"When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend."
(My favorite line from possibly my favorite western.)
Boring
- Thread starter JeffinOakland
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"When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend."
(My favorite line from possibly my favorite western.)
Who says it's boring? To echo what some others have said, one person's trash is another person's treasure. TMP was never meant to be an action-packed film. It's certainly heavy on the special effects, but it's of a totally different scope than TWOK, TSFS or TUC.
--Sran
I say it's boring. Of course that's just, like, my opinion, man. I don't think it's trash (I'd give it somewhere between 6 and 7 stars out of 10) but I do think they (especially Roddenberry) were trying for a grandiloquent statement aimed mostly at the diehards who had kept ST alive on reruns for 10 years. Pomp and circumstance in place of storytelling.
Why is it that no one seems to know when I'm asking a rhetorical question?
--Sran
It's hard to "read" rhetoric.
Okay, no one answered my query for clarification so I'll address both angles I mentions.
What makes the film boring to some people?
Frankly, the overlong visual effects sequences stop the movie cold in several places. Yes, some fans drool over seeing the Enterprise in drydock for several minutes straight, but most viewers are there for the story, not starship porn. The wormhole sequence isn't exciting; it's visually cool but there's no real tension, and the slow motion sucks the energy out of the scene. The film gets back on the right track from then til the ship is fired upon, and has a nice deliberate pace, then it slams into low gear again with not one lengthy VFX sequence, but TWO, back to back (the cloud and the Vger flyover), amounting to about 9 minutes of screen time where very little happens except flying along into mystery. These sequences all negate any forward momentum the film's managed to build up. That's a primary reason it's "boring" to a lot of people.
Why did it end up being boring to a lot of people?
Largely it's the fault of the VFX disaster and the production team's inadequate response to it. When the shit hit the fan and they realized they'd miss their contracted release date if something desperate wasn't done, they should have looked much longer and harder at these extensive VFX sequences and pruned them way the hell back so they could be finished faster. They should have have animatics done and cut them in so they could figure out the tempo. All of this would have made it possible to get a complete cut together sooner and then they could have previewed it and seen where the film had problems and made appropriate edits.
It's not. But I had the advantage of have only seen about half of TAS in b/w and about five episodes of TOS before reading the novelization of TMP in a weekend, then racing off to see the movie in beautiful art deco-style cinema, in December 1979 (by myself, 'cos no one else wanted to go).
Hung on every word.
Still my favourite Trek movie (and of all time). Now tied with JJ's 2009 movie.
I'm one of these guys that LOVE this movie, but at the same time understand WHY it is criticized.
For me, it's the middle part of the film when Kirk says, "Steady as she goes" and we have to go through that long odyssey inside V'Ger. That's when it becomes a challenging view. Nothing really happens there, and it has nothing to do with the absence of phasers and photo torpedoes. Even on an intellectual level, nothing is happening to engage me. Let's call it what it is: characters staring at nonsensical images. It would be one thing if those images meant something, but they don't.
IMO, the film's beginning through the wormhole scene and ending, probably starting with Spock's spacewalk, are EXCELLENT. Everything in between is inconsistent.
For me, it's the middle part of the film when Kirk says, "Steady as she goes" and we have to go through that long odyssey inside V'Ger. That's when it becomes a challenging view. Nothing really happens there, and it has nothing to do with the absence of phasers and photo torpedoes. Even on an intellectual level, nothing is happening to engage me. Let's call it what it is: characters staring at nonsensical images. It would be one thing if those images meant something, but they don't.
IMO, the film's beginning through the wormhole scene and ending, probably starting with Spock's spacewalk, are EXCELLENT. Everything in between is inconsistent.
In the theater in December 1979, it seemed really long, but not boring.
There hadn't been any live action Trek in 10 years, so it was an event. Sure, some of it was over extended. But hey, people my age weren't saturated with tv and movie Trek like today's fans are.
The Director's Edition seems to move a little faster.
But I tend to put movies on one of my devices while I work, so I'm not trying to stay glued to the screen for the duration.
There hadn't been any live action Trek in 10 years, so it was an event. Sure, some of it was over extended. But hey, people my age weren't saturated with tv and movie Trek like today's fans are.
The Director's Edition seems to move a little faster.
But I tend to put movies on one of my devices while I work, so I'm not trying to stay glued to the screen for the duration.
I "appreciate" it more than I enjoy it. That's not a compliment.
Keep the dream alive.
Giving credence to the novelization requires one to understand that if the story had been inherently involving, Roddenberry wouldn't have felt the need to use all those damn italics - more than I've seen in any other work of fiction, by several orders of magnitude - in an attempt to suggest awesomeness at every turn.
^Roddenberry wasn't a novelist and wrote that book without really knowing what he was doing. His use of italics was the result of his being more familiar with screenplay writing than with traditional prose.
--Sran
--Sran
I'm a film score junkie so I cannot find this movie boring. But not everyone is a score nut and I totally understand why they would find it boring. I think there are a lot more problems to this film than it's pacing, but I'm also thankful that the pacing issue was never really seen again.
Also, except for Shatner, none of the "classic" cast seem sold on what's going on. The next three ST movies seem much more like team efforts where Nimoy, Kelly, Nicholls, etc. seem to be actively participating.
Wrath of Khan seems so much more alive and invigorated and I think that has to do with the classic cast being more invested.
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