with a title like this, there was no way it would end with Admiral Kirk turning to the audience and saying "Sorry, folks, we didn't find him." If it had, people would've thrown rocks at the screen.
"Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"
- Thread starter Humanoid #77
- Start date
Title's a bit of a misnomer anyway as Spock's katra was squirreled away inside McCoy's bones and popped out from time to time. One didn't have far to look.
I dunno. Maybe Bones became McCoy's nickname because he had a long history of unwittingly hosting Vulcan katras whenever the need arose.
I dunno. Maybe Bones became McCoy's nickname because he had a long history of unwittingly hosting Vulcan katras whenever the need arose.
Yes, it is a strange choice for a title. As the post above mentions, it’s not much of a “search,” they already know where he is. “The Return of Spock” could have worked, but they probably didn’t want the title to seem so close to Return of the Jedi, which had come out the previous year.
“Star Trek III: Finding Spock”
“Star Trek III: Welcome back, Spock!”
“Star Trek III: The Genesis Effect”
“Star Trek III: Reset Button”
“Star Trek III: Finding Spock”
“Star Trek III: Welcome back, Spock!”
“Star Trek III: The Genesis Effect”
“Star Trek III: Reset Button”
Last edited:
These 3 come to mind, can't think why though
Star Trek 3, The Spock Awakens
Star Trek 3, The Last Dead Guy
Star Trek 3, The Rise of Spocks Katra
Star Trek 3, The Spock Awakens
Star Trek 3, The Last Dead Guy
Star Trek 3, The Rise of Spocks Katra
Star Trek III: Genesis.
Star Trek 3: Attack of the Klingons
That worked in numerous TNG battle scenes what with rocks flying everywhere and all...
But even in 1984, never saw TWOK, this film - even in promotionals/teasers/etc, or even just the poster only - felt like an event. In a franchise that already became an event in other ways...
Yeah, this is exactly it, and the joke was bandied about right after Spock died in TWOK. "The next one should be In Search Of...Spock!" I always felt this title was simply a play on it.
The best part of this thread is that it shows that The Search For Spock was a much better title than some others they could have gone with.
I rewatched the movie last week. Still great.
100% agreed.
The title is fine. Sometimes a film title isn't there simply to describe the plot - it is there to attract interest. And the title, plus the promos, did just that.
This. With only one TV series/cast, each movie, each new official adventure was an event. If you didn't live it, that impact is lost on you. We didn't have dozens of shows, 13 movies, and hundreds and hundreds of episodes to make it commonplace. This was HUGE and existed at all mostly because of fan passion.
Star Trek III was for the fans and people who enjoyed the previous film. No other real crossover appeal. And it made a tidy profit.
I miss that feeling: the agonizing wait for another adventure with the cast of the only Trek game in town. Waiting on line for hours opening night and excitement of the lights going down and the Paramount logo coming up. Knowing that, no matter how it turned out, the entire fan community was as excited to see this.
I was in high school and even I, a social pariah, had people to talk to just as the semester was ending....
The 70's through 1986 was my favorite time to be a fan.
Last edited:
Just one continuing saga, in a single show that had started things loose and developed more detail and generally was impressively and remarkable given the sheer number of stories and no computer database or script developing software to make managing it easier.
Star Trek Franchise Box Office History - The Numbers
Star Trek franchise box office earnings
www.the-numbers.com
TMP raked it in due to fans rewatching, maybe a handful of people who saw "STAR" in the title and may have thought it was another Star wars-"inspired movie" along with "Star Crash", "Battle Between the Stars", "Battle of the Network Stars", "Pirahna"*, and others, but TOS - at the time - was also in a unique position. Gotta wonder how TWOK managed to make less than TMP. TSFS didn't reclaim people who sat through TWOK, probably not caring for the script if not going back to rewatch it multiple times, like a hubby telling his spouse "Hey Martha, I'm going out to see TWOK again because I wanna see Spock die again!". TVH is a headscratcher, probably with casuals finding it "accessible", since most of this sequel spent more time in 1986 San Francisco and playing the "fish out of water" trope, keeping Klingon intrigue sidelined. The same comedy trope just couldn't work in TFF, where everyone's rendered (even Kirk) as a twit for a ha-ha joke because comedy always means big bux (and/or a possible belief in how only TNG should take itself seriously at this point in the franchise's history). TUC not only sidelines some of the character-assassinating comedy (sadly, some remains) and yet it definitely proves that word of mouth is a thing and it did for TUC what wasn't done for the preceding non-TVM movies regarding getting in new audiences or maybe even audiences that forgot what a Star Trek thingy was apart from Picard and crew**, but it was also shown as TOS's swansong and the teaser did pique interest...
* well, that's more a rip-off of "Jaws" but it's the only one worth seeing and it's actually really good in its own right, something a viewer can really sink their teeth into, but I digress. Hope a proper 4K version comes out one day, most 4K movies with going back to the original film negatives really reveal so much more color and sharpness detail...
** to be aged 12 in 1991 like how I wasn't and wondering just how big the franchise was even back then. It was probably best to have been a kid in the 70s through all eight trizillion reruns...
And with no home video at the time, the recaps in-movie to fill in viewers who missed the previous installment were succinct yet satisfying. Pretty nifty. At the time, how many of us really thought of "How'd the Klingons get this level of detail regarding the Enterprise going boom?" But it didn't matter too much, wasn't a major plot point that can't be cranialcanoned away, and, just as poignant, it's not like the Klingons don't have spies they buy data from or anything.
Not quite so, I had the first 2 movies on VHS tapes by then, I watched them endlessly. They were $24.95 each and I asked my dad to get them for me for my birthday. The movies also ran on cable, so they were being revisited prior to Star Trek III's premiere.
Probably because of the more crowded sci-fi/fantasy landscape by then. Summer 1982 was chockablock with incredible choices:
Poltergeist
Star Trek II
E.T. (the week after TWOK - so there's your answer)
Blade Runner
The Thing
Tron
Compared to Star Trek The Motion Picture whose sole sci-fi competition in December was The Black Hole, three weeks later. It also had 10 years of hunger to feed off of. If it came out in the summer of 1979, it may have been a different result with Alien, Rocky II, The Amityville Horror, Moonraker and the re-release of Star Wars taking the young folks' movie ticket dollars.
Yup that was it, it was the less "Trekkie" of the films. It was a heavy handed message comedy that was, like TMP, plot driven rather than character driven. Other than the 23rd century bookends, you didn't need to know a thing about the characters. And if the US prints had the same recap the overseas releases did, it wouldn't have been out of place to audiences. But Harve Bennett was quite skilled at working exposition into his dialog, so all you had to know was Spock died and the crew sacrificed their careers and their ship to save him. Everything else was Trek talk they just blew off and enjoyed the fun. I had one friend who had no interest in Star Trek, but his girlfriend made him go see it and he loved it. Then he saw "The Squire of Gothos" and loved how oddball Trek could be and suddenly he was a fan.
Because Paramount didn't realize that it wasn't the jokes per se that people liked, it was the 23rd century (as you said) fish out of water situation. Star Trek V also didn't have a consistent tone. Star Trek IV kept most of the humor to the 20th century scenes. TFF had it everywhere, mixed with heady themes and tragic backstories. It was also steeped in Trek characters that general audiences didn't have an investment in. There's a good film in there somewhere, but too many cooks destroyed the dish.
Ehhhh, this was supposed to be a "darker" story but it was sabotaaged at every turn by really awful gags. Chekov being a borderline simpleton (he really takes a pounding in this movie), Uhura and the books, the Kirk loves himself meta humor, and the heavy handed Shakespeare quotes dilute what really should have been a nifty political thriller (the DC is even worse with the Scooby-Doo climax). I really mean to do an edit of this movie, removing the idiocy and seeing how it plays. After Star Trek III, none of the TOS films were allowed to take themselves seriously and the first 3 really feel like they were made for adults more than the rest.
None of these things, though, take away from my love of the first 6 movies. I still enjoyed TFF more than TVH and consider TSFS my all time favorite Trek movie (with TWOK and TMP directly behind).
As I said, it was a lovely time to be alive.
Last edited:
Well, many fans have been upset about Spock's death, so they had to reconcile them.
