Star Trek vs Star Wars

[tgun121]

posted on August 27th, 2013, 8:33 am

Last edited by tgun121 on August 27th, 2013, 8:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

I need help in a debate that i have with my friend during boring classes so i would like to know what do any of you think has a bigger franchise???

posted on August 27th, 2013, 8:44 am

Bigger what?

posted on August 27th, 2013, 8:45 am

Bigger what?

sorry, bigger franchise

posted on August 27th, 2013, 10:38 am

At least popularity wise Star Wars seems to be on top I guess currently Star Wars products sell better than anything Star Trek related. I assume it has been different when Star Trek was more present somewhere during the 90s
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q= ... +star+wars
Sadly it only goes back to 2004.
Look at the peak in 2005 when SW Episode 3 was released. Compare that to the new Star Trek movies...

posted on August 27th, 2013, 12:01 pm

At least popularity wise Star Wars seems to be on top I guess currently Star Wars products sell better than anything Star Trek related. I assume it has been different when Star Trek was more present somewhere during the 90s
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q= ... +star+wars
Sadly it only goes back to 2004.
Look at the peak in 2005 when SW Episode 3 was released. Compare that to the new Star Trek movies...

Well that's true star wars is still growing where star trek is getting old after near 50 years thats what to be expected....the last bit of star trek was in the 90's and it might not ever be like that again

posted on August 27th, 2013, 3:35 pm

Star Wars and its not even close.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/star-wars ... e-revenue/

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Star-Trek

The highest grossing Star Trek movie "Into Darkness" didn't even beat Return of the Jedi which is the Star Wars movie that made the least. And that is assuming that they adjusted for today's dollars. If they didn't then RotJ looks even better compared to JJTrek.

Now factor in toys and DVD sales and video games and Star Wars treats Star Trek like its little tribble bitch.

I like Star Trek and even with its teen anst issues I even enjoyed JJTrek. But those are probably the last Star Trek movies that will ever be made......at least of many years and there are more Star Wars movies coming down the road. I just hope that the cast of the next Star Wars movies are not a bunch of emotionally codependent twenty somethings.

posted on August 27th, 2013, 3:46 pm

Star Wars and its not even close.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/star-wars ... e-revenue/

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Star-Trek

The highest grossing Star Trek movie "Into Darkness" didn't even beat Return of the Jedi which is the Star Wars movie that made the least. And that is assuming that they adjusted for today's dollars. If they didn't then RotJ looks even better compared to JJTrek.

Now factor in toys and DVD sales and video games and Star Wars treats Star Trek like its little tribble bitch.

I like Star Trek and even with its teen anst issues I even enjoyed JJTrek. But those are probably the last Star Trek movies that will ever be made......at least of many years and there are more Star Wars movies coming down the road. I just hope that the cast of the next Star Wars movies are not a bunch of emotionally codependent twenty somethings.

that is a bit of a simple conclusion, your point about corecting for todays dollars also counts for older star trek movies. And as star trek has a bigger size franchise if you consider tv series (yes i know that they dont make as much cash as movies but there is a very big quantity) it would not suprise me if star trek is bigger if you look at the revenue

posted on August 27th, 2013, 4:48 pm

TV Series dont make that much, certainly not compared to toys and movies and DVDs. Low budget shows get cancelled all the time because TV has such a small margin of profit. Star Wars has several extremely high grossing video games and of course Star Wars toy sales dwarf Star Trek toy sales. Just compare the amount of toys for the last Star Wars movies especially the unnameable Star Wars movie. Fucking Jar Jar Binks was all over the place and that was the one time in my life that I actually contemplated suicide after seeing the unnameable Star Wars movie. Compare that with the toys released for JJTrek which are the all time highest grosing Trek movies. The most I saw were a couple of toy phasers and some action figures. Nothing even close to the Star Wars bonanza. I mean seriously if you a kid which would you want? A phaser that just makes noises and flashes lights or a light saber that not only humms and glows and sounds cool when you wave it around, but that you can actually hit you little brothers and sisters with. No brainer for me, who doesn't want to smack their sibling and friends around.

Aside from a couple of games like Elite Force maybe Klingon Commander and Honor Guard but those struck me as more niche games. I can't think of any Star Trek games that sold as well as many of the Star Wars games. Battlefront 1 and 2. The Jedi Knight games which sold a ton. Empire at War did alright. The Tie Fighter series from way back sold millions if I recall. Star Wars just has a much much better pedigree in the video game market. And as I showed the Star Wars movies all did better than the Star Trek movies most of which never even broke the $200 million mark.

The DVD sales are the one that were surprising to me. I realize that they say that DVDs are where the studios make the real money but Star Wars DVD sales were just insane.

posted on August 27th, 2013, 8:48 pm

In terms of popularity, and fiscal value Star Wars is the stronger franchise.

However in other less tangible ways, Star Trek has proven itself superior. It has been far more influential in terms of inspiring inventions and career choices--real-world space vehicles have been named for the USS Enterprise--and the optimistic world-view remains a bright point in these modern days of wangsty* heroes and grimdark settings.

* A portmanteau of "wank" and "angst".

posted on August 27th, 2013, 10:13 pm

the franchises appeal for different reasons.
and perhaps star wars is more accessible, star trek appeals to the growth of humanity and its advancements and exploring interesting strange ideas of sci-fi stories.

and as amd hatter points out how many at-at's do we see walking down the road? and lightsabers?

whenever advances in science are mentioned its always star trek reverenced. mobile phones, hyper sprays(prototypes anyway), touch pads, "its like something out of star trek".

and the crew of multiculturalism when it was ahead of its time.

so the "size" of the franchises are measurable in different ways money/popularity/cultural etc

posted on August 28th, 2013, 12:56 am

I cant disagree that SW brings in more cash, but as has been previously stated theres something that ST has that SW just doesn't. I like them both, but they are so different. Star Wars has always been to me about just telling a good fantasy story, where as Star Trek being a TV series primarily can do so much more, they tell good stories and they try to make you think. They show you possibilities of what we can achieve if we strive for it. And as MadHatter pointed out, Star Trek has influenced people due to things they have seen on the show, you don't really hear people talking about how they wanted to work at NASA because they saw Star Wars.

posted on August 28th, 2013, 1:35 am

Yeah I agree with the inspiration part in regards to science. That is mostly because Star Trek SCIENCE! is more feasible than Star Wars tech. At some point we will have ships that travel the stars and ubiquitious hand held energy weapons etc. We will have tricorders that can detect DNA, holodecks etc. The only Trek tech that is pretty much impossible is transporter technology at least not for 100s if not 1000s of years..........if ever.

Star Wars tech is just on a much much much larger scale. I seriously doubt that humanity is ever going to have the resources to build not one, but two Deathstars the size of small moons. We also aren't going to have Jedi or Sith running around force choking everyone or zapping them with lightning. Star Wars is indeed a fantasy movie with technology in it. I doubt we are going to get to the point where Earth is entirely covered by one massive planet wide city that is several miles high like Coruscant has either. It would be cool as hell but I doubt that will happen.

If I had to choose which universe I lived in it would hands down be Star Wars. Its just on a much larger scale than Star Trek. The UFP consists of 150 planets and some other civilized planets that aren't members because they didn't join or aren't advanced enough yet. The Republic and by extension the Galactic Empire and New Republic encompasses millions of habitable worlds. I would die of old age before I got to see everything in the Star Wars universe. And who doesn't want to be a Sith Lor..........I mean loving carrying Jedi Knight. *cough*

Of course if I can only be Joe Schmoe instead of someone important like a military officer or an underworld boss like the Hutts, I suppose life in the Star Trek universe would be a lot easier if more pedantic.

posted on November 9th, 2013, 3:28 pm

Yeah I agree with the inspiration part in regards to science. That is mostly because Star Trek SCIENCE! is more feasible than Star Wars tech. At some point we will have ships that travel the stars and ubiquitious hand held energy weapons etc. We will have tricorders that can detect DNA, holodecks etc. The only Trek tech that is pretty much impossible is transporter technology at least not for 100s if not 1000s of years..........if ever.

Other inventions in Star Trek also seem to be impossible. For example gravity on a ship. The only way to create a stable gravity field, is to have a humongous center the size of a moon. The ship in either Star Trek or Star War that would have a gravity field, (albeit a low gravity field) would be the death star.

Then you have parts of both shows that are factually incorrect. Like when ships explode there is fire in space! Better yet sometimes there is smoke coming out of hullbreaches, that have forcefields. So the smoke should be contained. And if there would be no forcefields, then the fires in the ship would go out due to its contact into space.

Strangely enough transporters can hypothetically exist. We are already seeing a pre-evolution of transporters, namely 3d printers. (The concept is pretty much the same anyways.)

posted on November 9th, 2013, 3:50 pm

Other inventions in Star Trek also seem to be impossible. For example gravity on a ship. The only way to create a stable gravity field, is to have a humongous center the size of a moon. The ship in either Star Trek or Star War that would have a gravity field, (albeit a low gravity field) would be the death star.

i'd just like to chime in. you can also do something similar to gravity by having your spaceship/spacestation have a part that spins around an axis. like a centrifuge. it's not actual gravity, but for rooms in the spinning bit, it would do all the same things gravity does.

also consider newtoninan gravity, more mass = more gravity. gravity plating under the floor could use futuristic technobabble to either

a) cram loads of mass into a small space.
b) emulate the existence of large amounts of mass.

of the 4 fundamental forces in the standard model, all the three others (electromagnetism, strong nuclear, weak nuclear) are mediated by elementary particles. it's possible that gravity is similarly mediated by a currently undiscovered particle. which when discovered could be manipulated to create artificial gravity. this would be the currently hypothetical graviton that star trek loves mentioning.

i don't think artificial gravity is that wacky for centuries from now.

posted on November 9th, 2013, 10:04 pm

Star wars has the bigger franchise. For example, you will see star wars toys in stores year around. You will only see star trek toys when a movie is coming out. Then compare the amount of video games out there for each, books, etc...

Popularity wise, Star Wars is bigger. If you are talking about canon content however, I believe all the star trek series combined make up more hours than star wars for sure.