Sums up my thoughts as well. I didn't really like TMP Kirk. He was a jerk. TWOK Kirk, I felt for.
Boring
- Thread starter JeffinOakland
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FYI: There's a pretty good novel about that portion of Kirk's career: The Lost Years by J. M. Dillard.
I had no problem with Kirk taking over "The Center Seat" from Decker, but neither Collins, nor Shatner, were good enough actors to infuse that scene with any tension, whatsoever. Even though STAR TREK '09 was given an Oscar for Art Direction, THE MOTION PICTURE deserved it a hell of a lot more. For me, it is pure eye candy! I love everything about it. Yes, there should've been much more story and maybe even some action ... but it's a thing of beauty.
Christopher's DTI: Forgotten History and the Mere Anarchy anthology also touch on Kirk's tenure as Chief of Starfleet Operations.
--Sran
Great post. I agree.
I think they're both terrific bookends on Kirk's entry and exit of mid life crisis.
The Lost Years is probably my all time favorite Trek novel (though it has been about 12-15 years since I've read it.
Really? I thought everyone did a great job looking tense.
Report to the bridge, 2takesfrakes...IMMEDIATELY.
I read The Lost Years...but that was a long time ago. Also the one were they brought the space shuttle Enterprise out with impulse engines so it could go into space.
Plus the section were Decker takes the saucer section into orbit from the ground portion of San Francisco Yard was interesting. Berkeley still as an anti-military/Starfleet vibe going on...but gather to cheer for Enterprise.
Plus the section were Decker takes the saucer section into orbit from the ground portion of San Francisco Yard was interesting. Berkeley still as an anti-military/Starfleet vibe going on...but gather to cheer for Enterprise.
I have no problem with the acting in TMP, nor with the story.
The problem is the editing. It's relentlessly plodding, and frequently redundant. The journey into V'Ger should be a great slow down in pace, but there's nowhere to slow down from.
It's like Wise was determined to use the longest take available of every shot, plus several seconds on either end of the actual action being shot. Was he getting paid by the minute?
The problem is the editing. It's relentlessly plodding, and frequently redundant. The journey into V'Ger should be a great slow down in pace, but there's nowhere to slow down from.
It's like Wise was determined to use the longest take available of every shot, plus several seconds on either end of the actual action being shot. Was he getting paid by the minute?
Yes it is quite esoteric, with this haunting cold atmosphere. Usually I eat up things like that, especially scifi. And I remember when I first saw it as a little tyke I was quite impressed/frightened by some of the scenes/images like Spock declaring he saw a "planet populated with living machines" and the ending of Decker "merging" with V'Ger. My big sis, probably seeing that I was quite freaked out even tried to make light of it by declaring "Ha, watch out he'll look like the Bride of Frankenstein!"
However now, having seen and read much, much more scifi. I have to say the Motion Picture certainly tries to be esoteric and haunting and cerebral, but falls short by trying at the same time too hard to still appeal to the fans of TOS, making it neither fish nor flesh.
If they had cranked up the transhumanist elements only hinted at in the movie and its novelisation, made Decker and his interest/quest for transcendence the focus and cut down on a LOT of the filler it might have succeeded better in being "esoteric" and "cerebral" without being "boring"
It is of course debatable if it would have still been a Star Trek movie, but it might have been a better movie in general.
I've re-watched it many times in addition to seeing it in the theater when it was first run. I don't experience it as boring either. I find it fascinating: the new ship, the story, Vulcan, the huge V'ger housing machine, the characters and costumes, the Klingons and ships, the fx and cinematography.
Always interesting to read different ideas/takes from people who feel passionately. I still feel the movie is, in general, dull. The main culprits, for me, are lack of conflict and poor editing, which makes the film "feel" like it is too long.
Yeah, if we look even at TOS, something like the planet killer in "The Doomsday Machine" is essentially an esoteric threat, an unexplainable mystery machine that goes around eating planets. But what seperates something like that from V'Ger is that, with the planet killer the emphasis is on the sense of threat it poses (it is, effectively, a killer shark IN SPACE), whereas V'Ger is more like a conceptual threat (it destroys things in it's path, we get that, but the story isn't really about the threat itself as it is instead about the Enterprise crew trying to discover what the nature of V'Ger actually is).I like TMP a lot and I appreciate what it's doing, but for many people who don't like it, I think it's because the 'visual shorthand' of something like the doomsday machine planet killer is more immediate, visceral and "exciting" than something like V'Ger, where the audience understands what the threat *is*, but has a kind of disconnect from said threat because the story is geared in a completely different (yes, maybe even "boring") direction.....
Agreed. When I sat in the theater to watch TMP, I was not expecting any sort of Star Wars in it, or 2001, for that matter. Star Trek was a franchise with its own, strongly defined identity, so I expected a natural building on the developed relationships, universe and conflicts last seen in TOS--even TAS, not a fantasy which happened to be set in space.
TMP failed to live up rich work created for TOS, by suffering from Roddenberry's stale, overused "something bigger than man which makes us question and/or rediscover our human purpose" routine already worn to threads.
Moreover, in the wake of TOS, other sci-fi productions on TV, film, novels--all ran similar ideas into the ground, so the first big screen ST outing was perceived as not living up to the bold/adventurous ideas made so popular on the TV series.
You two guys really nailed it well.
We weren't expecting (or in my case WANTING) a Star wars type movie. I wanted a Star Trek type movie.
Name a great or good episode of TOS that was as slow paced, non character interactive, or sedentary as TMP.
It wasn't Trek--it was Trek trying to be epic first and character-driven a distant second.
TWOK showed you could have characters going thru personal issues--Kirk's birthday, lack of family, loss of ship--without doing it in a morose, grim fashion.
In TWOK you could see Kirk was out of sorts, but still himself.
Why make a 2 hour ten minute movie where Kirk is kirk for the last few minutes?
While the pace was slow and the sets were bland, there were some excellent character interactions in TMP. Kirk and Bones meeting up, Kirk and Scott in the engine room, the bridge crew excited to see Spock, the Three following Ilia-V'ger around the ship, and the "treat it like a child" discussion towards the end.
I didn't know what Star Trek was when I saw TMP in the theater as a 8 or 9 year old kid. I was a Star Wars nut but I liked TMP better. At the time, I felt that there was something about it that was missing in Star Wars. I wanted more of what I saw but didn't get another movie like it. Some time afterwards I partially forgot what I had seen but knew there was this movie about space that I wanted to see again.
TMP was not boring to me. When I was that age, it was wanted I wanted to see in a movie about being in outer space. I liked all the Star Wars movies but there were too many planet based scenes. I kept waiting for the story to go back to space.
It took a few years to put it all together with the TV show and the follow up movies. But I still compare a lot of sci-fi movies I see back to TMP.
TMP was not boring to me. When I was that age, it was wanted I wanted to see in a movie about being in outer space. I liked all the Star Wars movies but there were too many planet based scenes. I kept waiting for the story to go back to space.
It took a few years to put it all together with the TV show and the follow up movies. But I still compare a lot of sci-fi movies I see back to TMP.
More to the point: TMP felt obliged to have not only the crew-reassembling scenes, but also the long sequences of (i) the Enterprise herself, seen for the first time in detail, and (ii) the gigantic, 82-AU-diameter threat to Earth that was the reason for the crew being brought together again.
TWoK simply shows us the bridge crew as they are now: They're playactors on a simulated bridge, led by Captain Spock, and with the whole facility supervised by Admiral Kirk, former starship captain. Good enough, and a lot more economical (and less potentially boring) than TMP's approach to reassembling the crew.
Nor did TWoK feel obliged to include exceedingly long shots of the ship's exterior - the selected TMP visuals were relatively brief - or of the threat itself; that's one advantage of having a human (genetically engineered or otherwise) as a villain.
Separately: TWoK included phaser fire, inherently a not-boring element, whereas TMP was G-rated and essentially nonviolent.
I think these are all great points. I don't think it's an unreasonable assumption to say that TMP didn't want to be like Star Wars....but, especially in Roddenberry's mind, it wanted to be as far away from Star Wars as possible.
So this meant things like space battles, gunfights, really bad guys or entities were completely left out.
The only thing is Star Wars didn't pioneer these things many episodes of TOS had one or more of these elements in it. So as a result the Klingons get only lip service, there are no phaser fights, the Enterprise uses it's weapons only once and the main bad guy isn't really evil....it just doesn't understand it's purpose and has no concept of killing being wrong.
I'm no saying TMP HAD to have all these things but Star Trek fans wanted a bigger flashier version of TOS....not a copy of Star Wars.
But because Star Wars used the aforementioned elements and was an absolute sensation and everyone knew about it, TMP seemed almost afraid to use things SW did because they'd be called copycats, which wouldn't have been the case at all.
And because Paramount was in a hurry to get it out before The Empire Strike Back came out they gave Roddenberry carte blanche and he was in one of more cerebral moods for TMP and as a result it was a film that was more like 2001 than Star Trek.
Don't get me wrong 2001 is a landmark film and all, but it's not exactly what you'd call an easy film to follow or understand, even for intelligent people who like sci-fi.
TOS had stories that had deep themes but people could follow the stories with out really having to hurt their brains. TMP should have been more in that vein.
The movie made me quite angry. The authors did not understand, what the most people love on TOS- interaction between the characters, Bones and Spock arguing..My favourite characters were walking the ship in colourless outfits as like they've got a ruler shoved up their ass and talked whatever, and story was focused on some annoying guy with his man parts visible under his tight coverall, and some bald chick we did not hear about before.. Kirk's wet eyes at enterprise's haul out of dock was quite an impressive scene though. Bones (or Kelley himself) was trying his best to pull the story forward, but it was too much for him.
The part, when Spock came to Enterprise was one of the saddest moments in ST for me. If I ever take an alcohol obsession treatment....eeee....kolinahr, and do not greet my best friend (Bones) afterwards, after not seeing him for a long time, please put a red shirt on me and send me on a mission with the original crew, please, I do not want to 'live' anymore....At least we got normal Spock back by the end.
The part, when Spock came to Enterprise was one of the saddest moments in ST for me. If I ever take an alcohol obsession treatment....eeee....kolinahr, and do not greet my best friend (Bones) afterwards, after not seeing him for a long time, please put a red shirt on me and send me on a mission with the original crew, please, I do not want to 'live' anymore....At least we got normal Spock back by the end.
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It sounds more like you didn't understand the point of what Roddenberry and Livingston were trying to do with the characters. They haven't been serving together for quite some time, and have moved on with their lives in their own ways. Take any group of people, split them up, and it's not easy for that same spark to return when they come back together. I'm not sure if you didn't see the scene in the officer's lounge with Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but Spock and McCoy did in fact return to their bickering ways a little bit in that scene. Additionally, the whole point of Kolinahr was to "purge all remaining emotion," a task that Spock was nearly completed with by the time V'ger interrupted the ceremony at the beginning of the film. Naturally, Spock would not have that emotional attachment to McCoy anymore. I'd maybe suggest watching the film a little bit closer than the same scrutiny one would allow a comic book.
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