Improve Star Trek: The Motion Picture

[Cryogenic]

Personally, I'd have changed quite a bit in the script to focus less on the sci-fi and more on the human drama.

Ex astris, scientia.

Science fiction *is* human drama -- of the deepest and most imaginary kind.

Now that the geniuses of this forum have mauled TMP, I'd like them to be consistent and turn their attention to, oh, say, "Metropolis", "2001" and "Blade Runner". Clearly, those works are lacking in "human drama", too, so let's see them sliced, diced and rejiggered in accordance with popular sentiment. C'mon, the clock is ticking.

 

[Wynterhawk]

TMP's dramatic flatulence comes mostly from a lot of set-up but very little pay off.


Ditto on Spock. We don't actually see anything of the Kolinahr ritual, Spock's trials and tribulations, or the sacrifices he's made. Instead, he basically gets stage fright at the final ceremony. Later, he stalks around the ship looking slightly more severe than the last time we saw him. Then he cries, sort of..

I admit it... I laughed at that. And I completely agree.

 

[Maurice]

Why the hell they pay movie directors millions to make films, when they could just come here and get some advice for free, baffles me.

Because Hollywood's a business and you can't take ideas for free.

Furthermore, Sturgeon's Law applies here. Most fan ideas for making a film better involve catering to uber-fan tastes. The endless calls for the pointless Nogura scene being the most egregious example of fan ideas that wouldn't improve the film.

And, frankly, ideas are a dime a dozen...it's the ability to execute those ideas well that's the trick. Screenwriting's not easy. Even with all the plot points in place, writing concise dramatic scenes that work is no simple task, especially when you've got directors and producers making their influences and tastes felt.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

And, frankly, ideas are a dime a dozen...it's the ability to execute those ideas well that's the trick. Screenwriting's not easy. Even with all the plot points in place, writing concise dramatic scenes that work is no simple task, especially when you've got directors and producers making their influences and tastes felt.

Quoted for truth, justice, and the American Way.

 

[trevanian]

Personally, I'd have changed quite a bit in the script to focus less on the sci-fi and more on the human drama.

Ex astris, scientia.

Science fiction *is* human drama -- of the deepest and most imaginary kind.

Now that the geniuses of this forum have mauled TMP, I'd like them to be consistent and turn their attention to, oh, say, "Metropolis", "2001" and "Blade Runner". Clearly, those works are lacking in "human drama", too, so let's see them sliced, diced and rejiggered in accordance with popular sentiment. C'mon, the clock is ticking.

I don't find them in need of improvement, myself. I do find TMP flawed in any number of ways, but unlike, say MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 or a STAR WARS prequel, I am willing to spend time on how TMP went wrong in my eyes.

 

[T'Girl]

Give McCoy a truly thick southern accent, remember loony toons cartoons? Think fog horn leg horn, that kind of southern accent.

The scene where Kirk, McCoy and Decker enter Kirk quarters. Just when Kirk says: "Mr. Decker, why was my phaser order ..." Decker hits him across the face with a chair.

There is a problem with the life support system, a hallucinogenic gas is pumped on to the bridge just as the ship enters the V'ger cloud. The crew just stares at the viewscreen for five minutes without saying any thing.

When the Ilia-probe arrives, because V'ger scanned the Enterprise's computers, The Ilia-probe looks like a adult woman and not a fifteen year old boy.

At some point Kirk opens an overhead hatch and thousands of tribbles fall on him.

 

[Cryogenic]

Personally, I'd have changed quite a bit in the script to focus less on the sci-fi and more on the human drama.

Ex astris, scientia.

Science fiction *is* human drama -- of the deepest and most imaginary kind.

Now that the geniuses of this forum have mauled TMP, I'd like them to be consistent and turn their attention to, oh, say, "Metropolis", "2001" and "Blade Runner". Clearly, those works are lacking in "human drama", too, so let's see them sliced, diced and rejiggered in accordance with popular sentiment. C'mon, the clock is ticking.

I don't find them in need of improvement, myself. I do find TMP flawed in any number of ways, but unlike, say MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 or a STAR WARS prequel, I am willing to spend time on how TMP went wrong in my eyes.

Well, I was being a bit melodramatic. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Still, these sorts of threads always amuse me. One of the odd things the Internet has revealed is that few people seem willing or equipped to deal with films as they are. Many prefer foisting heterogenous opinions onto completed works of art, which is a supremely arrogant thing to do, if not an act of desecration. When many would rather obsess with how a film "should be" rather than what it actually is, they're missing the woods for the trees, and they're contributing to a climate of anti-intellectual interrogation of art and human expression.

 

[Agenda]

Ex astris, scientia.

Science fiction *is* human drama -- of the deepest and most imaginary kind.

Now that the geniuses of this forum have mauled TMP, I'd like them to be consistent and turn their attention to, oh, say, "Metropolis", "2001" and "Blade Runner". Clearly, those works are lacking in "human drama", too, so let's see them sliced, diced and rejiggered in accordance with popular sentiment. C'mon, the clock is ticking.

I don't find them in need of improvement, myself. I do find TMP flawed in any number of ways, but unlike, say MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 or a STAR WARS prequel, I am willing to spend time on how TMP went wrong in my eyes.

Well, I was being a bit melodramatic. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Still, these sorts of threads always amuse me. One of the odd things the Internet has revealed is that few people seem willing or equipped to deal with films as they are. Many prefer foisting heterogenous opinions onto completed works of art, which is a supremely arrogant thing to do, if not an act of desecration. When many would rather obsess with how a film "should be" rather than what it actually is, they're missing the woods for the trees, and they're contributing to a climate of anti-intellectual interrogation of art and human expression.

You're still being melodramatic.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

I don't find them in need of improvement, myself. I do find TMP flawed in any number of ways, but unlike, say MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 or a STAR WARS prequel, I am willing to spend time on how TMP went wrong in my eyes.

Well, I was being a bit melodramatic. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Still, these sorts of threads always amuse me. One of the odd things the Internet has revealed is that few people seem willing or equipped to deal with films as they are. Many prefer foisting heterogenous opinions onto completed works of art, which is a supremely arrogant thing to do, if not an act of desecration. When many would rather obsess with how a film "should be" rather than what it actually is, they're missing the woods for the trees, and they're contributing to a climate of anti-intellectual interrogation of art and human expression.

You're still being melodramatic.

Perhaps, but he's still right.

 

[Therin of Andor]

ST:TMP and JJ's ST are still my two favourite movies of all time.

 

[trevanian]

ST:TMP and JJ's ST are still my two favourite movies of all time.

A statement that makes my schizophrenia over TMP seem like a mild and treatable disorder by comparison.

 

[Therin of Andor]

A statement that makes my schizophrenia over TMP seem like a mild and treatable disorder by comparison.

I won a preview ticket to see JJ's movie a week early. It was a double pass so I invited a friend I'd met not long after ST:TMP's premiere, but we hadn't seen each other in ages. (We had both joined a ST club in the early 1980s that had been around since 1972 - and we had both found TOS via ST:TMP and were a bit mystified that so many TOS diehards absolutely hated ST:TMP.)

And you know what? We both still love TMP, and we both thoroughly enjoyed JJ's movie. I'm sure we are not alone in the world.

 

[Basil]

Personally, I'd have changed quite a bit in the script to focus less on the sci-fi and more on the human drama.

Ex astris, scientia.

Science fiction *is* human drama -- of the deepest and most imaginary kind.

Now that the geniuses of this forum have mauled TMP, I'd like them to be consistent and turn their attention to, oh, say, "Metropolis", "2001" and "Blade Runner". Clearly, those works are lacking in "human drama", too, so let's see them sliced, diced and rejiggered in accordance with popular sentiment. C'mon, the clock is ticking.

I don't find them in need of improvement, myself. I do find TMP flawed in any number of ways, but unlike, say MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 or a STAR WARS prequel, I am willing to spend time on how TMP went wrong in my eyes.

I agree! The three films cited by Cryogenic all got it right because they all confront the themes they raise, and they do it on a human level -- we see Bowman, for instance, struggle against HAL and not just get a scene where once back aboard the Discovery he simply reports the event to headquarters. Deckard falls in love with Rachel -- heck, he makes love to her -- and the central theme to the film is what is human? The Replicants are more "alive" in many ways than the stone-cold assassin that is chasing after them, who ironically might be one of them.

TMP mostly did not get it right dramatically, falling in love with it own ideas but mistaking ponderousness for importance; for all the bashing of TWOK that's in vogue currently, that film got the point about dramatizing the issues it was about, far better than TMP, even if the first film wanted to be more high brow. TMP by comparison barely pays lip service to any of its dramatic-concepts and instead wants us to ignore its expository nature by being wowed by the gee-whiz of it all . . .

 

[Basil]

TMP's dramatic flatulence comes mostly from a lot of set-up but very little pay off.


Ditto on Spock. We don't actually see anything of the Kolinahr ritual, Spock's trials and tribulations, or the sacrifices he's made. Instead, he basically gets stage fright at the final ceremony. Later, he stalks around the ship looking slightly more severe than the last time we saw him. Then he cries, sort of..

I admit it... I laughed at that. And I completely agree.

What I can't figure out is how the guy who made The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and The Sand Pebbles -- three films that jerk some tears for one reason or another at some point -- could have been so utterly oblivious to the narrative flaws in the film he was making . . . I met Wise many years ago, and he seemed a genuinely smart, sensitive man.

 

[trevanian]

There's not much deep emotional involvement in Wise's ANDROMEDA STRAIN, but it still worked okay as a movie. I always see a lot of similarities with that and TMP myself.

 

[destructive]

LEAVE IT THE FUCK ALONE!

 

[Basil]

There's not much deep emotional involvement in Wise's ANDROMEDA STRAIN, but it still worked okay as a movie. I always see a lot of similarities with that and TMP myself.

But there are ... there's the whole pathos of a baby, for instance, being a key to the mystery, and then that great scene where David Wayne's character may have the virus and is terrified but still trying to maintain his professional composure. The film is told from a low-key standpoint emotionally, not unlike 2001, but like that film, it fits the verisimilitude of the types of characters it has -- yet we still see their conflicts faced directly, and we see them triumph in a very human way over the virus.

TMP has the low-key tone but forgets the rest, relying on our fondness for and familiarity with the characters to make up for the lack of much meaningful interaction. "Run Silent, Run Deep," Wise' submarine drama, is very similar, but it, too, creates scenes that at least let Gable and Lancaster go at each other. My guess is it's better because it came from a novel (never read it, but did read the sequel, "Dust on the Sea" many, many years ago.)

 

[Therin of Andor]

relying on our fondness for and familiarity with the characters to make up for the lack of much meaningful interaction.

And yet I went into TMP knowing only a few TAS episodes and having just read the novelization of TMP. And it was my best ever cinema experience.

 

[Basil]

I don't doubt it was for some people, Therin -- I was maybe 10, and it was the movie we selected for my birthday party with schoolmates who would leave the theater mostly bored. The film opened more or less on my birthday, if I remember correctly. But I like Star Trek, so it was a great thrill for me. I bought the soundtrack, comic book, photonovel, fan magazines, and trading cards in addition to various toys, T-shirts, games, trading cards, posters, and so on. That doesn't hide its deficiencies, however.

The film does very little to move beyond having the characters be the excuse for the sci-fi premise of a machine that has become sentient, something episodes had addressed before more than once, with an approach that seemed more intent on invoking 2001 than the series. Even then, we learn almost nothing about V'Ger, nor have much in the way of interaction -- the first half, the better half, is essentially getting the crew back together, and most of the second half is the journey to V'ger -- "up the Himalayan mountain," so to speak, to get to the wise old man. Grand as the scenery is, t's not too thrilling a trip because when we finally get there, he's basically hiding behind a 300-year-old door and letting one of his disciples talk to us.

What makes it interesting for me is the fact that Captain Kirk and crew are back; but if we were to people the movie with different characters and a different ship, I doubt so many people would still be quite so enamored with the film. Its flaws dramatically would be more obvious because without the distraction of wanting to care about characters we know, we would realize they don't really have much to do to earn it.

Having said all that, I don't hate the movie even the slightest. I like it better than some of the films, if for no other reason than it is the only one that seems to have the verisimilitude that sci-fi should have. It looks like a movie. But it's not a well-conceived dramatic work, nor is it a great example of what to actually do with characters who always wanted to be in an epic but not let the epic overshadow them.

 

[trevanian]

What makes it interesting for me is the fact that Captain Kirk and crew are back; but if we were to people the movie with different characters and a different ship, I doubt so many people would still be quite so enamored with the film.

That's the gist of Kaye Anderson's review of TMP in CFQ from early 1980, that if the film were called STELLAR VOYAGES there wouldn't be so many people making excuses for it. But there is the other side of that coin -- people expecting TMP to live up to series ST's TV GUIDE description as ADVENTURE were feeling a bit like they had been sold short.