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Finally 'Getting' TMP

DeepSpaceYorks

DeepSpaceYorks

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After years of calling it the Motionless Picture, and after an intense desire to watch it recently, I feel like I finally 'get' it. Watched it today and the whole thing just sang to me. It's a mini masterpiece on a grand scale. I've fallen in love all over again.
 
It's not my "favorite..." but it's up there tight with TWOK and TSFS in the top 3. Very cool movie.

I showed it to my 4 year old son a few weekends ago. I gave him several "outs" and he didn't want to leave. He stayed through the whole thing...wide eyed and full of wonder. It made me pretty happy!
 
Oh, don't even get me started.

TMP is wonderful. In many ways, it is imperfect, but it's goals, heart, and soul are so apparent and so Star Trek. It also happens to be the most beautiful looking Trek film of all time. It's gorgeous. TWOK is a better movie in many ways, but TMP is the film in the franchise that was least polluted by gratuitous action and felt most like an episode of the TV series. Even if it is slow at times, it's heavily nostalgic for me, and I find the pacing kind of works in its favor to some degree. I used to watch the special longer version over and over again when I was a kid growing up in the nineties, which I had on VHS (I prefer the Director's Cut nowadays, but miss some of the elements of the longer cut).

I love the odd seventies stylistic choices. I love the incredible, borderline gratuitous amounts of alien costumes. I love the slow pan shots of pretty much everything, which builds both tension and awe. I love the Kirk-Spock-Bones interplay. I love the angry klaxon sounds of the original cut. I love the shots of the Enterprise as a little blip against the awesome size of V'Ger's ship (an effects shot that had to have influenced Interstellar a bit). I love, love, love the opening scene with the Klingons, and the menacing torpedo special effects. I even kind of love the transporter accident scene, which was brutal and necessary to show that Kirk needed to check his hubris. I love that they took the basic concept from "The Changeling" and ran with it, because, in all honesty, I don't think "The Changeling" is a great episode, and I'm happy the idea was expanded upon in TMP.

It does kind of have the feel that it's a movie cobbled together from ideas for a television show that never was, but all in all, it's kind of a breathtaking feat of filmmaking that took a lot of effort by hugely talented people to even exist at all. As a film buff, I consider the movie average, but as a Trek fan, it's easily my favorite Star Trek movie of all time and the one I'm most obsessed with.

(Just read the novelization at your own risk...it's the weirdest thing I've ever read.)
 
It's stylish and the pacing reminds me somewhat of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The detail that irritates me the most is the pajamas they're wearing instead of uniforms.
 
I remember first watching it.I didn't have one whit of a clue as to what was going on . It didn't even enter my head to investigate what was going on. I just sat back to be pleasantly hypnotised by the great FX which was an amazing sight to see on the small screen at that time.

It's a cool, unique movie which a style of film that gone out of fashion at blockbuster level anyway.
 
My favorite of all the movies. It has aged well. I like the pacing which is not at all dissimilar from other films of that era. Despite their flaws and issues, I feel like TMP and TFF are the only movies that stayed true to the core concepts of the series.
 
Galileo7 said:
Agree. For myself, the reason is that TMP is the only Star Trek film that is not about a villain(s) because it is about exploration [of V'Ger].
Click to expand...
It's that sense of exploration and wonder that appeals to me more and more. I had a personal experience a couple of years ago that means these tales of exploration really resonate with me.
 
"A flawed masterpiece" is an accurate description of a lot of Star Trek.

TMP was my favorite Trek film for a long time, but as I've gotten older I've found it harder and harder to excuse/dismiss the terrible pacing issues, which aren't even so much about what Wise was trying to do, I just think he spent too much time focusing on the trees and ignored the forest. (If that makes any sense at all.)

And, even as an atheist, I think the theme is a little too heavy handed and probably the most perfectly emblematic example of mythical Star Trek.

It's one of those things that, when you're young and insular and naive you think, "Hey this is really intelligent/smart/cerebral/whatever." But as you get older and become exposed to stuff, you begin to realize that it really isn't.
 
I'm the opposite - I've always liked TMP from being a kid but usually dismissed the second half of the film in favour of the more action-adventure Treks 2-4, but it's not until I got into my thirties that I really started to appreciate what a wonderful production it is.
 
CorporalClegg said:
"A flawed masterpiece" is an accurate description of a lot of Star Trek.

TMP was my favorite Trek film for a long time, but as I've gotten older I've found it harder and harder to excuse/dismiss the terrible pacing issues, which aren't even so much about what Wise was trying to do, I just think he spent too much time focusing on the trees and ignored the forest. (If that makes any sense at all.)

And, even as an atheist, I think the theme is a little too heavy handed and probably the most perfectly emblematic example of mythical Star Trek.

It's one of those things that, when you're young and insular and naive you think, "Hey this is really intelligent/smart/cerebral/whatever." But as you get older and become exposed to stuff, you begin to realize that it really isn't.
Click to expand...

Interesting, as I've gotten older I've found I'm much more forgiving of the pacing issues and themes. Also, I never really considered the religious aspect. As a somewhat secular humanist I've never approached the film in terms of god and religion. Rather, I always considered the quest of V'ger to just find it's place in the universe. I guess it could be read either way depending upon your viewpoint.
 
over the past ten years or so i've really come to appreciate TMP. as a kid i didn't rewatch it often because it was long. as i got older i realized how good it was. how it was the most Trek like of the films. heck, i've even come to appreciate the uniforms (my Star Trek Online character and entire bridge crew all have TMP uniforms).
 
maneth said:
It's stylish and the pacing reminds me somewhat of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The detail that irritates me the most is the pajamas they're wearing instead of uniforms.
Click to expand...

I personally like the uniforms better than the ones that came after. Those latter uniforms looked to me more like a marching band uniform
 
Of all the criticisms that get levied against TMP, the pacing bothers me the least. Maybe it's because I'm a lover of spaceship porn but I think its more likely because I saw 2001 first. In many ways I think that TMP is a "lesser" 2001 in that it had most of the same faults and accomplishments as 2001 but neither was as extreme. TMP had a beautiful depiction of space travel but not a scientifically accurate one. It had long sequences but not 9 minutes of nothing but pretty colors. TMP captured a sense of wonder and the vastness of space but it had nothing as intriguing or as mindblowing as the monoliths. TMP was at times confusing but I had some idea of what the hell I had just watched when I was done. In other words its a bit of a "safer" 2001. Which is a bit of a shame because the movie had so much potential. It could have been amazing.
 
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