of the franchise regarding what would would have happened if they had the courage to have moved on without Spock.
I’m not sure if they would have known where to take things.
Would they have tried to bring back Xon? Would they have moved Kristie Alley over to the science station?
Of course, TWOK set up the possibility of the literal “next generation” of characters being a focus of future films, with Kirk’s son and Spock’s “daughter”, but the film was still essentially a one-off which ended up becoming a big hit. Once Nimoy decided to come back, any notions of growth and change were quietly shuffled away via backpedaling, and the next four films became an every-few-years reunion with our favorite starship crew. And I can’t say that was the wrong choice.
While STAR TREK (with the right creative talent) could have maturely and insightfully moved forward in the aftermath of Spock’s death, I think there’s something to be said for iconic heroes to remain evergreen in our memories by getting their happy ending and flying off into the sunset.
In recent years, we’ve seen far too many “realistic”, downer endings for beloved characters and franchises, and we’ve also seen that leaving a sour taste in the audience’s mouth usually doesn’t end well.
As Nick Meyer has said, it’s more about killing a character
well than whether or not they should be killed, and Spock had one of the great deaths in all of cinema, one worthy of the character. But keeping the family together and having them fly into the sunset at the end of TUC just feels
right.
I’ve often said that the original STAR WARS trilogy was basically a story about a group of heroes who came together from very different circumstances and formed a surrogate family, and that’s partly why it resonated so strongly with people. Flash-forward to the disastrous Disney Trilogy, and that family was completely ripped apart. Which did NOT sit well with fans.
To borrow from WAYNE’S WORLD, sometimes you just need the
mega-happy ending, to heck with “realism”.
