Revisiting the films...

[Warped9]

Gojira wrote:

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Thank you! I am glad someone else understands!

Sorry, but you're you're just playing with words. If someone says, "This is dull" it's obviously an opinion. It's just a different way of saying "I think this is dull" or "I feel this is dull." People can be forceful or emphatic with their opinions, as evidenced by how they express them, but they're still just opinions.


This afternoon I'll start watching the films. In the interim here's a thumbnail sketch of my opinion based mostly on memory.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Director's Edition)
- The theatrical release was interesting and welcome after a dry decade of reruns. The longer television version added some previously deleted bits that gave the film a tad more feeling. The DE tightens the film up in the right places and added some visuals originally planned but never finished---it's much closer to what we should have gotten in 1979. But all three versions suffer from a lack of character drama. The story needed something to up the ante dramatically rather than just the threat of Vger. Unfortunately thats not something you can CGI into a film.
Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (Director's Edition)
- A lot more energy and loads of more character drama than the first film. The characters feel more like themselves. Some really nice visuals. But in some respects this doesn't feel like the Star Trek I saw in TOS. With the changes in costumes and injection of questionable ideas this has something of a retro feel to it particularly after the look of TMP. There are also a lot of logic holes I find disturbing. Every film has logic flaws, but a good film usually helps you overlook them.
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock
- In some respects it feels warmer than TWOK in terms of the characters, but it's so obviously a continuation of the previous movie. Some nice character moments, but again the logic flaws are a little too apparent.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- TOS had done humour, but it was usually contextual. This film is part of an over arcing story of which the previous parts were serious minded while this one plays more like a comedy. The setup has us laughing at the characters rather than with them. My least favourite of the TOS based movies. When I think of time travel in Star Trek I think of "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," "The City On The Edge Of Forever," "Assignment: Earth" and "Yesteryear" I'm not thinking of "I, Mudd."
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- Like some of TOS' third season episodes there is a worthy story at the heart of this exercise, but it's buried under a lot of silliness. There's too much mucking around with extraneous crap and trying too hard to get a laugh. There's quite a bit of energy in this movie and also some good character moments in it. Sadly, the film often looks cheap due to poor use of budget and resources.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- In some respects these Klingons are more like those seen in TNG. There is more diversity of character. I also liked that we saw Klingons that didn't look alike whereas in TNG onward so many of them looked and dressed very much alike. It also harkened back to some of the better Klingons we got in TOS, namely Kor and Kang, and eschewed the cardboard cutouts of second season TOS, TSFS and TFF. Nicholas Meyer serves us more retro looking Trek and more annoying logic flaws.
Star Trek: Generations
- The film is entertaining when Shatner is on the screen and mostly dull as dishwater the rest of the time. The destruction of the E-D is so contrived and such a cheap ploy it's more insulting than saddening. The death of Kirk, and the manner of it, is like a slap in the face to longtime fans.
Star Trek: First Contact
- TNG tries to do their version of TWOK with a lot of action and energy. Along the way they re-invent (or redefine) the Borg, redefine a historical Trek figure and rewrite history (contextually). The new E-E looks like some fanboy's wet dream. This version of TNG also looks darker than the already dark version offered up in GEN.

Thats what I remember.

Stay tuned...

[Mage]

Warped9 wrote:

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Sorry, but you're you're just playing with words. If someone says, "This is dull" it's obviously an opinion. It's just a different way of saying "I think this is dull" or "I feel this is dull." People can be forceful or emphatic with their opinions, as evidenced by how they express them, but they're still just opinions.

It may 'obviously' be an opinion, but when you use a word (the word 'is') that is linked the stating fact, not opinion, there's no playing of words involved. It's simple English. If you want to talk on a board where discussions are taking place all the time, it's best to use the language used on that forum in a proper way to make yourself 100% clear, so people know exactly what your saying. You mean to convey a feeling, but you do it in a way that is used to state a fact. Ofcourse some people are going to be confused about what you want to say.

Miscommunication is what starts most of the arguments on forums. Using the proper way to say something, so no room for misinformation is left open, you can avoid such situations.

[Warped9]

Mage wrote:

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It may 'obviously' be an opinion, but when you use a word (the word 'is') that is linked the stating fact, not opinion, there's no playing of words involved. It's simple English. If you want to talk on a board where discussions are taking place all the time, it's best to use the language used on that forum in a proper way to make yourself 100% clear, so people know exactly what your saying. You mean to convey a feeling, but you do it in a way that is used to state a fact. Ofcourse some people are going to be confused about what you want to say.

Miscommunication is what starts most of the arguments on forums. Using the proper way to say something, so no room for misinformation is left open, you can avoid such situations.

Well then we're about to have an argument. I've done numerous "revisiting" threads and in them I've only offered up my opinion. I'm not the one who went into a thread and started accusing someone of putting their opinion across as if it were an established fact. If you can't read something for what it is then thats not my problem. I express myself as I see fit (as anyone does) and I make no apologies for it.

It's been my experience that when people make this accusation they're often trying to discredit the one they're accusing and to derail the thread.

Of course, thats merely my observation and not a proven fact...just in case someone needs that clarified.

[Lord Garth]

Mage wrote:

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It may 'obviously' be an opinion, but when you use a word (the word 'is') that is linked the stating fact, not opinion, there's no playing of words involved. It's simple English. If you want to talk on a board where discussions are taking place all the time, it's best to use the language used on that forum in a proper way to make yourself 100% clear, so people know exactly what your saying.

Except he never said "is".

He said, and you quoted upthread:

And, of course, I won't be bothering with ST09. There's only so much I can endure.

There is no "is" in that sentence. Unless you count a contraction and it only refers to Warped9's unwillingness watch what he doesn't like.

This, by the way, reminds me of Bill Clinton. "Well, that depends on what your definition of is is." [That's a joke, by the way.]

People who've followed Warped9's posts know he doesn't like ST XI. This is an opinion of his. It's not news that it's his opinion. And, frankly, at the end of the day, who really cares?

Miscommunication is what starts most of the arguments on forums. Using the proper way to say something, so no room for misinformation is left open, you can avoid such situations.

I have a Bachelor's Degree in Communication. I'm also a former-moderator. I understood Warped9 just fine.

We're here to read, in this thread, his opinions of the movies. They're not mine, they're not yours, and I'm interested in his take. His opinion of the TOS movies, at least, seem like they'd be about the same as TNG, so it's not uniform and is in fact a different perspective. It'll be an interesting ride to revisit. And they're just his opinions whether he explicitely says it or not.

The most common opinion that I've seen my 21 years as a fan is "even-numbered films are better than odd!" Or "II-IV is the peak!" I've read these hundreds of times. It's the equivalent of TNG's "The middle years are the best!" I like to read different perspectives.

[J.T.B.]

Mage wrote:

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It may 'obviously' be an opinion, but when you use a word (the word 'is') that is linked the stating fact, not opinion, there's no playing of words involved. It's simple English. If you want to talk on a board where discussions are taking place all the time, it's best to use the language used on that forum in a proper way to make yourself 100% clear, so people know exactly what your saying. You mean to convey a feeling, but you do it in a way that is used to state a fact. Ofcourse some people are going to be confused about what you want to say.

If a person becomes confused between opinions and claims of fact without constant reminders I'd say it's more of a problem on the reader's side than the writer's. You'll notice that successful movie critics don't have to sprinkle their reviews with phrases like "in my opinion," "as I see it," "I think" and so on, which would not only be repetitive but is so obvious as to go without saying. I think most readers of this board are familiar enough with that type of writing to not be confused.

Justin

[Gojira]

Warped9 wrote:

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Sorry, but you're you're just playing with words. If someone says, "This is dull" it's obviously an opinion. It's just a different way of saying "I think this is dull" or "I feel this is dull." People can be forceful or emphatic with their opinions, as evidenced by how they express them, but they're still just opinions.

I may be just playing with words but as a therapist I do teach clients to be more accurate with their words because words hook people very easily.

Saying Star Trek 09 sucks can hook people into an argument. Saying I didn't like Star Trek 09 may limit the chances of people being hooked into an argument because in the second instance you're saying something that may provoke further inquiry--- but it may not hook people into an argument. The first saying you are speaking universally, even if it is only your opinion, it is stated as if you are speaking for others. The second way of saying it is clearly speaking only for yourself.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

[Maurice]

"That dinner was awful!" is an opinion. "That movie was awful!" is an opinion. It's standard colloquial language, and it's ridiculous to have to preface that with "In my opinion" when that's not the standard usage.

Proceed, Warped9.

[Warped9]

Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979) ****

The Enterprise races to intercept an immense unknown object headed for Earth and destroying everything in its path.

One thing that undeniably hurts ST-TMP is the lack of context. It's not 1979 anymore. Viewers are no longer seeing at after a drought of ten years without any new Star Trek (setting aside TAS and a handful of books). There are things in this film you likely wouldn't think of doing today simply because we've been inundated with Trek since the 1980s.

Certain expectations also work against the film. Star Trek has been best on television where it was offered up in one hour segments. Television is a medium of brevity and it can rarely afford to take the time to really explore ideas. It usually has to be snappy and tightly paced. The constraints of television production also mean you have to be really creative to be effective in your storytelling. Yet it also means that you're rarely compelled to be epic and you can focus on smaller scale stories.

A feature film almost demands that your story be epic. In extent it also allows you the luxury of time to dwell on certain things whether they be visual or expository. Sometimes that works...and sometimes it doesn't.

Today the beginning of ST-TMP can feel like it drags. Thats partly because contemporary films are often paced more quickly than those of thirty years ago. Audiences often aren't as patient today. The other reason is one of context. In '79 we didn't mind seeing how all our favourite characters were brought back together. Roddenberry and Wise chose to show the idea that time had passed since the end of the Enterprise's five-year mission and that our heroes had drifted apart and were no longer in sync with each other. Hence we had to see them reunited and rediscovering their place with one another. This was also acknowledgement of the very real fact the original cast was visually older than what they had been in TOS. I think it works in the film and it reflects a sense of credibility after a group of people have been apart for an extended time. Indeed it would have seemed unbelievable if everyone had just fallen into place as if nothing had happened.

Unfortunately just as everyone is beginning to gel again there's nothing of character substance to replace it. Sadly they had an inkling of an idea, but they chose not to explore it: Decker's friction with Kirk. It really comes down to Decker acquiescing to Kirk too easily. The best example I can give of how this could have played out is a 1950's war film called Run Silent, Run Deep. In RSRD Burt Lancaster is a young up-and-coming commander recently granted command of his own submarine. Everything is turned on its head when an older officer (played by Clark Gable) is given command for an important mission and displacing Lancaster. The tangible tension amongst the crew as well as friction and resentment between Lancaster and Gable is exactly the sort of thing that could have worked for ST-TMP. And this character drama was played out during a mission where no one knew if they would survive or not, effectively paralleling whether the Enterprise will survive its encounter with Vger. But because we get little to nothing of that added character drama the story has to rely solely on discovering what Vger is and what it wants. In RSRD the threat to the mission is as much inside the sub as without. In ST-TMP the threat is only from the outside. That can work in a television episode where you've got only 42-50 minutes to tell your story. It gets more problematical in a two hour feature film.

The DE solves some of that problem (over the theatrical and television versions) by being deftly edited and quickening the pace of unfolding events to some extent. It helps a lot, but I could argue they could have gone a bit further in this regard, but it still wouldn't make up for the sense of something missing. I have my opinion of what's missing and someone else might have another idea.

There's another character element here that could have used a bit more screen time: Spock's dilemma. In this film Spock is finally at the crossroad where he has to decide which direction his life will take and what kind of person he's going to be. At first he thinks (as perhaps he has long thought) that he needs to purge himself of his human half to feel complete. But the film illustrates that Spock will never feel complete until he fully acknowledges and accepts his human half. More specifically he has to accept his unique nature. Spock's dilemma isn't much different from the personal crises many of us can face at one time or another.

Many have jokingly called ST-TMP the protracted episode "Where Nomad Has Gone Before." That isn't a wholly inaccurate charge, but it's not necessarily a crime to revisit a story idea. It matters more how you deliver it. Roddenberry and Wise would have done well to inject a little more of another TOS episode, "Obsession." This is similar to what I was describing from RDRD.

ST-TMP struggles with another issue of context. In the '70s and '80s we were getting a variety of SF films. Today there is an expectancy to be something of a roller coaster adventure that overloads the senses and not much time spent on any exposition or introspection. ST-TMP chose not to emulate Star Wars released two years earlier. Whereas SW was a rollicking adventure TMP aimed for something different. I don't think it's too cerebral, but it certainly seems so compared to something like SW. Roddenberry and Wise appear intent to aim for something other than another a shoot-em-up adventure and I don't think they were consciously trying to emulate 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This is a gorgeous film to look at and restored it lays false the charge that it's monochromatic and sterile looking. It's actually quite colourful even if it isn't vivid. In TOS they were trying to depict a credible future within the constrains of television production and budget constraints. ST-TMP was able to give Star Trek's depiction of a future a distinctly more polished look. This is evident in the elaborate sets and ship miniatures and, yes, costumes. I think this is where we see Robert Wise's imprint. He didn't just want to polish off the look of TOS, he wanted a credible look to their future vision and one that wouldn't necessarily gel with contemporary sensibilities. And thats a reflection of how much real thought went into this film. They were convinced the setting had to look convincing to help audiences buy into the story. It worked...mostly.

The opening sequence of ST-TMP could well be one of the best for Trek features. It was certainly very effective in 1979. Three highly detailed Klingon Battle Cruisers take on an immense alien object. The Klingons are now much more alien looking and with their own language (with English subtitles). They're still belligerent and shortly have their warrior asses handed to them. we next get to see Vulcan as we've never seen it before as well as a long-haired Spock amongst of group of Vulcans speaking their own language (with English subtitles). Televisied Star Trek was never like this because they couldn't afford to do it. Here a feature film allows you to do something rarely seen in television.

The resolution of TMP feels a bit anticlimactic and mostly because it works well enough for a science fiction film, but might leave something to be desired for viewers weaned on explosive action for an ending. And I think this is where TMP runs into some trouble: it's trying to be two kinds of films, a Star Trek adventure and a thought provoking science fiction film. It works as a SF film, but it suffers a bit as a Star Trek film. Note I say it suffers and not that it fails---two different things.

Overall I quite like ST-TMP. I think it's quite good. I like it better now than one I was younger. It has a lot of excellent things in it even if there's a little something missing to make it excellent.

It feels like Gene Roddenberry's series idea writ large, but it could use an extra measure of passion.

[Gojira]

Great review and I agree with what you've said.

[Warped9]

One thing I neglected to comment on: the soundtrack.

Today it's somewhat odd to hear the TMP opening theme because it's so associated with TNG. Nonetheless this is an amazing soundtrack with very evocative music. My favourite version is actually the ending credits where you get not only the main theme, but also the Ilia theme as well as the Klingon theme all mixed into one.

Within the film I like the sequence when the Enterprise is launched more than the sequence where the refit design is revealed.

The Klingon theme is spot on and the Vulcan music is nicely eerie.

The music nicely enhances the early scene where we catch our first sight of Admiral Kirk arriving at Starfleet Headquarters. I remember how in 1979 the theatre erupted in thunderous applause and cheering when Kirk emerged from the shuttle. Kirk was back.

And the music was all you could hear in a dead silent theatre as everyone was awestruck seeing the refit Enterprise revealed on the big screen. Variations of "Holy shit!" wound their way throughout the room.

[Maurice]

^^^The Klingon theme in the end titles? That happened in STV but it's not in TMP.

[Warped9]

Maurice wrote:

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^^^The Klingon theme in the end titles? That happened in STV but it's not in TMP.

Really? I know it's in TFF, but I could have sworn it was also in TMP. I'll have to check again because I didn't listen to the closing credits this time around after the film was over.

The soundtrack was one of the things I liked in TFF, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.


Another thing I liked about TMP and something that still resonates. It ended on a hopeful note: Star Trek was back and set for new adventures...

Hmm, we had no idea what was coming...


I came across Run Silent, Run Deep several years ago when I caught it on TCM. I had heard something of the film and decided to check it out. I thought it was a wonderful film and yet almost right off I could see the parallels with ST-TMP. I couldn't stop thinking about the conflict between Lancaster and Gable and how it was exactly the kind of thing needed in TMP.

I do have another reservation about TMP and thats the casting of Stephen Collins. I simply thought he was a wet blanket with no screen presence. He isn't horrible, but he's just there. Instead of having some measure of conviction he seemed more like, "Wah! You took my ship away! Wahhh!" Of course he could only work with what he was given. It also didn't helped to be photographed in that silly one-piece uniform. I don't mind the TMP uniforms in general, but the one-piece outfit was lousy.

What the film does illustrate is that if Decker had been in command it would have been game over. Kirk's instincts were in form and he knew when to push forward and when to stand pat. Decker was so over cautious he was near paralyzed. Decker would have still been considering his next move after Vger had already sterilized the Earth.

Decker represents an idea Roddenberry referenced in his novelization of the film: the emergence of a new humanity that felt somewhat apart from the "throwbacks" of Starfleet. The new humans were supposedly more evolved intellectually and spiritually(?) then the old-fashioned humans, many of whom felt more at home in Starfleet. Roddenberry's idea was that many of the new humans made lousy Starfleet officers because they were too easily swayed by "higher" forms of life with supposedly higher levels of consciousness. Oldstyle humanity (as represented by Kirk and crew) proved themselves better suited for encountering the unknown since they tended to have a stronger sense of self, a stronger sense of identity and not so easily swayed by new ideas. Older humans were more skeptical.

Maybe it was just New Age babble of the time, but it had an interesting ring to it. The new humans apparently weren't comfortable with some of the military aspects of Starfleet. In some ways this idea seems to have been raised again in early TNG as evidenced by Picard initially being quite hesitant to appear the least provocative with other life forms.

[Mr_Homn]

If you have to be told that Warped9 is sharing his opinion, you have bigger problems. Not everything needs a damn disclaimer. Warped9 is obviously sharing his opinions, he presented nothing as "fact"... Jesus.

As for your review, I quite enjoyed it. I wish there was a blu ray version of the DE so I could be truly at peace with the film, though, I know that would require all the new special effects to be redone.

[Harvey]

I'm not sure if the OP knows this, but it's interesting to see Run Silent, Run Deep brought up as a counterpoint to Star Trek--The Motion Picture, since both films were directed by Robert Wise.

[Warped9]

Harvey wrote:

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I'm not sure if the OP knows this, but it's interesting to see Run Silent, Run Deep brought up as a counterpoint to Star Trek--The Motion Picture, since both films were directed by Robert Wise.

Yep, I knew that. Apparently it was another film that was being rewritten even as it was being shot.