I was wondering how people regarded TMP at the time it was released. It seems weird to me now that it was the first Trek movie, with the really '70s uniforms and slooooow pacing. Today it seems like it has a pretty "love it or hate it" reaction from a lot of people; I was wondering how reactions were different back then.
How was TMP received at the time?
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I was disappointed, no question about it. TMP was not the Star Trek movie I wanted. It wasn't fully baked, that was obvious on first viewing. TWOK was a much more complete film, that also significantly restored the excitement of TOS.
As time has passed, the strengths of TMP stand out, in contrast to its faults, perhaps in part because from TWOK onward a different vision of the future was adopted. The world-building for TMP was always extremely impressive, but it was never enough to carry the film.
On balance, TWOK and TMP are my top favorite Trek films, #1 and #2 respectively, with STXI coming in at #3.
As time has passed, the strengths of TMP stand out, in contrast to its faults, perhaps in part because from TWOK onward a different vision of the future was adopted. The world-building for TMP was always extremely impressive, but it was never enough to carry the film.
On balance, TWOK and TMP are my top favorite Trek films, #1 and #2 respectively, with STXI coming in at #3.
I was just getting around to being born when it came out, so I can't say what it was like when it first came out, but when I did get to see it, I remember it dragging on a lot in a lot of places.
I know it was trying to be grandiose as being "THE BIG FIRST STAR TREK MOVIE!!!" but I felt a lot of the dramatic and long scenes seemed to be more time filler than anything else and could have been shortened a lot to add more to the story.
I know it was trying to be grandiose as being "THE BIG FIRST STAR TREK MOVIE!!!" but I felt a lot of the dramatic and long scenes seemed to be more time filler than anything else and could have been shortened a lot to add more to the story.
The locked-in release date did not permit a final edit to be performed, which was one of many strikes against the film, from a production standpoint.
I saw it on TV around 1981 when I was 6 and was in awe. It wasn't the series, but I still absolutely loved it. It ignited my imagination more than any of the following movies did. Trek 2 was exciting but for very different reasons, and I wish the later Treks had borrowed more from TMP.
I lived in center city Philadelphia at the time, saw it at the Fox* theater that would be torn down within 6 months, and still recall (and still have clips of) the Inquirer review, headlined "The film's just heavenly", and the Daily News review, "Screen's too big for Trek". The writer of the Inquirer review did backpedal a bit, writing a week or two later about having had some reservations about the movie. The Daily News review made the point (as reflected in the headline) that every so often there was a crisis reminiscent of the end of each act in a Trek TV episode. (With, naturally, longueurs between them.)
As for what I thought personally, I had gotten all excited - having been a Star Trek fan since seeing most of the third season (including the premiere "Spock's Brain") on NBC, caught up on the better-written episodes in reruns, went to a convention (New York City, January 1975), and finally read the Inquirer's worshipful Sunday magazine cover story about Roddenberry, with color photos from the not-yet-released movie interspersed. But when I finally went to see TMP I was underwhelmed. Much of the dialogue was no better than that in, say, "The Empath" (e.g., "Compassion for another is becoming part of her functioning life-system"). The rhythm was just off. The actors didn't seem comfortable at all. "Wasn't fully baked," as CorporalCaptain wrote, is how it felt - which turned out to be exactly what happened behind the scenes.
*The Fox theater was quite big; in 1968 it was able to show 2001 in Cinerama, where I got to see it when I was 11 (and continue to be thankful for having had the chance).
As for what I thought personally, I had gotten all excited - having been a Star Trek fan since seeing most of the third season (including the premiere "Spock's Brain") on NBC, caught up on the better-written episodes in reruns, went to a convention (New York City, January 1975), and finally read the Inquirer's worshipful Sunday magazine cover story about Roddenberry, with color photos from the not-yet-released movie interspersed. But when I finally went to see TMP I was underwhelmed. Much of the dialogue was no better than that in, say, "The Empath" (e.g., "Compassion for another is becoming part of her functioning life-system"). The rhythm was just off. The actors didn't seem comfortable at all. "Wasn't fully baked," as CorporalCaptain wrote, is how it felt - which turned out to be exactly what happened behind the scenes.
*The Fox theater was quite big; in 1968 it was able to show 2001 in Cinerama, where I got to see it when I was 11 (and continue to be thankful for having had the chance).
I think the Director's Edition proves that TMP's slow pacing is not due to rushed production.
No, that is untrue. The Director's Edition, following decades after the theatrical version, proves that they did not make the Director's Edition in accordance with their stated intentions at the time TMP was originally released. An earlier discussion.
I remember my dad renting Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and though I "liked it", I remember having a TON of trouble getting through it.
I almost always got through the wormhole because I loved the reunion scenes and leaving space-dock and all that great Trek stuff, but I would always kinda lose interest after the wormhole and let the movie play out while I went to my room to play, and would return once they were walking towards V'Ger, or around there.
I would play TMP a lot as a kid, and I'd say that I'd sit through the whole thing about 5% of the time. The rest of the time, I'd walk in and out of the room.
But I *always* loved the music, the epic stature of the Enterprise interiors, the feeling that the Enterprise was full of people, that the Enterprise looked comfortable and exciting at the same time. I loved the characters and the performances.
But the whole traveling into the cloud stuff was a chore.
These days? I still love the film. It takes some effort, I have to admit, to get through the middle portion, but I love the film anyway.
I almost always got through the wormhole because I loved the reunion scenes and leaving space-dock and all that great Trek stuff, but I would always kinda lose interest after the wormhole and let the movie play out while I went to my room to play, and would return once they were walking towards V'Ger, or around there.
I would play TMP a lot as a kid, and I'd say that I'd sit through the whole thing about 5% of the time. The rest of the time, I'd walk in and out of the room.
But I *always* loved the music, the epic stature of the Enterprise interiors, the feeling that the Enterprise was full of people, that the Enterprise looked comfortable and exciting at the same time. I loved the characters and the performances.
But the whole traveling into the cloud stuff was a chore.
These days? I still love the film. It takes some effort, I have to admit, to get through the middle portion, but I love the film anyway.
"[TMP] is so determined to say Something Important that it forgets Alfred Hitchcock's rule: 'Remember, it's only a movie.'"
- I wish I could remember the title of what I just quoted. Some paperback guide to movies that came out around '83.
- I wish I could remember the title of what I just quoted. Some paperback guide to movies that came out around '83.
I think it could have a minute or two cut (I'm including the whole voyage into V'Ger, not just the cloud) but basically works - it's supposed to be epic and wonderous. Problem is the whole film is so slow that the cloud sequence is not a dramatic slowing of pace, but rather more of the same.
I was 11 when it came out. I think I went on the Saturday of the initial release weekend, and the place was packed.
There was a huge amount of buzz around TMP, I even recall coverage on the 20/20 news show. Considering that movies in 1979 aren't nearly as front-loaded as they are today, and it was the highest grossing ST movie until '09, the word-of-mouth at the time had to be reasonably positive. And while slow compared to Star Wars, it's pacing was probably not too different from similar movies of the day, such as Close Encounters, so audiences may have been more forgiving and allowed themselves to be wowed by the spectacle.
There was a huge amount of buzz around TMP, I even recall coverage on the 20/20 news show. Considering that movies in 1979 aren't nearly as front-loaded as they are today, and it was the highest grossing ST movie until '09, the word-of-mouth at the time had to be reasonably positive. And while slow compared to Star Wars, it's pacing was probably not too different from similar movies of the day, such as Close Encounters, so audiences may have been more forgiving and allowed themselves to be wowed by the spectacle.
Which version? There are so many edits floating around on home video and I don't think any of them is precisely the original December 1977 theatrical cut, which I think is the best; it's well paced for the most part, certainly more so than TMP. Cutting the use of Kodaly pedagogical hand symbols for musical notes would have helped, though.
Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr certainly enlivened CE3K for me; too bad they weren't available (or were they?) to play Decker and Ilia...
Never really watched that movie. I saw bits and pieces when I was younger, but never sat down to actually watch it.
2001 Space Odyssey.... I did try and sit down to watch that back in the late 90's / early 2000's when I was in college. I do believe I watched it through, but my geez.... did it ever drag on. It dragged on so much that after a while I forgot what the plot/point of the movie was, if there even was one.
Hell, that was also during my "Recreational" days and no amount of "Recreational Things" helped me keep interested in that movie. To this very day I still don't know wtf it was all about.
TMP.... well, even that took me a few watch'overs to figure out exactly what the plot was for the movie, but at least I was willing to sit down and try and watch it again a few times.... 2001? I never want to see that movie ever again.
For TMP, I knew there was this big thing coming to destroy Earth and the Enterprise Crew needed to save the day..... and I got the point of it being some old space probe Earth sent out many years before, but everything in between and even the ending went in one ear and right out the other with a big "Fbbbrrrraapppppapapapapaaaa" sound.
Eventually on the third go through a few years later, I got the whole thing, but during the big Enterprise Reveal and entering V'Ger.... and Spock's travel into V'Ger, I simply just fast forwarded through.
I'm getting all the ST movies on BluRay for Christmas, and will certainly be watching TMP first all the way through to Nemesis..... I'll do my very best to not fast forward, lol.
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Any of them. That's not a reflection on the quality of the movie, it just didn't 'grab' me. Probably just me, though: I'm a Star Trek fan, but I tend not to gravitate to science fiction in general.
With Close Encounters, I seem to mostly remember the stuff with the potatoes.
I liked it. I saw it twice opening day and 11 times by the end of December (if you count an 11 PM showing on new years eve).
Was it slow?
Yeah... a couple times I fell a sleep during the cloud scene, but the movie had a built in alarm to wake me up when that was done (the intruder alert at the end). The thing to keep in mind was that I (along with most of my friends) was a techie-trekkie. So much of my time in later showings was spent taking notes and discussing them with my friends.
Plus this was the first new Trek since the animated series and we had no idea if there was ever going to be any more to come after TMP. It is hard to understand seeing the movie from that perspective now since we've had 10 more movies and 4 more TV series. So yeah, at the time we were starving for anything Trek, so it was great.
Was it flawed at the time?
Absolutely. I hated the 70's during the 70's. I hated Disco and Country (both styles were pervasive in the later half of that decade), and the moment outsiders came into Trek wanting to make it look modern, those elements were going to find their way in. Production design for TOS and Phase II were focused on utilitarian aspects of technology (making much of it timeless). And post-TMP production design worked it's way back towards that, but the 70's esthetics worked it's way into TMP (the earth-tone colors, leisure suit feel of some of the uniforms and cowboy inspired belt buckle). That isn't to say that some of it didn't work (I liked the t-shirts and jumpsuit uniform styles), but I would have been happier if they had kept working along the lines which they had been with Phase II (though some of the new uniform styles in that production also had some 70's elements as well).
Also, I thought that TMP was a bad idea. Even back then I didn't think that Star Trek should be a movie. The best Trek stories have made it to the screen not because the people making them knew they were going to be great, but in spite of how producers thought of them. When you have to fill 24 episodes with stories in a year, something good had a chance to slip in there. When you have to fit one story in every three years, they don't stand as much of a chance. So my biggest disappointment with TMP came when I heard that the Star Trek II TV series was being replaced with (what seemed like at the time) a one-off movie project.
Was it slow?
Yeah... a couple times I fell a sleep during the cloud scene, but the movie had a built in alarm to wake me up when that was done (the intruder alert at the end). The thing to keep in mind was that I (along with most of my friends) was a techie-trekkie. So much of my time in later showings was spent taking notes and discussing them with my friends.
Plus this was the first new Trek since the animated series and we had no idea if there was ever going to be any more to come after TMP. It is hard to understand seeing the movie from that perspective now since we've had 10 more movies and 4 more TV series. So yeah, at the time we were starving for anything Trek, so it was great.
Was it flawed at the time?
Absolutely. I hated the 70's during the 70's. I hated Disco and Country (both styles were pervasive in the later half of that decade), and the moment outsiders came into Trek wanting to make it look modern, those elements were going to find their way in. Production design for TOS and Phase II were focused on utilitarian aspects of technology (making much of it timeless). And post-TMP production design worked it's way back towards that, but the 70's esthetics worked it's way into TMP (the earth-tone colors, leisure suit feel of some of the uniforms and cowboy inspired belt buckle). That isn't to say that some of it didn't work (I liked the t-shirts and jumpsuit uniform styles), but I would have been happier if they had kept working along the lines which they had been with Phase II (though some of the new uniform styles in that production also had some 70's elements as well).
Also, I thought that TMP was a bad idea. Even back then I didn't think that Star Trek should be a movie. The best Trek stories have made it to the screen not because the people making them knew they were going to be great, but in spite of how producers thought of them. When you have to fill 24 episodes with stories in a year, something good had a chance to slip in there. When you have to fit one story in every three years, they don't stand as much of a chance. So my biggest disappointment with TMP came when I heard that the Star Trek II TV series was being replaced with (what seemed like at the time) a one-off movie project.
I think the second thing may explain the first thing. You should watch 2001 straight at least once.
Which theatre?
I saw it on home video many times during my youth and always liked it, but I have never had a cinematic *experience* like seeing it in a 70MM Cinerama theatre. It's amazing how well that film holds up, how perfect every shot is (You can see little people walking through the space-plane as it docks), and how enveloping it becomes in a large format theatre.
I took my best friend to see it with me who doesn't usually have patience for longer films nor has an interest in science fiction, yet she enjoyed it to a large extent.
