I had less exposure to Star Trek but TMP did exactly the same for me. I felt like I was on the Enterprise. Star Wars didn't even come close to that for me and I was 7-8 at the time.
ST:TMP-Why DID they think it was what fans waited for?
- Thread starter Mutara Nebula 1967
- Start date
I had less exposure to Star Trek but TMP did exactly the same for me. I felt like I was on the Enterprise. Star Wars didn't even come close to that for me and I was 7-8 at the time.
You only had black & white TV until 1975? That's terrible.
Yep. We saw the first run of shows like "Batman", "Star Trek", "Star Trek Animated", "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Disney's Wonderful World of Color" in glorious black and white.
But, IIRC, South Africa didn't have TV at all until about the same time.
Though I saw TMP as an adult (18), it did the same thing for me that you said above; it put me on the Enterprise, in a way the TV series hadn't. It had a feeling of realism that was unlike anything I'd seen to that point, even 2001, which quite obviously inspired Gene when he began to envision TMP.
I had just turned 21. It was the night of my party that a former school friend - not a ST fan either - boasted he'd been to the gala Sydney premiere, and that most of the audience had been in Starfleet uniforms, and had cheered the opening credits and each actor's first entrance. (For a reunion movie of a TV show?)
It just sounded like a phenomenon I needed to check out for myself, seeing I had just finished my teachers college course and was facing a long wait before my first permanent job offer. Of course, I attended a regular screening, but the design of the film just sucked me right in. It was an art deco theatre in the heart of Sydney, Ilia's theme was being piped through the sound system in the foyer areas, and it was as if the curtained corridors of the building became the corridors of the Enterprise.
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Part of what appeals to me about ST:TMP more than any other Trek film is that the world that it depicts doesn't feel quite as "production-designed" as the other films. The color palette could be improved, but overall the designs -- interiors, exteriors, props and costumes -- feel "real" rather than simply "cool."
I like TMP because it's so relaxing at points.
I'd like to disagree with the statement that the 1st effect company delivered some substandard effects. From my understanding what happened was that concerns were mounting that ASTRA (Able) was falling so far behind schedule that they were in danger of missing their release date, this lead to Trumbull being brought on, and, ASTRA going bye bye. Andy Probert has told me some of the stuff ASTRA was working on for the film that sounded really cool, but I don't think it was the quality of what little they had delivered at the turnover time that was the main problem. I think it was the quantity, not the quality.
A lot, though, of what you're saying is wrong with it, is also what's right with it - from a point of view.
For instance:
Kirk starts the film as an admiral, but then gets back to being what he should be, a captain.
Spock starst the film by rejecting his friends in favour of pure emotion, but then realizes his friends are the most previous things he has.
You can't really say 'And so on', as the other characters don't get the arcs in the same sense. (Rand appearing is just a fan-pleasing detail there wasn't room to expand; ditto Sulu and co stil being on the ship rather than having been promoted to their own commands elsewhere).
But from the point of view of making a single film which encapsulates what Kirk and Spock are about, you can certainly argue that TMP gets it. They start out denying who they are, and then rediscover their true selves.
Wherea 'Kirk battles a clear-cut villain and wins' is just another episode. Or at least, it could be. (STII, of course, manages to do both things by doing that plot, and also the character plot about Kirk accepting his ageing, but also realizing it's not the end of him, just a change to him).
As someone who at least saw the third season first run, and then rabidly caught the rest in syndication as I grew up; what dissapointed ME more than anything else was the ST:TMP was not 'new' per se; is was an expanded re-make/re-imagining of the TOS second season episode The Changeling - and that really hampered my enjoyment of it at he time (I was 16 in 1979 when it premired; and I still saw it 3 times in theatres over the holidays).
The real shortfall of the film was the fact that the Third Act was written during filming. That alone cost the movie more so than losing ASTRA or having the color palette of vanilla-puke.
People,
Some of you know TMP isn't my favorite ST film. That singular honor goes to TWOK precisely because it wasn't TMP.
Don't get me wrong -- TMP is superior to a lot of the ST movies. It has a grand scale and a challenging, intellectual plot where the search for God is the cornerstone of the movie. If you think about it, the three main characters -- Kirk, Spock, and V'Ger -- start out looking for one thing and finding something else.
But I disagree that some of the other ST movies aren't real SF. In TWOK, we have Genesis, surely a grand, lofty plan to solve the problems of population and food supply. Like nuclear power, it is instead perverted into a dreadful weapon. While TWOK has more action, it also deals with some lofty philosophies. Things like how vengeance is self-defeating, how to grow old gracefully, and how to appreciate the fabric of one's life.
Having said that, you couldn't have had TWOK without TMP, esp. the sets and the new Enterprise. So in a strange way, they are twisted mirror reflections of one another. That's how I see it, anyway.
Red Ranger
Some of you know TMP isn't my favorite ST film. That singular honor goes to TWOK precisely because it wasn't TMP.
Don't get me wrong -- TMP is superior to a lot of the ST movies. It has a grand scale and a challenging, intellectual plot where the search for God is the cornerstone of the movie. If you think about it, the three main characters -- Kirk, Spock, and V'Ger -- start out looking for one thing and finding something else.
But I disagree that some of the other ST movies aren't real SF. In TWOK, we have Genesis, surely a grand, lofty plan to solve the problems of population and food supply. Like nuclear power, it is instead perverted into a dreadful weapon. While TWOK has more action, it also deals with some lofty philosophies. Things like how vengeance is self-defeating, how to grow old gracefully, and how to appreciate the fabric of one's life.
Having said that, you couldn't have had TWOK without TMP, esp. the sets and the new Enterprise. So in a strange way, they are twisted mirror reflections of one another. That's how I see it, anyway.
Red Ranger
No offense, but that misses the whole point of the movie. Kirk and Spock had lost touch with what made them "human" (for lack of a better term in Spock's case). In the course of the film they realized this, came to terms with it, and became happier, more fulfilled people. V'Ger's story was a parallel that helped illustrate Kirk and Spock's predicament, besides motivating the plot. The fact that the two main characters were allowed to have personal difficulties and grow in the course of the film does not seem like a bad thing to me. The alternative is to say that the main characters should always be the same and proceed like automatons through the plot like a bunch of Steve McGarrets. Likewise the villain. Does there always have to be a baddie we can hiss and throw popcorn at? Of course one may disagree with how well they executed the story and the final product, but to say that the fundamentals were flawed from the beginning seems to call for a very limiting, formulaic kind of film.
Cameos in movies usually don't involve calling overt attention to the character.
Like it or not, miniskirts didn't seem to be part of the dress code.
TOS, though certainly successful as reruns, was not yet considered a "franchise," and appealing to hard-core TOS fans was never a major consideration in making the movie. They were far too small an audience segment to worry about.
Though Star Wars had an action cliffhanger every 10 minutes, at the time it was seen more as opening the door for big science fiction movies than providing an inviolable blueprint. TMP followed more in the footsteps of 2001, which, though many people call it boring, was a big success at the box office, one of the top two or three movies of its year (as was TMP). Alien and The Black Hole, also seen as "cashing in" on SW's success around the same time as TMP, followed a different path, based more on horror.
Aside from all that, TOS itself had a fair share of quieter, more conceptual, less action-oriented episodes.
TMP certainly had its flaws and a lot of people don't like it, but I think the criticisms in the OP have more to do with hindsight, seeing how TMP is viewed now and what later movie audiences are like. What the producers knew or could have known in 1978 is very different.
I don't know the ins and outs of what happened at Paramount between TMP and TWOK, but I do know that at the time there was a general concern in Hollywood that movie budgets were snowballing out of all proportion, to the point that a flop could ruin a studio. And Paramount felt that the TMP production had pretty nearly run out of control, and a new team was needed that could keep a tighter rein and run a tighter budget. The new team brought their own ideas, TWOK was the result, and it was also very successful (though IIRC it grossed about the same as TMP in box office, it was more profitable), and also a fine movie IMO.
--Justin
Despite the fact it's considered to be the most thought provoking, cerebral, and esoteric of the bunch.
I think we have varying differences of opinion. 
Screenwriting 101: I think the third act problems really hurt the film.
Spock should have been the one to join with VGER, as a payoff to his story arc. Kirk's arc needed a big payoff that ideally would have paralleled Spock's. Decker (by what we see of him in the first & second acts) didn't earn his payoff at the end.
Spock should have been the one to join with VGER, as a payoff to his story arc. Kirk's arc needed a big payoff that ideally would have paralleled Spock's. Decker (by what we see of him in the first & second acts) didn't earn his payoff at the end.
I agree that Spock joining with V'Ger makes sense but what would that leave Kirk with?
Y'know, given that TMP was made in reaction to Star Wars, in hindsight I'm much more surprised (and pleased) that TMP was made more in the vein of 2001 than Star Wars, as the movie inspired so many other, lesser rip-off movies at the time. It could've been so easy for TMP to fall down that route of direct copycat but didn't.
I'm not saying that it worked per se, but it was a gutsy decision for a first outing.
I'm not saying that it worked per se, but it was a gutsy decision for a first outing.
TMP was in pre-production as, invariably, a medium budget motion picture, a TV series revival, a telemovie, and back to a series before "Star Wars" came out and caused Paramount to scratch around for something to rival it - and therefore upped ST to big budget motion picture status.
ST didn't do its salute to SW until the "cantina with aliens" scene in ST III.
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