I liked TFF, mainly because I read the novelization first and loved it. But looking back, I guess it didn't make much sense that this super powerful entity needed a starship or that it only communicated with Sybok. Surely there are other Vulcans and even more telepathic species out there. Perhaps they should've changed what the entity wanted. Perhaps there should've been a community of different species, 'believers' already down on the planet and the entity was using their belief in it to power itself, something like the Ori from Stargate SG-1. I wouldn't have minded Sybok being a little more fanatic-if pressed- and manipulative. Also, I would've liked to see what pain the other crew members had besides Spock and Bones. I read once that the plan had been to use the Romulans instead of Klaa, and I wish they had gone with that. It would've been nice to see an updated Romulan warbird in a TOS movie. Also have better FX.
I understand that V is not one of the best movies, but I still have a soft spot for it. One of the scenes I have come to love is the camp fire, where Kirk is hammered and McCoy is pretty far gone. For the most part I thought it was very well written, although a bit over the top. Don't even start me on the center of the galaxy....thing though.
I've recently gotten my girlfriend hooked on Trek by way of the original series on YouTube. Not on purpose; I was watching them and she started casually watching them with me. Imagine my delight when she started asking for more! She's a complete sci-fi newbie and is drawn to the characters. She's especially taken a liking to Spock and McCoy and their 'gruff love' relationship. Over the weekend, we had a movie marathon and tore through all six TOS movies. She recognizes The Wrath of Khan as the best of the bunch, said she had the most fun with The Voyage Home for the levity/humor (especially watching it directly after the relatively depressing preceding movie), and puts The Final Frontier as her next favorite. She actually let out a whimper during the scene with McCoy and his father, and laughed (in a good way) during the campfire scenes. She asked, after that movie, if the actors were friends in real life because she thought their relationship onscreen felt very genuine. She dozed off during The Motionless Picture
I truly found it painful to watch the first and second times I saw it, I haven't revisited it since a year or two after it hit VHS. But I do have most of the movies on LD. lol
After I learned that today was the 20th Anniversary of its' theatrical release, I watched TFF again. I've reevaluated my thoughts on it and I agree with many of the other posters that the movie needs an special effects upgrade and the jokes need to go. It has been a few years since the last time I watched it and now I think it is a fair movie. As we all know TFF gets a lot of flack over the last two decades but some here in the thread have pointed out that it had a lot of outside factors against it. One factor that may not have been mentioned yet, is the movie's budget. According to the movie's IMDB box office info, Wikipedia and Memory Alpha articles, the movie only had a $27.8 million budget. Even in 1989, you couldn't do much with that. yet according to the same information it made nearly twice its' budget in U.S. gross box office. IMHO, we all need to re-evaluate TFF and, perhaps give it the benefit of the doubt. I know I have.
Actually that is the budget AFTER Paramount cut it drastically and left Shatner virtually nothing to work with.
I got to interview Shatner back in 2002 prior to the Collector's Edition of Star Trek V DVD release, and yes I think it could really be salvaged. He apparently asked Paramount for the money to go back and fix it up like The Motion Picture Director's Edition, but they wouldn't budge.
why did they cut the budget.why did they sabotage shatner's effort.why would a studio shoot itself in the foot? st4 made a lot of money so it would seem reasonable they would do their best for the next film to build on the success of the previous one. yet they seemed to have set out to destroy/sabotage their own product. why? this has never been fully explored or explained.could paramount people in charge at the time be interviewed to get the truth?
That would be interesting to know. It seems to me that Paramount was very stingy when it came to Trek, and seriously hampered their abilities to make more money. If ST V had the necessary budget and a bit better writing, it would have blown the doors off ST IV in revenue.
Upgrade Star Trek V ? Trekweb has an article up from Friday about the idea of possibly upgrading STV since it is having a 20th Anniversary. Time To Upgrade Star Trek V? Feature May Be Worth Revisiting In Light of 20th Anniversary http://trekweb.com/articles/2009/06...Revisiting-In-Light-of-20th-Anniversary.shtml
You know when I first saw the title of this thread I though it said, Could Star Trek V be savaged? I was all ready to say, "Yes. Most definitely!"
After Star Trek IV completed the "trilogy" that started in TWOK and brought everybody (and everything) back together, I was excited to see where they would go next with our intrepid characters. I was initially let down with TFF with its poor FX (when compared to the previous three movies) and campy humor which, compared to TVH, felt kind of juvenile at times. However, the relationship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy was actually surprisingly quite well done all things considered. Seeing most of the crew more or less get "brainwashed" by Sybok was kind of weird but I liked that they kept Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (and Scotty?) from getting sucked into Sybok's quest (Kirk: "I need my pain") despite their ultimate inability to stop him. Sybok's sacrifice at the end was well done, particularly how he uses his "pain-healing" meld on the "God" entity in order to allow the others time enough to escape. Ya' know, I actually don't think it was really that bad now that I think about it some more. Certainly not one of the stronger of the films but it did IMHO have a good theme to it.
These things are budgeted on a cost-versus-expected-return basis, and unfortunately that sometimes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Paramount lowballed the movie because they had no confidence that it would make enough money to justify a higher budget. Meyer nearly cried in a budget meeting when the suits did the same thing to ST 6 - he was memorably told "This is a business, if you want love go home to your family." They were essentially saying that they didn't expect much out of the movie and were therefore unwilling to invest much in it. As to why such projects aren't simply killed outright - beats me.
I'd like to be optimistic here, but I think probably not. Beyond all the other numerous points already brought up, there is the fact that the crew is so geriatric at this point that they just seem out of place in their respective roles, and the whole concept of Starfleet seems to have devolved into a sort of thirty-year high school reunion in space. Really this a problem in all the TOS features to a certain degree, although it is exacerbated in the later films. The one truly excellent TOS film, TWOK, is excellent partly because it embraces the confrontation with one's mortality as the primary theme. Still, getting old is hardly sustainable as a focus for sci-fi adventure over the course of numerous films. Star Trek just needed new blood, and needed it badly.
a timely 2 part article on the making of STV The Making of Star Trek V, Part 1: 20 Years Later http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/startrekthenandnow/news/?a=7966 The Making of Star Trek V, Part 2: From the Archives http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/startrekthenandnow/news/?a=7979
Re: a timely 2 part article on the making of STV When Shatner first enters the bridge from the camping interruption, the girl that gives him his jacket and gives him the broken captain's log pad is Shatner's daughter Elizabeth. I wonder if she got paid for it or that was the case of cutting the money spending by not paying another actress..either way I'm glad to see her in it.
What I meant by "a fan edition cut down" was Jack Marshall did one who used to work for New Voyages. I downloaded it before it was pulled.