Quoted for truth. It sure the hell was!
"Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"
- Thread starter Humanoid #77
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Quoted for truth. It sure the hell was!
And a bit earlier the first Conan movie, Secret of NIMH, Sword and the Sorcerer, Beastmaster...and Megaforce!
Great point.
And, yeah, those first 2 are so easily rewatchable too...Great year for sci-fi movies, I must concede! TV shows were also there, most were just not memorable (or good)...
Dang. Glad it came out when it had, then. And "The Black Hole", while imperfect, has a surprising level of horror that sets it apart. It too is a masterclass of a movie, as is TMP.
TOS had some heavy handed episodes, so it makes sense that at least one of the movies would whip out the sledgehammer as well. I don't recall what TMP's heavy handed bit was (Kirk's obsessing?) but TVH definitely has a whale of a time in whaling it up about the whales. Everyone loved it, but everyone loved smoking too so either way I can't complain. Signed, a non-smoking Trekkie.
The one time that a plot-driven movie makes a comeback and it's a 2-hour sitcom.
Which is a plus, especially for bringing in new audiences to get hooked on them before you do something big and epic like what had happened in the previous two films, which is what made TOS that much more epic in the first place.
Great point! I've to look up the international edition one day...
Admittedly, it was a very solid recap. The events of two movies rolled up into a handful of minutes. Great for the time to fill in the edited highlights, but the full experience and adventure of II and III were still no less mammoth in their own rights. I'd only hope that newbies in 1986 looked back, but even then there's nothing like the cinema. Which is usually good, but then you have to deal with sticky floors, dirty seats, talking people that causes sound pollution, people using their phones that causes light pollution, people doing it in the back seats that's distracting for a handful of reasons, etc.
The best result.
"Gothos" is an interesting choice as well. It is oddball, and yet it hangs together so neatly.
^^this
^^this!
As good as TUC is, the franchise never really ditched the gags until NEM, then forgot to make a compelling movie to go along with the darker tone. TWOK was compelling. NEM is just a big blob of empty indulgence.
I did like the Shakespeare "in the original Klingon" stuff, though. While it's riffing on the Chekov shtick from TOS, and yet it's not making the Klingons looks like doofuses in the way Chekov was treated as one in TOS. It's almost heavy-handed in a way, given some of Shakespeare's stories' themes, and yet it isn't.
^^this!!
That's the phraseology for sure. The films and franchise stopped taking itself seriously and it's not been the same. Even the TNG flicks never fully recovered from this "need".
I do remember griping in 1989 how TOS's movies were getting sillier while TNG was getting to take itself seriously. TNG definitely needed to. But so did TOS. The seriousness of the general content is another reason why the one-off comedic episodes hold up better. Make it all one farcical comedy routine one episode after the next and it won't be seen credibly as the audience, apart from being a joke.
Ditto. I-III are, IMHO, the platinum standard, but: TUC still has a lot in its favor, while I felt TFF was okay at the time I adore it now because - jokiness aside - it captured the flavor and aura of TOS* as well as trying to find a big epic way to explore a strange new world and to seek out w new life form, with the deleted scenes adding desperately needed background context. TVH, in the right mindset, can be fun, but the humor is too much dated as it's a relic of 1986. But it's still not without its moments.
* Shatner nailed it, even if audiences didn't recognize it at the time because they were used to the serious element from I-III that had been ditched thanks to TVH's detour, and at least TUC remembered to put enough seriousness back in to satisfy that trait of the big screen Treks.
Too true!
1982 television also featured my favorites, Square Pegs and Q. E. D.
School sucked, but life was sooooo good.
School sucked, but life was sooooo good.
1982 television also featured my favorites, Square Pegs and Q. E. D.
School sucked, but life was sooooo good.
Square Pegs... definitely a curate's egg of a show, released on DVD after being remastered from the original film negs (so why not put it on blu-ray to really let it shine?). True, the laugh track doesn't help it, but the show's still got a certain charm. Loved the opening credits, great graphic design... Then they top it off with the otherwise cliché "bring in the pop music group" sweeps week shtick but it's DEVO of all groups -- talk about subverting expectations. What's not to love!
A good cast for sure, but Merritt Butrick definitely had some range and seemed to be a potential standout actor. Sadly died way too young, he would have been acclaimed, deemed underrated as a terrific character actor, or both.
And now, some examples of Devo:
They always made their covers of other songs "their own" with unexpected twists and tweaks that are to be expected by the group as they love subverting expectations...
With any title but that plot (other than maybe some very-vague one word title) they would have reacted that way (although the film does make it still feel like, though the resurrection pretty contrived reset, it is still also a challenge to succeed, not completely inevitable that they will).
I think going super-dark/real serious without much comedy tends to be understandably real rare and even when it does happen that is also regarded as pretty bad, unfortunate take. Sure you're not going to really have comedy with Khan or Borg Queen nearly winning (OK to have a little before it's clear Borg Queen is nearly winning), I think most of the other stories aren't, and shouldn't be, so grim that a little comedy is against the tone or is not taking seriously at all or is damaging to the characters.
I think most people agree TVH and TFF back to back was too much, and the latter at least a little character damaging, don't think the brief scenes of Chekov making mistake or Uhura struggling in TUC at all make whole thing farcical.
I think Uhura and the entire senior staff sitting around on the bridge with a bunch of dusty old books trying badly to respond to a Klingon transmission is far more farcical, and character assaulting, than anything that happens in TFF.
