How was TMP received at the time?
- Thread starter TalkieToaster
- Start date
I first saw 2001 on widescreen when I was a kid (for my birthday). It was so overwhelming I remember virtually nothing of the experience. Relevant to the thread topic because TMP is often described as "like 2001", I think 2001 is a better film than TMP and more profound. OTOH, TMP has better characters. It actually has characters, anyway 
Some reactions at the time:
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture
Lots and lots of comments from Interstat, the TrekBBS of it's day:
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Interstat/Issues_021-030
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Interstat/Issues_031-040
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Thanks for the interesting links, KDID.
Well, HAL matters. He gets most of the best lines.
I'm not sure that I would go as far as to assert that the characters and dialog in 2001 don't matter at all. There are parts of the film when the characters matter a great deal.
One example is the triangle of Frank, Dave, and HAL. Frank and Dave have different relationships with HAL. Frank treats HAL like a machine, whereas Dave treats him with greater respect. That distinction is conveyed entirely by dialog. The distinction matters to the plot, because it is Frank who suggests shutting down HAL, and it is Frank who HAL goes after first. After Frank is killed, Dave still trusts HAL enough to leave the ship. Would that have been true the other way around, if it had been Dave who HAL had killed first in that way, or would Frank have gone after HAL right away?
And, perhaps most significantly, HAL's nature as a character is conveyed almost entirely via dialog. Most of the time his physicality is represented solely by the inert eye sensors. His taking over of Frank's pod is one of the few times when HAL performs pure action on the physical plane.
But yes, there are of course large swaths of the film where the visual spectacle is what's happening. But I would argue there that the musical soundtrack is also extremely important in these parts too. Classical music plays when we are flying in human-built spaceships, and it reassures us with familiar tunes and structures that all is normal. In contrast, some of Ligeti's micropolyphonic masterpieces assure us that we have indeed left the normal universe during the Star Gate sequence, and that the monolith is indeed something very much out of the ordinary.
Another significant use of music is that Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra explicitly establishes a parallel between the discovery of tools and the birth of the Star-Child.
Despite its ambitions, TMP's nonverbal passages aren't operating on 2001's level.
Thanks!
I've spoken at great length on here about how TMP was the first movie I saw at the cinema as a five year old, suffice to say that in the years that have passed I've gone from it being the reason I got into Trek in the first place, through me seeing it as 'the boring one' as a young adult, through to a new found respect for it in the last decade or so.
A recent re-watch of the DE (back to back with TWOK on a 42" LCD with a banging surround sound system) the other week really highlighted the amazing sets - engineering never looked better than in this movie, even though they were re-used in the sequel. It looks so hi-tech even today, and that alone is a great achievement. There was also a lot of other big sets that looked excellent too - the place where the crew watch the Epsilon station getting consumed by vger for example, and even the corridors, all looked expensive and gave the Enterprise a great feel.
The DE with the extra effects fit in very nicely and don't jar (unlike the SW special editions), but I would love to see them remastered on blu-ray for the 50th. Most of the original effects still look very good - especially the spacedock sequences, again, the Enterprise never looked better that what it did in this movie.
We've all discussed the score on here at length, and it deserves all the accolades you can throw at it - simply outstanding work from Goldsmith and right up there as among my favorite movie scores of all time.
In many ways, I now see it as the very best Trek movie, it has sense of scale and scope that has remained unmatched in the movie franchise to date in my view. TWOK may be more outwardly entertaining, but TMP has an old school, classic, timeless quality to it, the type you don't get in movies any more. If it just had a bit more of the character interaction of some of the later instalments I think it would absolutely cement itself into the top spot. Special movie.
A recent re-watch of the DE (back to back with TWOK on a 42" LCD with a banging surround sound system) the other week really highlighted the amazing sets - engineering never looked better than in this movie, even though they were re-used in the sequel. It looks so hi-tech even today, and that alone is a great achievement. There was also a lot of other big sets that looked excellent too - the place where the crew watch the Epsilon station getting consumed by vger for example, and even the corridors, all looked expensive and gave the Enterprise a great feel.
The DE with the extra effects fit in very nicely and don't jar (unlike the SW special editions), but I would love to see them remastered on blu-ray for the 50th. Most of the original effects still look very good - especially the spacedock sequences, again, the Enterprise never looked better that what it did in this movie.
We've all discussed the score on here at length, and it deserves all the accolades you can throw at it - simply outstanding work from Goldsmith and right up there as among my favorite movie scores of all time.
In many ways, I now see it as the very best Trek movie, it has sense of scale and scope that has remained unmatched in the movie franchise to date in my view. TWOK may be more outwardly entertaining, but TMP has an old school, classic, timeless quality to it, the type you don't get in movies any more. If it just had a bit more of the character interaction of some of the later instalments I think it would absolutely cement itself into the top spot. Special movie.
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Speaking of 2001 does anyone think Decker was modelled on Bowman? (a blonde bowman) watched 2001 again recently and Bowmans look, mannerisms, even the way he talked had me thinking of Decker. Wonder if that was intentional (I know its very awkward talking about SCollins now but its in relation to Decker)
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Well with my 60" LCD and BluRay discs I'll be getting, I'm sure I'll be more impressed than the VHS version I watched on my old college 24" CRT
Agree on all thoughts.
Albeit I was a boy on Friday December 7th 1979, so the big screen awe of the 1701-refit Enterprise and the reunited cast was extremely pleasing to me. 
I was a freshman in college and very psyched for the movie. I'd hit the magazine stand every time a new Starlog came out to see if there was anything about the movie in it (largely, Susan Sackett's reports). I remember buying the August issue with Mike Minor's new Enterprise on the cover like it was yesterday.
The rythmn of the movie was off for me, too. It took itself far too seriously, and the actors didn't seem fully in character, as if they were trying to rediscover how to be their characters or were deliberately portraying toned-down versions of them instead of the larger than life people we enjoyed in TOS. When I read "Kirk's" preface to Roddenberry's novelization, I understood why they may have played them that way. Still, I didn't enjoy it. As much as I wanted to like it, I was sorely disappointed. Over time, especially after finding out all that was going on behind the scenes, I've softened my opinion about the movie and appreciate what they tried to do.
Or just read the book. Doing that helped me "get" the story just fine, and made future viewings of the movie easier to understand.
I disagree. I think Clarke's work, especially his sequel books, demonstrate that he only grokked the surface level of what Kubrick was doing. Clarke's much too literal.
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Except Kubrick himself said:
Make of that what you will.
He tried. And there's a distinction between things that are important and things that don't matter at all.
I remember I bought it on video because it was never showed on TV. II, IV and V were always shown but I and III I never saw until I bought them on video.
It looked so different to the other films, more like a musical in some ways. I was kinda glad the film series didn't go in this direction. Very pretty though.
It looked so different to the other films, more like a musical in some ways. I was kinda glad the film series didn't go in this direction. Very pretty though.
