Khan 2.0
What was that about?
Star Trek The Motion Picture: If You Could Remake It
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
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I'd have one of the Klingon cruisers escape the opening battle and the Enterprise meet it on the way to v'ger, and have the Klingon ship attack the Enterprise for some much needed action. Inject some colour into the uniforms, tighten up a few of the v'ger flyby scenes and lighten up the performances of the cast a little. Everything else is just great as it is.
I'd have long legged Persis in my bed at night. Every night.
Oh--you meant the movie....
Oh--you meant the movie....
Read somewhere (think it was The Art of Trek book from the 90s) where said one possible ending considered was the 3 Klingon ships get released by vger after it vanishes and the enterprise has to do battle resulting in a saucer separation.
Not to be argumentative, but no we didn't.
Well, I suppose that's not argumentative, it's just contradiction.
Actually, just forget V'ger altogether and keep the 3 Klingons as the antagonists. Mark Lenard was criminally underused in his role, could you imagine him as a Klingon Admiral trying to assault the Federation. I'd love to see that movie. It would have some similarities to his Romulan Commander role, but be a very different character and I think he would have done an excellent job with it.
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Yeah, these kinds of minor tweaks would do it for me. The Director's Cut with extra character scenes from the SLV maybe. Kirk's admiral uniform was the best of the bunch so a variation of that for the officers would have been cool, maybe with shoulder pads. I would have liked each of the supporting characters to have been given a scene where they could showcase their personalities a bit more, maybe an off-duty scene to highlight their friendship. I think a landing party (or maybe shuttle party) that consisted of more than just the big three and involved some perilous exploration of V'Ger would have been nice. Rip Shatner's shirt a bit. Give Janice Rand a station on the bridge or in engineering so you don't blink and miss her. Make Chapel the ship's Exobiologist instead of another MD. Keep Ilia-bot around as a leggier prototype for Data.
A time-travel story in which our heroes become the Titans of myth, or something like that.
Kor
I think it's interesting that so many people seem to think jumping straight into the action would've been the way to go, whereas a lot of reviews of the film seem to think the film is strongest during the first 20 minutes and starts to run out of steam once the ship leaves drydock. If anything, it's the failure of the film to build on the conflicts set up in those first 20 minutes that are its failing. Kirk's arc goes nowhere. Decker's is so underwritten he comes off as a cipher. Only Spock has an arc that resolves in any meaningful fashion.
Also, there was never any serious thought given to having the Klingons reappear at the end of the film. That was one of two blue-sky endings Andy Probert came up with, but neither was ever seriously considered by the production.
If I could remake it I'd:
Change the wormhole to something that doesn't slow the whole damned film down.
Get rid of the redundancy, such as everyone and their brother commenting on how there's an object at the center of the cloud, and have it so no one knows what this cloud is, and save the reveal to be Spock's insight.
Have the crew be a helluva lot more active. Once they get grabbed by V'ger everyone just fucking sits there. The crew should be making suggestions, taking readings (whatever they can get through passive scans), and testing various ideas to see if they can get to the bottom of what this thing is and what it wants.
Write real arcs for all the leads. Kirk's obsession with the Enterprise would mirror Spock's obsession with V'ger, and it's be Spock's suicidal spacewalk that would make Kirk realize he's on a similar obsessive trajectory.
For starters.
Also, there was never any serious thought given to having the Klingons reappear at the end of the film. That was one of two blue-sky endings Andy Probert came up with, but neither was ever seriously considered by the production.
If I could remake it I'd:
Change the wormhole to something that doesn't slow the whole damned film down.
Get rid of the redundancy, such as everyone and their brother commenting on how there's an object at the center of the cloud, and have it so no one knows what this cloud is, and save the reveal to be Spock's insight.
Have the crew be a helluva lot more active. Once they get grabbed by V'ger everyone just fucking sits there. The crew should be making suggestions, taking readings (whatever they can get through passive scans), and testing various ideas to see if they can get to the bottom of what this thing is and what it wants.
Write real arcs for all the leads. Kirk's obsession with the Enterprise would mirror Spock's obsession with V'ger, and it's be Spock's suicidal spacewalk that would make Kirk realize he's on a similar obsessive trajectory.
For starters.
I'd have loved to see the Klingons reappear for some pew pew, but that would have taken away from the feel-good "love is the answer" ending of Decker merging with Ilia/V'Ger.
I think the biggest hole in the picture, based on the overriding theme, was the lack of chemistry between Ilia and Decker after Decker is "assigned" the task of being her escort. The end of the film suggests that the love between them was a tranformative force that allowed V'Ger to go beyond mechanical thinking. But by there being such limited sparks between Decker and Ilia, it didn't have a proper setup. There's just that little glimmer from Ilia in the rec deck. But I would have wanted to see more of Ilia's real consciousness fighting to reassert itself in the midst of a rekindled romance. Of course, doing that would have meant making those two more of the protagonist and stealing attention away from the original crew. Instead, Ilia maintains a pretty robotic attitude straight through to the end.
Maybe in the end rather than Decker volunteering to merge with the creator after Ilia continues to ask for it in a cold monotone, Ilia could have reasserted her consciousness and asked for it, sort of more of a Ghost style ending.
So the problem was that the film pushed a "love is the answer" message, but did so in the package of a cold essay. Even though there were some good lines, like McCoy portraying V'Ger as a child having a temper-tantrum, there was too much "tell" and not "show".
I think the biggest hole in the picture, based on the overriding theme, was the lack of chemistry between Ilia and Decker after Decker is "assigned" the task of being her escort. The end of the film suggests that the love between them was a tranformative force that allowed V'Ger to go beyond mechanical thinking. But by there being such limited sparks between Decker and Ilia, it didn't have a proper setup. There's just that little glimmer from Ilia in the rec deck. But I would have wanted to see more of Ilia's real consciousness fighting to reassert itself in the midst of a rekindled romance. Of course, doing that would have meant making those two more of the protagonist and stealing attention away from the original crew. Instead, Ilia maintains a pretty robotic attitude straight through to the end.
Maybe in the end rather than Decker volunteering to merge with the creator after Ilia continues to ask for it in a cold monotone, Ilia could have reasserted her consciousness and asked for it, sort of more of a Ghost style ending.
So the problem was that the film pushed a "love is the answer" message, but did so in the package of a cold essay. Even though there were some good lines, like McCoy portraying V'Ger as a child having a temper-tantrum, there was too much "tell" and not "show".
Now if there'd been a Klingon ship that had gotten into V'ger without getting digitized, and the Enterprise had to contend with them while figuring things out...with the two ships perhaps coming to a grudging truce but Kirk always having to watch his ship's back...that could have really spiced up the middle part of the film.
Another possibility involving Klingons...if instead of digitizing Ilia and creating a probe based on her, V'ger had sent a probe based on Lenard's digitized Klingon captain...and the probe was interacting with the carbon units informed by the perspective of the Klingon.
Another possibility involving Klingons...if instead of digitizing Ilia and creating a probe based on her, V'ger had sent a probe based on Lenard's digitized Klingon captain...and the probe was interacting with the carbon units informed by the perspective of the Klingon.
More of the warmth and banter between the characters that I loved from TOS would have made a huge difference to TMP
Agreed. The first 30-40 minutes are the most interesting of the film. Partly because we're seeing the characters again for the first time in 10 years, and partly because of the variety of environments. Once they settle on to the bridge, the film grinds to a halt.
Yes. We didn't need BOTH the transporter accident AND the wormhole sequence. One or the other is enough to sufficiently establish that the Enterprise has problems. Including both is redundant and slows the film down just when it should be ramping up.
Yes. I'm sure the film would've been tightened up more in this regard if Wise had had the time to preview and edit the picture properly. But honestly, that stuff should've been caught at the screenplay stage.
Biggest problem in the movie. The crew is largely passive rather than active.
I like this idea a lot. Kirk's and Spock's arcs should affect each other more.
Who let you read Phil Kaufman's treatment?
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