Moments that really made you cringe or disliked

the Kobyashi Maru bit added to the film. Like others have said, it gave an edge to the Kirk/Spock dynamic, More directly it was referenced later when Kirk winked at SpockPrime: "You know, coming back in time, giving us this information, that's... cheating."

 

Star wars stands up well, I disgree with you concerning the editing, on the original the scene cuts were abrupt, dialog cut were substandard as well.

Abrams found his nitch with TV, maybe the two hour movie just isn't his field, Alias viewed as a whole was excellent, "spy girl" was my mothers favorite show. And a staple in my home.

Ilia was sexy? Sir admit it, PK had the body of a boy, compare her uniform to Uhura's. There was no movement to her ass, or excitement in her voice. And yes, i ment pre-Ilia-bot.

We understand.

.

 

Why, thank you. It's not so much about thought, though; more aesthetic revulsion. In my case, at least.

Given that Kubrick's discarded outtakes would be of higher quality than most filmmakers' entire professional output, I'll take that remark as a great compliment. It's funny that people that dislike "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" tend to compare it to "2001: A Space Odyssey", as if that's meant as an insult to one or both pictures. If it's contrived to somehow be analogous to saying that ST:TMP is pompous and dull, I can only dissent, on behalf of Stanley Kubrick and Robert Wise, not to mention every other creative talent involved in the conception and production of both features. Not only is "2001" arguably the greatest motion picture ever created, but ST:TMP doesn't ape it (pardon the pun) or remotely resemble it (in my opinion). Structurally, tonally, stylistically, they are light years apart.

Well, maybe it's an exaggeration to say that ST:TMP doesn't "remotely resemble" "2001"; in some ways, it seems similar, but in a polemical sense, as if it's refuting or holding up a mirror to the earlier film. Consider their resounding climaxes. In "2001", a human being sheds his corporeal form to undergo a dazzling transformation; in ST:TMP, the same basic thing happens, but by very different means, for a very different purpose. Although there are deeper readings of the films that may contest my own, I'm going to be simplistic here and assert the following: in "2001", a human being undertakes a solitary journey provoked by an external force; in ST:TMP, a human being joins with a human-machine intelligence, itself evolved from a comparatively simple machine of human origin, and the human being does this as a solution to the conflict between personal desire and social duty. The former's transformation occurred through innate curiosity teased forward by a seemingly alien force, while the latter's is a result of latent, insoluble desire, portended specifically by his love for another, and consciously embraced as an act that satisfies multiple parties (which also reflects its real-world inception, allowing for a rich meta critique, which I won't delve into here).

Why is such analysis important? Maybe it isn't, but I hold that the endings to both movies allow us to understand the films' inner objectives and the scope and nature of their concerns. By definition, ST:TMP is a much "warmer" picture; human beings are afforded a primacy of place in the cosmos, while "2001" seems to imply the inevitability of ascension, and it repeatedly stresses the feeble nature of our bodies in space; a place we are destined to explore, but also a place, suggests "2001", that may require a kind of transubstantiation. "2001" seems unapologetic about our frailties and weaknesses, and is very clinical in its depiction of the human individuals that grace its tableaux; an intellectual attitude that continues to alienate some viewers and leaves them feeling detached (but that is the point, I think); ST:TMP, however, willfully embraces the human heart, the human mind, the continual push-pull tension between logic and emotion, passion and reason, and does a manner of things, powerfully embodied in its marriage of visuals and music, in particular (consider Ilia's Theme, which is used as an overture, or the Main Theme, which is played as a sensual waltz when Kirk sees the Enterprise, inexorably linking one to the other), and also in details ranging from the macroscopic (e.g. Spock's burgeoning realisation of the vacuity of "total logic" tied inextricably to V'Ger itself; in many senses, the corollary of Kirk and his attachment to the Enterprise) to the small (e.g. the "reassuring hand" motif that occurs when Scotty is reassuring Kirk, when Kirk embraces McCoy and when Spock clasps Kirk's hand after his meld with V'Ger). Finally, we journey back to the endings. In both films, new life has been created, but only in ST:TMP do humans still remain a part of the picture, and only in ST:TMP does a very particular declaration flash up: "The human adventure is just beginning".

To bring this to a close, yes, ST:TMP might seem overly ponderous and "full of itself" next to most films, to say nothing of the staggering contrast between it and the other ST movies, but remarks that aim to denigrate its scale and beauty, most of all when they're wrought to suggest that ST:TMP is a poor man's "2001", are, to my mind, not only specious, but absurd. I guess that we'll have to agree to disagree.

I don't just look to be entertained; I look to be engaged. "Entertainment" is something of a dirty word to me, especially when it's applied to the elevated realm of cinema. Entertainment is an art form, but the full range of its meaning has been horribly debased in recent years, so I tend not to use it out of fear of activating my gag reflex, never mind anything else. Again, we'll have to agree to disagree. To each, their own, indeed.

 

You know... as much as I love this movie, I can't say any of the points above are off-base. That is why the follow-up movie has to be much tighter and well thought out or else we'll be re-booting again in five years' time.

 

He had a phaser at his hip. So did Kirk before he mindlessly charged the emerging Romulan instead of shooting him, only to decide to draw his phaser mid-fight and get it slapped out of his hand.

For fuck's sake, they wouldn't have even have had to land on the thing. A hand phaser or three could have destroyed that drill platform with a single flyby.

 

And a sword already in his hand, which he's probably more familiar with than a phaser in an actual fight (unless the Academy runs 'Lazer Quest'-style training scenarios with 'marker' phasers against other cadets to simulate combat). When in combats like that, use the weapon you're more familiar and find easier to use instinctively.

Or maybe he should have just used both, how awesome would that be?

Admiteddly, that was pretty stupid, though he did hit hard with that helmet. Wonder what they make those things out of

Well considering that a sustained barrage by two assault rifle stye disruptors at point blank range only disabled it, and it required a barrage of cannon fire from the Jellyfish to actually destroy it, just relying on hand phasers being fired by airborne humans with no targetting assists at the rate they were falling seems incredibly stupid, even by the standards of stupidity people are assigning to the characters' actions in this movie

 

1. Just before the sword fight starts, Sulu is standing 10 feet away from the Romulan with the axe-mace. I don't care if he's a 10th level ninja samurai and only just picked up his first phaser that day - he could've made an instant kill with zero effort, and they were on the clock.

2. Yes, it was stupid.

3. A hand phaser at its maximum setting can crack a mountain in half, and they had parachutes to slow them down. The weakening of Trek weapons really ticks me off - a hand phaser should be more like EVE's blaster from WALL-E than the pea-shooter we got.

 

True, but what's more fun and dramatic to watch? A non ranged fight with funky close combat weapons in a franchise that repeatedly seemed to just rely on 'cross your hands to make double sized fist', or a second or so of Sulu just popping out a phaser and downing the Romulan?

Can't even do that scene as a funny, Indiana Jones already did that

Woohoo! Consensus!
Can't really say

I'll get back to this point when I've had more time to think about it.

 

Totally agree. If Pine had just emulated that Kirk smile (eg from Space Seed each time he frustrated Khan) while eating the apple, that would have have won the scene.

 

Sulu simply shooting him would have been better.



And why didn't the Enterprise simply fire everything she had at that drill?

 

Better how? Realism/pragmatically probably. Dramatic? Hardly

Because she had already taken a beating from the Narada, i.e. the ship the drill is attached to and still watching the Enterprise.

 

Once again, great analysis! I have to say, a good analysis is one from which the reader has actually learned something, and I must admit I'd not looked at ST:TMP in this light before—so I feel like I did learn something. Thank you!

I just wanted to clarify a couple of my intentions:

I agree, Kubrick is one of the greats. I was only attempting to insult ST:TMP, not 2001, which I think is revolutionary.

I will wholeheartedly admit to being a fully-brainwashed member of the MTV generation (more on relevance of this to my opinions below), which means that suffer from the same "Video ADD" that many of my "Gen X" compatriots do. I need fast cuts in order to continually engage my 20 second attention span. 2001 did not offer fast cuts, but it's beauty is completely hypnotic. ST:TMP seems like it was attempting to do that, but to me, failed. Some cases in point:

* 2001 begins with about 5 minutes of music against a blank screen. I'd never seen that before, and to be honest, doesn't capture me. But it was a unique feature of the film. That ST:TMP is the only other movie I've seen that does that, to me indicates a cheap attempt to stylistically echo or copy a superior movie. And if it didn't capture me in 2001, it flat out pissed me off in ST:TMP. I couldn't hit the FF button on my remote fast enough.

Moreover, the vibrant, energetic march of Jerry Goldsmith's theme for ST:TMP is so disconnected from the actual pacing of the movie itself that I felt this music actually worked against the film; it creates an opening expectation for an uptempo film, the music being uptempo. When in fact the film itself moves at the pace of paint drying.

* Speaking of the music, this is another minor detail that pulled me out of the film, but I'm a musician, that's my excuse (I used to teach college English in my full leather and spikes). Music is very often used to set the mood, and also very often musical themes follow characters. But every time something unexplained either happened or was being discussed, there was this jarring percussive synth bass "BWOOOOOOAAAAAAAM" accompanying it. It got to the point that we were inventing dialog:

"Captain, what could explain this anomaly?"
"BWOOOAAAAAAAAAAM"
"Must be V'Ger...can't you hear the bass?"

I am a huge fan of the late, great Bob Moog and appreciate the tribute to him in the soundtrack, but to my sensibility that was overdone enough to pull me out of the movie. By contrast, I found the music in 2001 perfectly selected and mesmerizing.

* The characterizations of the "big three" were really stiff. I'm thinking of the scene of Kirk and Bones reuniting after a time off when McCoy first beams on board. It's as if 13+ years of being friends is lost and they're starting over.

And then there's Kirk/Spock. Okay, Spock spent years on Vulcan going to Yeshiva and learning Logic, so I can understand that he was less touchy feely than he was in TOS. But you would think that again, after being friends for 13+ years, he would at least explain at their first meeting "Captain, please understand, I've spent years purging my emotions. I value our relationship as much as ever, but this is the new me." Instead he just comes off as an automaton.

I think 2001 had it easier on this count, as the characters were not known from other works. So I didn't compare them to any previous incarnations. However, I would say that I felt the characters rang true to me, whereas in ST:TMP I felt that the big three really didn't. (I feel it took STII to bring the "characterizations" back to the TOS personalities).

In the case of Spock and McCoy, I would go so far as to say that in my opinion STXI was more "true" to the spirit of the personalities in TOS than was ST:TMP.

* Finally:

I find that description particularly apt, as my wife and I jokingly referred to that as the "money shot." (for those not familiar, a porn term). In 2001, I felt the long, slow shots of space and ships were hypnotic. But I felt the overlong focus on the Enterprise in ST:TMP was a lame attempt to make boys who wanted to see a new Enterprise feel tingly down there. They could have cut the scene in half and had the same effect, while keeping the movie moving along at a faster pace. Again, I felt it was an attempt to stylistically "attach" itself to 2001 that fell short.

I'll be the first to admit that these are all stylistic, not really philosophical complaints. But then if a movie doesn't move me, I generally won't give it the time to unravel its message. 2001 did, ST:TMP did not. I will completely admit that I've never looked at ST:TMP in the light you have shown it, you have inspired me to rewatch it and look at it in a new light.

 

I just had flashes of Pike sacrificing himself by crashing his shuttle into the drill, saving the entire planet because Nero wouldn't have been able to use the Red Matter.

 

Allow me to address these ...

Actually, I found it pretty funny, and it added a sense of energy to the scene, keeping things light.

Kirk likely had several antagonistic encounters, and Uhura was surprised at not being assigned. As far as Kirk was concerned, she was on board, as she likely would have told him in passing.

Well, she's used to people, even in other languages, speaking mostly without impedement.

Starfleet doesn't post guards like on a Romulan ship, and he probably had security clearance since he was in Starfleet, Cadet or not.

Because he was thinking about an emergency situation, not Kirk's father and a dissertation he wrote a while back. I'm a coder, and I can't remember code I wrote even 1 year ago without getting more than mention of an exception.

She probably passed the information further up the chain of command, and the big event for Starfleet seems to be in the Laurentian System, so a prisoner escape, along with the destruction of many Klingon ships, may not have made major headlines.

Now this is something you have to be paying such close attention to to notice, and for something so badly blocked and edited, I found it very effective.

Pike ordered Shields Up and Red Alert, since whatever was happening at Vulcan had to be dealt with. It was a decision made very quickly once they established a probable attack, and if anyone required assistance, it was likely to be of the emergency kind, where contacting starfleet would take too much time and likely cost lives, and not just Starfleet.

Actually, what was scraped off was NOT from the saucer, but one of the Nacelles, and may have been surface plating. The maneuver probably had to be done so quick that the Enterprise may not have been able to maneuver fast enough.

Forward is the direction the Enterprise is heading in, auxiliary power was likely used to supplement mains power, and the power from one Nacelle was probably sufficient. Also, the Aux power may refer to power extracted from the hydrogen collectors at the front of the Nacelles.

You sir, are nitpicking to an unreasonable extreme, with a level of scrutiny that NO dramatic presentation can ever hope to pass.

In your case, Shatner's SNL statement of "Get A Life" might actually be applicable.

 

OK, I loved the movie and enjoyed it immensely. However, should I ever stop to think about the premise, it may begin to bug me.
A Romulan miner who loves his homeworld sees it in danger. Evidently only one fellow (Spock) offers a solution that even has ahope of working. His attempt fails, and the world is destroyed. The aforementioned Romulan miner then loses it and decides that he simply must kill the only guy who even tried to help. He somehow manages to take a mining ship back in time and in retaliation for a well-meant attempt that failed, attempts to destroy all worlds related to Spock.

Then a guy who cheated on his Academy test and should not have been on any Fleet ship in the first place, not only ends up on such a ship, but is made interim captain by an actual captain who earned his rank and should probably know better.

Also, even if Spock's solution had worked, would it not have sucked up the Romulan sun, in which case the Romulan homeworld and all of its inhabitants would have quickly frozen to death anyway?

What did I miss? I sneezedonce or twice in the cold theatre in which I watched this film. Did I miss some critical bits during those sneezes?

And once again, let me reiterate that I did completely love watching this movie, and I realize it is only a movie, but someone *did* ask if anything about it bothered us....

 

Once again, and if I didn't articulate it fully before: my thanks.

You'll have to excuse me for being blunt now, but hopefully, it's not without reasonable context. There are some factual errors you made, which I desire to correct, so bluntness may be apropos, and I also don't want to divert this thread too far from its course, which, if I keep blathering on about ST:TMP, I may do.

Without further ado:

"2001" does not begin that way. It starts with a musical overture, "Thus Sprake Zarathustra", by composer Richard Strauss, recalling the philosophical work by Nietzsche, and this music is set to geometry/imagery (the Earth, the moon and the sun), and this lasts for just over a minute, before the film essentially "begins". Musical overtures used as film overtures precede "2001" by several decades. ST:TMP was not copying "2001", but was merely continuing a rich cinematic tradition consistent with its epic style. Other famous films with overtures, older than "2001", include: "King Kong" (1933), "Gone With The Wind" (1939), "Ben-Hur" (1959) and "Lawrence Of Arabia" (1962). ST:TMP's director, Robert Wise, had even used an overture for one of his earlier films, "West Side Story" (1961). Sorry to say, but you seem very ignorant of film history.

The instrument you describe was not "percussive synth bass", but a brand new instrument in its own right (a innovation that should have helped net Jerry Goldsmith's astonishing score the Oscar, but I digress). Designed by Craig Huxley, it was dubbed "The Blaster Beam", and was a 15-foot long narrow metal box, equipped with low, electronically-amplified piano strings, played by striking the strings with a polished artillery shell casing and mallet. Here is a video of the creator demonstrating his baby:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=4672638#video_details

In my opinion, your perception of the film is mired by your lack of knowledge and understanding, which is all too common. I don't mean to sound rude, but your comments about the film's style, its music and its characters do not inspire me with confidence; I doubt you'll enjoy ST:TMP any more than you did before. Good luck, though.

 

Heh heh, that's been bugging me forever too. Everyone tries to tell me that the death of his family made Nero go bugnuts insane somehow, but I'm just not buying it-- at least the way it's presented in the movie.

Certainly, after 25 long years, it should start to dawn on him that "oh yeah, Spock actually tried to HELP save my world!"

I mean, Khan holding a grudge against Kirk all those years I understand. Kirk was the one who marooned him on the planet (not to mention the fact Khan was an egocentric madman from the start). But the vendetta here just doesn't ring true nearly as well.

 

ummmm.....What Cryogenic said!

Seriously, though, excellent comments!

 

So far, there are 10 pages of comments in regards to the scenes that are deemed 'cringe worthy'.

Although there are some people who are truly nitpicking, the majority of the comments deal with problems involving major parts of the plot in the movie. This begs the question, do people continue to still believe that the storyline was well written?

If anything, this thread has put a glaring spotlight on the foundations of this movie.