Your favorite movie and why?

Does anyone feel like the actors in both the latter TOS movies and latter TNG movies are just a bit too old for the roles they're in? Or did I just condemn myself to a painful death by a violent mob...

 

They needed to get as close to 100 episodes as possible for strip syndication. I imagine that drove the decision to green-light season four far more than the letter writing campaign. Heck, I didn't even know there was a letter-writing campaign after season three, and I was a member here.

 

It's hard to find information about it online as most search efforts will take you to the fan campaign after season 4 which had a lot of media coverage.

Everyone says that the letter writing campaign of TOS brought the show back for another season. That is, everyone except William Shatter.

 

I don't know, I always thought it was the best of Trek movies and still is.

 

I think it's a little bit of both. When I was young watching TMP was like being condemned to death by boredom. Now that I'm older I've appreciated it much more and it's easily in my top 3 Trek movies. I love that TMP doesn't have another villain bent on revenge or destruction but there is actual exploration of the unknown.

 

Can't decide between TMP and TWOK as my personal favourite. Depends on what mood I'm in wether or not I watch either one.

 

I know I said this on page one, but I saw TMP on TV when I was 8-9 years old and was totally entranced by it. I got scared when Spock went EVA and thought he was going crazy or something. Years later when I heard some of the titles of Star Trek movies, I thought "The Search for Spock" was the film that I had seen.

The only other movie I saw as a child was "Generations" in the theatre. TNG was a weekly family affair back then. I would have been 10 or 11 when the film came out. I never saw any of the other movies until my early 20's, and still haven't seen Insurrection, Beyond, or all of The Final Frontier and Nemesis.

For me, the TV shows is where it's at. I'm sure I've seen every episode of every series by now. I probably have a bit of Nostalgia for TMP.

 

Hard to decide really. There's still a lot of folk who label it 'the Motionless Picture' and from what I've seen in my few years on these boards I would say there's quite a few people who take this view of the film, but, as this thread alone proves, they appear to be in a minority. I've definitely grown to appreciate it more and more down the years, especially on a technical level. I find it hard to divorce my feelings from nostalgia though as it was my first visit to the cinema aged 5 to see this film, that being said, I loved TWOK probably even more when I saw that on the big screen, and have watched it more times from that point, probably into three figures, whereas TMP maybe half as much? They are so different in style and tone, but both excellent in my view. TMP is without doubt the most impressive technically, and much more ambitious in it's scope and visuals. It really is still even today, an epic movie, the likes of which we'll probably never see again, in the Trek universe at least.

 

I can't tell if you're taking the piss or not.

 

I'm shocked. It's a familiar term in these parts.

 

I did. I'll face the mob with you.

 

Not at all. The fact that they're all getting older is, to me, at the heart of all of the TOS films. I loved it. I thought it gave those movies an emotional and challenging undercurrent. Some of the most memorable scenes in those films are about them aging -- in WOK when Bones talks to Kirk in his apartment about retirement, at the end of TUC with that final Kirk speech, in TMP when Spock talks about "This simple feeling" which is rooted in years of friendship and service with Kirk, or the ethical personal dilemma Kirk has with his need for adventure and fear of becoming obsolete, etc. Those are powerful moments. The TOS films are just one great big arc for the original crew as they move into retirement and have to let go, giving the next generation (literally and figuratively) the reins.

 

I suppose you can see it both ways, yes they were arguably too old for the roles if we're parallelling, say our military of the day, but then you could argue that being in your 60's in the 23rd century is like being 40 now. Critically, yes I think they started to look too old to pull of the roles from TVH onwards really - but not all the cast. Doohan and Kelly aged the worse, but they were the oldest out of the group I believe. Shatner, more or less pulled it off throughout for me bar his weight, plus he was the senior officer, so you'd expect to see someone older in command, Nimoy I can give a pass too as he was playing an alien that lives a lot longer than we do in-universe, Takei and Koenig both aged pretty well and didn't really start to look past it til TUC IMO, Nichols by TFF, damn this could be a thread all on it's own.

That being said, I agree with you, in the fact that their ageing was integral to the TOS movies, was a major plot point in TWOK and TUC, and a source of humour too. It really gave the cast a big screen journey that the TNG movies couldn't dream of. It's part of their appeal to me, whereas the TNG films just feel like self contained episodes without any continuity. The only time the TNG films really got close to this kind of thing was the wedding in Nemesis, which a lot of people dislike, but I found to be surprisingly moving.

 

I haven't seen Nemesis since it first opened, but I recall liking the wedding scene.

By coincidence, I had just watched Attack of the Clones the night before and I remember thinking that the dialogue and relationships in the wedding scene felt much more natural and less stilted than the "romantic" scenes in Clones.

 

If you value your safety, you should know better than to use the "M" word around here...

 

The Search For Spock. I think it's just a lovely film. It really shows the Enterprise crew as the close knit group that we know or want them to be: A family. It's full of great character moments (everyone gets their moment in the limelight), and some really hard-hitting emotional punches: Sarek and Kirk's mind meld (Shatner's best acting, in my opinion); Saavik helping Spock with his Pon Farr; the death of David (Shatner's second best moment); the death of the Enterprise; the resurrection of Spock.
Plus, the Star Trek universe is really opened up in this film: so many new ships, space stations, locations. Yes, there are some clunky bits and cheap-looking sets, but I think these are far outweighed by everything else. And: Robin Curtis is my favourite Saavik!
Wonderful!

 

TFF and Nemesis are both getting no love on this thread.

Good.

For me, it's a toss-up between Wrath of Khan, Undiscovered Country, and Beyond. Whichever one is first, First Contact is second. It's good, but to be brutally honest none of the TNG movies were as good as the good TOS movies.