Siskel and Ebert Review of Trek 5...

[srombomb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AeajDlRNA

-- I find it kind of interesting they both tore apart the campfire scene, and really didn't even try to dissect why it may have had some relevance with the main characters. Instead they just wrote it off as laughable.

Normally I'd attempt to take Ebert's review of Star Trek V as something I could respect, but this is the same guy that was one of the few to give the new Star Trek movie a not so good review.

He did make some good points about too many introductions to characters we never even really got to know through the rest of the movie. However, it's only a 2 hr movie. There wouldn't be enough time to give David Warner's character, or others a proper back story.

Either way I think there review was a little too harsh, and spoken by true "non- Trek" fans who simply don't get Star Trek to begin with.

Anyone agree?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AeajDlRNA

-- I find it kind of interesting they both tore apart the campfire scene, and really didn't even try to dissect why it may have had some relevance with the main characters. Instead they just wrote it off as laughable.?

That's because it was laughable. Doesn't matter what "relevance" it supposedly had to the characters - it was badly written, badly directed, and just sadly funny at best.

That Ebert and Siskel didn't deign to humor Trekkies by pretending that this movie wasn't a turd just elevates them a bit more as reviewers. This movie stank.

"It's going to be of interest only to Trekkies and then mainly so that they can analyze what's wrong with it" - that alone is evidence of Ebert's perceptive and prescient brilliance.

Siskel's no slouch either: "Everyone's getting sloshed in this film. Maybe they've read the script."

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Normally I'd attempt to take Ebert's review of Star Trek V as something I could respect, but this is the same guy that was one of the few to give the new Star Trek movie a not so good review.

I've always been under the impression that Ebert has always understood the potential the Trek format has to be really awe-inspiring science fiction. From his reviews, it seems Ebert is disappointed that the franchise never really lived up to that potential in the majority of its movies.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I think their reviews of Star Trek movies were pretty spot-on, although Siskel was a little too kind to the TNG movies. He gave every single one of them that he saw thumbs up!

His main excuse for "Generations" and "Insurrection" was that he enjoyed the obvious affection that the actors had for each other. Kind of a flimsy defense. The actors' affection for each other being apparent in their performances is not enough by itself to make a movie good.

For some reason, Siskel also seemed to let the fact that he knew Michael Piller influence him to favour "Insurrection". Weird. I wonder what he would have thought about "Nemesis" if he'd lived to see it. Oddly enough, his successor Roeper actually liked it.

 

[Kirk1980]

....the affection wasn't apparent in V?

I thought it was, at least.

Oh well, I don't read many reviews anyway.

 

[Mr. B]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AeajDlRNA
Either way I think there review was a little too harsh, and spoken by true "non- Trek" fans who simply don't get Star Trek to begin with.

Anyone agree?

I couldn't. Star Trek V was pretty bad. I wouldn't even expect a Trek fan to take it seriously, much less respected film critics.

 

[Jbarney]

Wow they trashed it.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Wow, it deserved it. They wouldn't have been doing their jobs if they'd given it a pass.

middyseafort has pretty much nailed Ebert's problem with the Trek movies, and Nemesis and Trek XI in particular. They're space opera instead of science fiction, and (in his opinion) they're not even great space opera. Unfortunately, the archives on Ebert's website seem to be screwed up at the moment (you can search titles, but all the article links keep coming up 404'd), otherwise I'd pull up his review of Final Frontier, where he seems to be alluding to this even as far back as '89. He mentions how the scene where Sybok takes the ship through the Great Barrier filled him with hope that after all the awkward comedy, we might actually get to Go Where No Man Has Gone Before. Then they get down to the planet and "God" turns out to be a floating head of a pissed-off alien, and he feels let down again.

 

[Trek Survivor]

That's because it was laughable. Doesn't matter what "relevance" it supposedly had to the characters - it was badly written, badly directed, and just sadly funny at best.

Says you. Yours is just an opinion, like this Ebert. Honestly, Americans keep mentioning him like he's some kind of review God.

What is he, the equivalent of Barry Norman!?!

I love the camp fire scene. One of the best in any of the Trek movies. Nowhere else has the friendship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy ever been more 'true' (the forced emotion of the over-rated "Wrath Of Khan" included. See, I have an opinion on that too!)

 

[Shatmandu]

People read movie reviews?

I think that's quaint.

Joe, filmy

 

[cardinal biggles]

Yours is just an opinion, like this Ebert. Honestly, Americans keep mentioning him like he's some kind of review God.

What is he, the equivalent of Barry Norman!?!

Ebert is far from God; I doubt even his biggest fans think that. But he is one of the most prominent film critics in America, because of the combination of his long-running movie review show with the late Gene Siskel, and also because he's the the first film critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize for his criticism (in 1975). Do I always agree with him? No. But even when I disagree, I always enjoy reading his reviews.

While I personally don't mind Trek's tendency towards less sci-fi and more space opera, I can see why it would bother Ebert, especially if TOS captured his imagination, and he then saw it drifting away from him. Nor do I see the need to tear him a new one simply because he won't give in to rose-colored sentimentality and see past the flaws in movies like Final Frontier and Nemesis and instead judge them on "what might have been if _____(fill in the blank with usual excuse for why movie is misjudged by fans, critics, and everybody)_____."

 

[BriGuy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1AeajDlRNA

-- I find it kind of interesting they both tore apart the campfire scene, and really didn't even try to dissect why it may have had some relevance with the main characters. Instead they just wrote it off as laughable.

Normally I'd attempt to take Ebert's review of Star Trek V as something I could respect, but this is the same guy that was one of the few to give the new Star Trek movie a not so good review.

He did make some good points about too many introductions to characters we never even really got to know through the rest of the movie. However, it's only a 2 hr movie. There wouldn't be enough time to give David Warner's character, or others a proper back story.

Either way I think there review was a little too harsh, and spoken by true "non- Trek" fans who simply don't get Star Trek to begin with.

Anyone agree?

They're movie reviewers reviewing a movie, not Trek fans reviewing a Trek movie.

TFF was a bad film. At the time I was nearly embarrassed to be a Trek fan by it. Even if I've come to appreciate some of it, doesn't change the fact it was horribly executed.

To suggest someone has to be a Trek fan to render an opinion on a Trek film? Ridiculous.

 

[cardinal biggles]

^Bingo. This whole idea that Trek has to be made for the fans, and that you have to be a fan to enjoy it is self-defeating. It's what brings about rubbish like Nemesis and Enterprise. Trek is not art made in a vacuum, it is a product that has to compete in the marketplace; the more insular and inaccessible it becomes, the less successful it will be in that competition.

 

[Gorn Captain]

Look, I would fix 433 things about Star Trek V if I could. Comparatively, it suffers to what came before and after. However, in the end, I like the movie.

That's right, I said it.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Nobody's saying you can't like it. I like Twilight, Avril Lavigne, and Power Rangers, but I still recognize that they're crap. It's this whole idea that Final Frontier is a flawed masterpiece and Roger Ebert is a big fat meanie that I (personally, not in any official moderator-y capacity) have a problem with.

 

[Gorn Captain]

Nobody's saying you can't like it. I like Twilight, Avril Lavigne, and Power Rangers, but I still recognize that they're crap. It's this whole idea that Final Frontier is a flawed masterpiece and Roger Ebert is a big fat meanie that I (personally, not in any official moderator-y capacity) have a problem with.

I gotcha. I agree with you on that part of it.

I don't think it's a flawed masterpiece. I think there are a few nice elements that are significantly overshadowed by immense problems.

 

[Jbarney]

Nobody's saying you can't like it. I like Twilight, Avril Lavigne, and Power Rangers, but I still recognize that they're crap. It's this whole idea that Final Frontier is a flawed masterpiece and Roger Ebert is a big fat meanie that I (personally, not in any official moderator-y capacity) have a problem with.

I don't see it as a flawed masterpiece any more than I can defend the 3rd season of TOS, which by far has a lot of clunkers.

Over time I have come to view The Final Frontier as something very close to a 3rd season TOS episode. Some parts of it are really silly, and you have to wonder what they were thinking when they put it together.

That said, The Final Frontier is a movie I enjoy watching.

 

[Kirk1980]

I think it had great potential but yes, much more would be needed than upgraded effects and judicious trims.

That being said....it sure as hell couldn't hurt!

 

[cardinal biggles]

^Yeah, I don't get how people think they can fix a movie just by cutting out the lame comedy bits (TFF) or putting back in the character scenes (NEM), or by eliminating a certain annoying character (Phantom Menace). The flaws go far deeper than what you can fix in the editing room; they're flaws that needed to be fixed all the way back during the writing phase.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

^Yeah, I don't get how people think they can fix a movie just by cutting out the lame comedy bits (TFF) or putting back in the character scenes (NEM), or by eliminating a certain annoying character (Phantom Menace). The flaws go far deeper than what you can fix in the editing room; they're flaws that needed to be fixed all the way back during the writing phase.

Precisely. It's as if they filmed the first draft of the screenplay, when it really needed a few more passes to fix the cracks in the keel. And, I think, it wouldn't have hurt to replace David Loughery as primary screenwriter.