Medved also thinks the movie "Happy Feet" pushes a pro-gay message. Literally no one in the world should take anything this nut says seriously.
And Star Trek V failed because...
- Thread starter Zaku
- Start date
Star Trek V was disastrous for many reasons -- Shatner's amateurish production, Paramount's reluctance to fully market the film, Bran Ferren's laughable SFX, and so forth. It was a mediocre movie in a summer of mediocre movies. Had the SFX been better, it would have been no worse than Star Trek III, but the movie was unfortunate enough to not just be a bad idea but be executed very badly. I don't recall anyone being upset about the religious overtones of the film, as I don't remember much of anyone taking it seriously. I was in college at the time, doing film reviews for the student newspaper and studying journalism, among other things. So, I kept my attention on what many of the writers of the day were saying.
Michael Medved is a right wing sophist. I don't know if he believes a lot of the crap he says, but I listen to his show on the local FM mouthpiece for conservatives. He says what one would expect, as they all seem to get their talking points out of some kind of central headquarters. (I'm a political independent, but I teach writing for a living, so I like to listen to argument, even if some of them are rife with illogic.)
Michael Medved is a right wing sophist. I don't know if he believes a lot of the crap he says, but I listen to his show on the local FM mouthpiece for conservatives. He says what one would expect, as they all seem to get their talking points out of some kind of central headquarters. (I'm a political independent, but I teach writing for a living, so I like to listen to argument, even if some of them are rife with illogic.)
1.Lousy plot where the ending was preordained in the first 10 mins, what were they going to have them do? discover the thing on the planet REALLY was God and the crew of the Enterprise was going to solve perhaps the greatest mystery of all mankind. "Well we found God and proved he exists" I mean where can you really go from there as a series if that was the case. Every episode TNG, DS9 and VOY when they were in
real trouble could have just said "Hey let's get God involved in this, after all we know where he is now and can just send him a subspace message asking for help."
2. Shatner's script clearly trying to make himself look like he was 35 years younger with all his macho shit (Free climbing El Cap.....give me a break. You know how many younger, stronger and experienced rock climbers won't even think of trying that) and whoever did his makeup should never work in the industry again. He looked like a freaking geisha is some shots.
3. Shatner also making himself look like he's the only rational person on the Enterprise where everyone else, including Spock to some degree, are weak minded fools who are just willing to abandon their oath and committments they've made to starfleet for decades not because some hippy vulcan can "Feel their pain. Still don't understand how every member of the crew, except perhaps McCoy wasn't charged with mutiny.
4. Silly pie in your face style jokes instead of the more subtle,
smarter humor we'd come to expect from Star Trek.
5. A fat, old Uhura doing an exotic fan dance. Couldn't they have paid Kathy Ireland or some other supermodel of the time a shitload of money for a cameo as an extra crewmember who went on the rescue attempt and then tell HER "We need a distraction, go and take your clothes off and dance around with fans." Don't think too many fans would have minded
that scene"
6. Stupidest Klingon ever in Klaa. Seemed to personally hate Kirk for some reason (like some extremely weak version of Khan) and wanted to beat Kirk and the Enterprise to show "He's the best" What was going to happen if he did? Was he going to be appointed leader of the Klingons or something for a completely unprovoked and pointless attack on a Federation starship .
7. Totally contrived plot devices like Spock having a half brother he never mentioned to Kirk in their 20+ years of friendship. A great barrier that noone seemed to have the slightest interest in exploring until now, especially when it didn't seem all that hard to get through.
8. Special effects done by some guy in a wearhouse in Jersey and, in some cases, you could argue looked worse than the effects on episodes of TOS. I think it had been pretty much established since "Star Wars" that if you're going to do a sci-fi film the effects had better be pretty good because that was what audience expected now. For God sakes Spaceballs had better SFX.
9. Absolutely no explanation as why the Enterprise-A wasn't working well. I mean it had been a little while since TOS crew took command and it still wasn't fully functional. The 1701 refit was a totally brand new untried ship in TMP and except for the warp engines, which they fixed pretty quickly, it had no problems. They were able to get it fixed up and working well after it got the shit beat out of it by Khan.
Why was 1701-A a total lemon apparently?
10. The fact it made the crew look they had no lives besides each other. I mean they get shore leave and all decide to go camping at Yosomite together. Don't you think at least one member might say "I haven't seem mom in a little while" or "I just need to get away from work and relax on Waikiki alone or try and meet a girl (unless your Sulu) for a week. Even TNG had enough sense to have crew members seem to need a break away from everyone once in a while and go away
somewhere without the other six tagging along.
11. Finally the fact it was a self indulgent, self glorifing tribute to the greatness that is William Shatner. I like Shatner and the fact he's always embraced the Kirk character and the opportunities it gave him, unlike Nimoy who bitched for years about being known as Spock despite the fact it brought him great fame, wealth and power and millions of wanna be actors out there would switched places with him in a second and,
until he mellowed out about it sometime in the 1980's, you would have thought Nimoy was gotten screwed over by Hollywood his whole life the way he carried on. I also like how
by many accounts Shatner seems to be approachable and generally good to fans and he's not afraid to be the butt of self deperecating humor as he's shown several times and he's generous with charities including the America Tinnitus Association, something he has and I unfortunately have in common with him. And he often has kids out to his horse farm in Kentucky to let them experience horse riding and raising. Plus the guy is an absolutely a non stop bundle of energy. He could have retired years ago and sat on his farm raising his horses and drinking mint julips every day, yet it seems every other week I read the news and there's some new project involving William Shatner, and the guy is freaking 80!!!!!!
But it's no secret that he has a high degree of vanity and an ego the size of the Enterprise and he's never been shy about making sure the spotlight falls on him and foremost even if his co stars suffer as a result of it (In his defense he's acknowledged these traits and says he just gets carried away with his passion for what he does and really never meant to hurt anyone) and he has engaged in high profile feuds with Doohan abd Takei plus all the cast, except Kelley as far as I know, have had conflicts and bitter feelings towards him at some point.In TFF he finally got the chance to officially call the shots and unlike Nimoy.ho strove to make the best pic possible and make Spock a part of the bigger story in his director stints, Shatner saw the chance to make sure he got to make Kirk look every bit the most awesome man in
history and he took it and absolutely ran with it.....and the results speak for themselves.
Other than that it was a pretty good film.
real trouble could have just said "Hey let's get God involved in this, after all we know where he is now and can just send him a subspace message asking for help."
2. Shatner's script clearly trying to make himself look like he was 35 years younger with all his macho shit (Free climbing El Cap.....give me a break. You know how many younger, stronger and experienced rock climbers won't even think of trying that) and whoever did his makeup should never work in the industry again. He looked like a freaking geisha is some shots.
3. Shatner also making himself look like he's the only rational person on the Enterprise where everyone else, including Spock to some degree, are weak minded fools who are just willing to abandon their oath and committments they've made to starfleet for decades not because some hippy vulcan can "Feel their pain. Still don't understand how every member of the crew, except perhaps McCoy wasn't charged with mutiny.
4. Silly pie in your face style jokes instead of the more subtle,
smarter humor we'd come to expect from Star Trek.
5. A fat, old Uhura doing an exotic fan dance. Couldn't they have paid Kathy Ireland or some other supermodel of the time a shitload of money for a cameo as an extra crewmember who went on the rescue attempt and then tell HER "We need a distraction, go and take your clothes off and dance around with fans." Don't think too many fans would have minded
that scene"
6. Stupidest Klingon ever in Klaa. Seemed to personally hate Kirk for some reason (like some extremely weak version of Khan) and wanted to beat Kirk and the Enterprise to show "He's the best" What was going to happen if he did? Was he going to be appointed leader of the Klingons or something for a completely unprovoked and pointless attack on a Federation starship .
7. Totally contrived plot devices like Spock having a half brother he never mentioned to Kirk in their 20+ years of friendship. A great barrier that noone seemed to have the slightest interest in exploring until now, especially when it didn't seem all that hard to get through.
8. Special effects done by some guy in a wearhouse in Jersey and, in some cases, you could argue looked worse than the effects on episodes of TOS. I think it had been pretty much established since "Star Wars" that if you're going to do a sci-fi film the effects had better be pretty good because that was what audience expected now. For God sakes Spaceballs had better SFX.
9. Absolutely no explanation as why the Enterprise-A wasn't working well. I mean it had been a little while since TOS crew took command and it still wasn't fully functional. The 1701 refit was a totally brand new untried ship in TMP and except for the warp engines, which they fixed pretty quickly, it had no problems. They were able to get it fixed up and working well after it got the shit beat out of it by Khan.
Why was 1701-A a total lemon apparently?
10. The fact it made the crew look they had no lives besides each other. I mean they get shore leave and all decide to go camping at Yosomite together. Don't you think at least one member might say "I haven't seem mom in a little while" or "I just need to get away from work and relax on Waikiki alone or try and meet a girl (unless your Sulu) for a week. Even TNG had enough sense to have crew members seem to need a break away from everyone once in a while and go away
somewhere without the other six tagging along.
11. Finally the fact it was a self indulgent, self glorifing tribute to the greatness that is William Shatner. I like Shatner and the fact he's always embraced the Kirk character and the opportunities it gave him, unlike Nimoy who bitched for years about being known as Spock despite the fact it brought him great fame, wealth and power and millions of wanna be actors out there would switched places with him in a second and,
until he mellowed out about it sometime in the 1980's, you would have thought Nimoy was gotten screwed over by Hollywood his whole life the way he carried on. I also like how
by many accounts Shatner seems to be approachable and generally good to fans and he's not afraid to be the butt of self deperecating humor as he's shown several times and he's generous with charities including the America Tinnitus Association, something he has and I unfortunately have in common with him. And he often has kids out to his horse farm in Kentucky to let them experience horse riding and raising. Plus the guy is an absolutely a non stop bundle of energy. He could have retired years ago and sat on his farm raising his horses and drinking mint julips every day, yet it seems every other week I read the news and there's some new project involving William Shatner, and the guy is freaking 80!!!!!!
But it's no secret that he has a high degree of vanity and an ego the size of the Enterprise and he's never been shy about making sure the spotlight falls on him and foremost even if his co stars suffer as a result of it (In his defense he's acknowledged these traits and says he just gets carried away with his passion for what he does and really never meant to hurt anyone) and he has engaged in high profile feuds with Doohan abd Takei plus all the cast, except Kelley as far as I know, have had conflicts and bitter feelings towards him at some point.In TFF he finally got the chance to officially call the shots and unlike Nimoy.ho strove to make the best pic possible and make Spock a part of the bigger story in his director stints, Shatner saw the chance to make sure he got to make Kirk look every bit the most awesome man in
history and he took it and absolutely ran with it.....and the results speak for themselves.
Other than that it was a pretty good film.
Several people tried to convince Shatner about the futility of "searching for God" in STV, but he would not be dismayed. And the end result was a movie that continues to divide Trekdom to this day and beyond.
It is a very flawed, but entertaining movie.
No, because the whole premise is stupid and insulting. It presumes that all the guards are:
- Male
- Heterosexual
- Horny
- Idiots
The Original Series cast had paved the way for Gene Roddenberry's pièce de résistance: The Next Generation. And for that, they deserved a far more fitting farewell than either STAR TREK V, or VI could offer. The movie reason STAR TREK V really failed, as far as I'm concerned is because it was superfluous. The Voyage Home, as corny as that was, at least gave the TOS crew a fitting ending: showing the crew getting back to what they've always done, having adventures, saving the universe and all that jazz. Only ... leaving the rest to the imagination. It wasn't necessary to actually witness anymore of those said adventures, it was just best to end on that kind of a high note. But no, "they" kept milking STAR TREK for every last quarter they could squeeze out of it. Not that I really blame them, I guess, but artistically, it's pure shite. And STAR TREK V had nothing to "say," really, other than "you just gotta love James T. Kirk!" No ... the time for the Old Soldiers to fade was definitely by the end of STAR TREK IV.
I got reminded of this train-wreck again today and (as always) it really makes me dislike Shatner. If there is one person who absolutely doesn't get Trek, it is Shatner (who I'm not sure is able to comprehend anything else either).
First, Shatner didn't understand Kirk... nor did he ever want to. Shatner saw Kirk as a chance to project himself into a hero role. In season one of TOS we had Captain Kirk, but by season three we started to see more and more of Captain Shatner. One of the things I dislike about the new movies is that they decided to play up Captain Shatner rather than sticking with the actual Kirk character. After all, Kirk isn't a womanizer, Shatner is! And most important, Kirk is a genius (smarter than Spock), and Shatner isn't and can't write/direct the Kirk character because he doesn't have any experience being that bright.
To be fair, a lot of TV series let their lead actors take over the path of their shows and how their characters developed... and in many cases it watered down those characters (two good examples would be Alan Alda with Hawkeye and Tom Selleck with Magnum).
Second is that Shatner never understood or cared about any other characters in Trek. The fact that the other characters in TFF are written as caricatures (including Spock and McCoy) isn't surprising. Shatner wasn't aware that the other parts had any depth to them, but believed he knew them all just the same. Honestly, I wouldn't expect any of the actors who played those parts to know them any better (these are actors reading lines, so I don't expect them to recall anything from a TV series 20 years earlier), but Shatner undercut all the characters' dignity (including Kirk's).
Yes, Shatner is a joke... and he makes money being a joke. But Kirk isn't, so Shatner shouldn't have written/played him that way. Shatner has taken the older you get, the funnier you should be path. Again, this isn't a bad thing on it's own. Leslie Nelson made a great career in his later years doing this... but he didn't do it while playing Commander JJ Adams.
There is nothing about TTF that is redeemable... at all! In fact, the only place where this might have worked would have been if it had been done as a Star Trek parody in the pages of either Cracked or Mad magazine. And in the end, this movie really is just an expensive Star Trek parody that the studio attempted to sell us as the real thing.
I know some people have tried to point out that there was humor in TVH, but the humor of that movie was in the fish-out-of-water setting the characters were in. We were laughing with the odd situations our characters found themselves in... not at the characters themselves. In their own settings these were the serious, skilled professionals who we watched save the day countless times before. And the movie was book ended with that, which was why we were comfortable laughing at them when they were faced with odd (but humorous) situations in the middle of the film.
Neither Shatner nor the executives at Paramount seemed to understand this, which is the only reason Shatner was able to make this film. So as long as people keep telling Shatner no to a director's cut of this movie, I'll feel like Trek is in safe hands.
Here is the thing, we never got the TOS movie we should have... and I don't think we are going to any time in the near future. To date the best TOS movie isn't even a Trek film at all... it is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The story plays like an extended TOS episode and holds the audience's interest even if you know nothing about the main characters. The Master and Commander series of books started being published around the third season of TOS, so there is most likely a strong link there... but why couldn't people who were (or still are) involved in Trek done this?
TFF is awful on all levels. The idea that more money would have helped this film could only work if the money was to pay Shatner to not be involved in it other than to read his lines in front of the camera. Everything wrong with this film can be found to have Shatner as the main cause.
First, Shatner didn't understand Kirk... nor did he ever want to. Shatner saw Kirk as a chance to project himself into a hero role. In season one of TOS we had Captain Kirk, but by season three we started to see more and more of Captain Shatner. One of the things I dislike about the new movies is that they decided to play up Captain Shatner rather than sticking with the actual Kirk character. After all, Kirk isn't a womanizer, Shatner is! And most important, Kirk is a genius (smarter than Spock), and Shatner isn't and can't write/direct the Kirk character because he doesn't have any experience being that bright.
To be fair, a lot of TV series let their lead actors take over the path of their shows and how their characters developed... and in many cases it watered down those characters (two good examples would be Alan Alda with Hawkeye and Tom Selleck with Magnum).
Second is that Shatner never understood or cared about any other characters in Trek. The fact that the other characters in TFF are written as caricatures (including Spock and McCoy) isn't surprising. Shatner wasn't aware that the other parts had any depth to them, but believed he knew them all just the same. Honestly, I wouldn't expect any of the actors who played those parts to know them any better (these are actors reading lines, so I don't expect them to recall anything from a TV series 20 years earlier), but Shatner undercut all the characters' dignity (including Kirk's).
Yes, Shatner is a joke... and he makes money being a joke. But Kirk isn't, so Shatner shouldn't have written/played him that way. Shatner has taken the older you get, the funnier you should be path. Again, this isn't a bad thing on it's own. Leslie Nelson made a great career in his later years doing this... but he didn't do it while playing Commander JJ Adams.
There is nothing about TTF that is redeemable... at all! In fact, the only place where this might have worked would have been if it had been done as a Star Trek parody in the pages of either Cracked or Mad magazine. And in the end, this movie really is just an expensive Star Trek parody that the studio attempted to sell us as the real thing.
I know some people have tried to point out that there was humor in TVH, but the humor of that movie was in the fish-out-of-water setting the characters were in. We were laughing with the odd situations our characters found themselves in... not at the characters themselves. In their own settings these were the serious, skilled professionals who we watched save the day countless times before. And the movie was book ended with that, which was why we were comfortable laughing at them when they were faced with odd (but humorous) situations in the middle of the film.
Neither Shatner nor the executives at Paramount seemed to understand this, which is the only reason Shatner was able to make this film. So as long as people keep telling Shatner no to a director's cut of this movie, I'll feel like Trek is in safe hands.
Here is the thing, we never got the TOS movie we should have... and I don't think we are going to any time in the near future. To date the best TOS movie isn't even a Trek film at all... it is Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The story plays like an extended TOS episode and holds the audience's interest even if you know nothing about the main characters. The Master and Commander series of books started being published around the third season of TOS, so there is most likely a strong link there... but why couldn't people who were (or still are) involved in Trek done this?
TFF is awful on all levels. The idea that more money would have helped this film could only work if the money was to pay Shatner to not be involved in it other than to read his lines in front of the camera. Everything wrong with this film can be found to have Shatner as the main cause.
Oh please. You sound like that Vandervecke troll who tried to convince us that we all hate TFF because we fear being persecuted by our friends and family if we admit we like it.
Both Shaw and Maurice in the posts right above yours, and several others in this thread, have offered rational explanations as to why this movie is a piece of garbage. Nobody is "hating just to hate." If that was the case then these same people would be finding "tiny molehills which fans insist on blowing up into mountains" in all the other TOS films, and to my knowledge they're not doing that.
I don't need to hate just to hate. If I don't like something, I'll offer valid reasons why.
I like V if only for the fact it came at a time when TNG had already broke Star Trek and it resisted that, much more than VI.
Despite the tan Enterprise interiors, ugh.
Despite the tan Enterprise interiors, ugh.
So I agree the whole sequence was stupid and insulting. My point though was, if they were going to include it, then at least go out and find some wanna be actress with a hot body, I'm sure there are only a million of those in Hollywood, pay them scale and have her beam down as a member of the crew and have her end up doing that dance as a "distraction" for the assault force.
I mean seriously a fat, old Nichelle Nichols makes that scene BETTER somehow just because she is a main character. If you're going to do something stupid anyway at least do it in a way that the audience might find more appealing instead of having them say "Oh my Lord" when Nichols does it.
So my point was that the movie was so bad that it couldn't even F up in a decent way.
Oh Christ.....You know it does happen sometimes that a lot of people don't like something for the simple reason that it sucks.
Yes people are sheep often sheep, how else do you explain the Kardashians or Miley Cyrus.
But Star Trek fans tend to be a pretty discriminating lot and have a pretty good idea of what makes a good Star Trek film or show. And the opinion of the vast majority of those fans is that Star Trek V was a piece of crap and generally regarded as the worst of the TOS films and even of the whole film series. And there are a myriad of reasons people can give to back it up, not the least of which it was clearly a vanity project for Shatner now that he was calling the shots.
You remind me of those "Star Wars" prequel defenders just say to the tons and tons of people who hate the films "Oh you only hate them because they weren't Han, Luke, Leia the Millennium Falcon and so on" And can't seem to fathom that maybe so may people hated them because they were pieces of shit as any films go and doubly so when compared to the Original Triology.
and there are hundreds of concrete reasons to back up those feelings.
If you like TFF, fine, everyone has differing tastes. But don't say all the people who hate it are only doing so out of fear of admitting they like it or because it's what everyone else does.
Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade. Sorry it offends you so much.
I think Batman Begins is a WAY better film than The Dark Knight (which was also very good) and have reasons for feeling so. But I know that far more people would probably pick the Dark Knight. I don't agree but I'm not going to say they only feel that way because it's what's expected and they are all mindless lemmings. Grow the hell up.
Well it was strongly implied.
It just irks me when someone who likes something that a vast majority of people don't like and have valid reasons to back it up, get all defensive and say "Oh you're just a hater" or "People are sheep who follow what they told to believe."
No I dislike TFF because its a poorly made film and I loathe the prequels because they took what could have been an awesome and compelling story and turned into a 6 hour fest of Lucas self indulgence to fit as much cgi crap on the screen as possible, have some of the most boring dialogue ever, one of the worst love stories ever and oh BTW here's how Anakin became Darth Vader.
Do people get it wrong sometimes....sure. Office Space and Shawshank Redemption should have been huge hits at the box office, but for whatever reason didn't turn out so. But eventually a lot of people saw it one way or another and now Shawshank often makes the lists of best films ever made and Office Space may not be a total comedy classic but it sure is funny as hell in may parts, especially when you've experienced a lot of the things about work that are in that film.
The Empire Strikes Back got mixed reviews at first and wasn't liked as much by most people as Star Wars and Jedi because it wasn't the non stop action fest those other two were and it had good action at the beginning and end with the Hoth battle and the Bespin duel but it also had those "boring" sequences on Dagobah with Luke and Yoda.
Of course once the whole saga was complete and you saw how it fit into the overall picture and grew up enough to understand that those Dagobah scenes were some of the most important in the whole series that revealed deeper information and understanding about key themes and people in the film, then it eventually grew in stature to where most Star Wars fans consider it the best of the series and IMHO the best SCI-FI film of all time because it combined great action with depth and meaning, something TWOK did as well.
But I'm sorry when something like TFF or the prequels have been out for years and years now and pretty much everyone who disliked it first, still dislike it and others who liked it when they were younger may have flipped their opinions and don't really like it much now (I don't know anyone who went from not liking these films to strongly liking them as they got older) then it's a pretty safe the product itself wasn't that good and people are hating it on it's own merit, not because pop culture tells them to.
Similar threads
- Locked
