William Shatner Apologizes For Star Trek V

[locutus101]

This film is bashed a bit too much IMO because it is a frustrating film for this reason I think: Shatners directing and acting goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. Shatner's best and his worst shares this one film. Shatner delivers incredible performances in the Observation deck scenes and uses his rapport with his friends superbly but then we get idiotic scenes where he ultimately loses a phaser battle with some goofballs with rocks and Spock does the Vulcan neck pinch with a horse. I'm not sure there's an excuse for that kinda a messin' around.

The script is quite dog-eared but it isn't the fundamental issue at hand and it could be salvaged and tidied up. In fact, I rather liked the way they went a little off the reservation with this film and some of the acting is genuinely on par with anything we get with these films. .

He doesn't need to apolgise for the problems, this was a long time ago and, well. Shat Happens as they say, eh?

Shat? As in Shatners, you mean?

 

[Paradise City]

Shat? As in Shatners, you mean?

I must confess I've been struggling to resist including "Shat Happens" somewhere on this blasted forum and I'm sorry but my resolve just couldn't handle a Star Trek V thread.

 

[locutus101]

I must confess I've been struggling to resist including "Shat Happens" somewhere on this blasted forum and I'm sorry but my resolve just couldn't handle a Star Trek V thread.

I know the feeling.

 

[Timby]

Go over the script again!!! Tighten it up.

Uh, you are aware that David Loughery had literally only a month to write the film, yes?

 

[locutus101]

Uh, you are aware that David Loughery had literally only a month to write the film, yes?

Really? I would have guessed a week, at most.

 

[Philip Guyott]

I must confess I've been struggling to resist including "Shat Happens" somewhere on this blasted forum and I'm sorry but my resolve just couldn't handle a Star Trek V thread.

Got the T-shirt?

 

[locutus101]

Got the T-shirt?

Is this a real thing?

 

[Timby]

Really? I would have guessed a week, at most.

This is one of the reasons I feel a lot of the blame for The Final Frontier gets thrown at Shatner, unfairly. Beyond Loughery having an obscenely short amount of time to write it, the Teamsters went on strike at the same time they started some very, very expensive location shooting, Ralph Winter and Harve Bennett fucked up with picking the effects team, Harve Bennett was so tired of Trek that he was a massive dick to Shatner on the set, and the work on an effects-heavy movie began in late October for a June release. That's one of those experiences where it feels like everything is conspiring against you.

 

[locutus101]

This is one of the reasons I feel a lot of the blame for The Final Frontier gets thrown at Shatner, unfairly. Beyond Loughery having an obscenely short amount of time to write it, the Teamsters went on strike at the same time they started some very, very expensive location shooting, Ralph Winter and Harve Bennett fucked up with picking the effects team, Harve Bennett was so tired of Trek that he was a massive dick to Shatner on the set, and the work on an effects-heavy movie began in late October for a June release. That's one of those experiences where it feels like everything is conspiring against you.

Yes, these are definitely extenuating circumstances.

 

[Philip Guyott]

Is this a real thing?

Yes, but I can't post the link as that would be against the forum rules, but just type "Shat happens t'shirts" into google.

 

[locutus101]

Yes, bit I can't post the link as that would be against the forum rules, but just type "Shat happens t'shirts" into google.

Is Shatner getting his share of the royalties on these?
I just think that would the apex of irony.

 

[Lance]

Shatner's rock men, after budget cuts came into effect:

 

[Timby]

And, if I'm remembering correctly, Associates and Ferren couldn't even begin their effects work until February, because they over-sold their ability to do the work and had to wait for a bunch of custom-made motion-control hardware to be delivered (and ILM dragged its feet on delivering the Enterprise-A and Bird of Prey models, too, as I recall).

I know it's easy to hate Shatner because he's an egotistical jackwagon, but he directed the hell out of The Final Frontier -- visually, in terms of the blocking and camera movements, it's easily the most or second-most visually interesting of the original six films. He didn't write it, he wasn't the effects supervisor. Place the blame where it belongs; it's not like he personally wrote the "Scotty bumping his head" scene.

 

[JeffinOakland]

A film this bad has plenty of grubby fingerprints all over it.

 

[diankra]

With hindsight, and having read the making of book at the time, a big problem is that Shatner had in mind some big FX set-pieces that couldn't be done well on even a $100 million budget then. Now they can be done in CGI for change, so even if they have been done then they wouldn't seem so impressive now.
On top of that there are the strikes, the scratched negatives that had to be enlarged to take off the scratch at the side of the shot, and very basically the Kirk vs God idea.

 

[locutus101]

A film this bad has plenty of grubby fingerprints all over it.

That's very good.

 

[Timby]

A film this bad has plenty of grubby fingerprints all over it.

Funny, it's easily the Trek movie I've watched the most times after The Wrath of Khan, and I personally love it.

 

[locutus101]

Funny, it's easily the Trek movie I've watched the most times after The Wrath of Khan, and I personally love it.

As the Romans used to say: De gustibus non disputandum*.

*there's no accounting for taste.

 

[Timby]

As the Romans used to say: De gustibus non disputandum*.

*there's no accounting for taste.

Oh, you wound me, sir. You wound me to the core.

I'll always, always, always take an ambitious misfire that doesn't quite stick the landing over bland mediocrity.

 

[locutus101]

...
I'll always, always, always take an ambitious misfire that doesn't quite stick the landing over bland mediocrity.

I agree. I hate mediocrity.