No, but having such a huge drop in VFX quality from previous movies is ugly and distracting. Whatever you think of the movie, having better visual effects would bump it up a notch, even if it were a small notch.
I personally never had much of a problem with the VFX. It's not ILM quality, sure, but the story wasn't so compelling that they needed compelling FX to go along with it.
Yeah, VFX have to be egregiously bad, as in it's obviously a plastic dinosaur, level bad before I care about it. Visuals mean very little to me from a film point of view. The story and characters have got to suck me in from the get go or it is just visuals and I could turn of the sound, watch a clip and call it good. That's not a story though.
I would say STV is the closest movie to being a actual TOS episode of them all, with the cheaper budget actually helping it to achieve that.
It has a lot of heart (sorry to be vague) and that makes up for a lot of it's flaws. Picard (as in the series) is even worse for that, especially the second series.
Like TMP, ST V might have worked best as a series…after the Praxis event as everything was winding down. The crew seeming to abandon Kirk would have made a bit more sense….especially if Spock’s brother wound up being a dalliance…Sybok’s mother being an El-Aurian, say? This makes him a far more dangerous Jim Jones type. While Spock tried but failed to purge emotions…Sybok—like Lore—embraced them as a master manipulator and social engineer. If I had to splice all the Trek films together as I mentioned above—I would have made him and Soren the same character. Kirk’s Enterprise—not the Ent-D saucer—-is what crashes. The Nexus would have been the outreach of the Imprisoned One. Sybok gives each crew member a taste of what he remembered…and then they turn into putty more understandably.
I like V despite the flaws. It does feel like they filmed a first draft and maybe with another draft could have nailed it. I love seeing people do new FX for this on Youtube but I don't think even at the time it was released more budget or better FX would have made this script any better. It feels like it's missing something at the end. They just go from place to place to place and God's not God and then they shoot God in the face and it ends. But deep down we knew that was coming. I don't think the comedy's all that great. It's stuff done to the characters a lot and not coming from the characters. Uhura does a naked dance, Scotty cracks his head, Chekov and Sulu get lost in the forest. It's low hanging fruit. I quite like Nimbus III, especially the opening with J'onn meeting Sybok like something out of Mad Max. There's some pretty nice scenes with the trio and then later with the trio and Sybok, obviously McCoy's scene stands out. I did get a kick out of "The Tears of Eridanus" using a few characters from this film. And Enterprise-A will always be my favourite Star Trek ship.
I actually think the humor is very good in some places, and very mis-placed in others. The slapstick stuff is not very good. I do like "Hold your horse, Captain" and I like Kirk telling Spock to "be one with the horse," but the rest of the silly humor just isn't right. I particularly don't like McCoy's irritating remarks to Spock in the Observation Lounge scene when Spock is explaining (loosely) his potential connection to Sybok. It's a beautiful scene, beautifully scored, and the inserted McCoy heckling just totally takes away from the tone. But, a lot of the more subtle humor is very well written and played. The fun around the campfire is good. Particularly strong is the whole exchange between Sybok, Sulu and Kirk just before they execute the barricade landing in the shuttle. "He did have pointed ears" is a great line with fantastic comedic timing. So, it's a mixed bag for me.
TFF would've done a lot, I believe, if wasn't competing with Indiana Jones, Batman, & Lethal Weapon 2; if it was released in the winter I think the numbers would've been better. It was a stacked summer of 1989 and Paramount made a huge mistake releasing it that season.
There are two things that make ST V enjoyable: - The dynamic between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and - of course, Laurence Luckinbill. He knocks it out of the park as Sybok. He's charismatic and likeable, but still ruthless. And I love that one bit where Kirk (I think it's Kirk, anyway) says "You're insane!" and Sybok pauses, clearly uncertain about it...and then says "We'll see." Like Sybok realizes in that moment Kirk might be right. Also I like the fact that when the Ent-A crew go down to Nimbus III to stop Sybok, they bring a trained team of Starfleet Marines (yes, they are Marines - they wear dark blue turtlenecks) down with them. Didn't do much GOOD, but at least they tried!
Great year for cinema, Those you have mentioned then BTTF 2, Naked Gun, Ghostbusters2, Scandal, licence to kill..plus more.
That summer was amazing for big blockbusters. I look back fondly as an early teen, thinking about all the great movies that came out that season. So much fun.
Yep, I was,18 had my first car (and serious girlfriend), multiplexes were quite new to the UK , seemed to spend every weekend there.
If it had done better then it might have had repercussions for the sixth film. Maybe Shatner stays on to do a second film like Nimoy did. They don't get Meyer back and there's no TUC storyline probably.
I would have been more than ok with that. I think Meyer was WAAAAY too busy smoking his own awesomeness by the time TUC went to page. It's one of the most self-indulgent entities in all the franchise, and it's a bit embarassing to watch sometimes as such. If TFF had done moderately better (say...in the 70M range as opposed to the $55M it made), it may have been a good "calibration" experience for Shatner, and he would have learned the lessons and pitfalls all associated with the making of TFF. And, frankly, TUC was just as sloppy as TFF was. The visual effects were obviously better, but it isn't any tighter from a plot perspective if we are being honest with ourselves, and there's just as much winking at the camera (perhaps even more). I also thought Shatner's eye for direction, cinematography and editing were honestly REALLY quite good. Meyer has the distinction of helming some very successful films, but nobody is going to say that TWOK or TUC are particularly dynamic looking films. TFF, for all it's flaws, actually LOOKS great from a direction standpoint (VFX aside). I honestly think Shatner was interested in telling and filming Star Trek stories. I think Meyer was interested in telling and filming his OWN stories, with Star Trek skin on it that he had to grudgingly work with.
The one place I'll put the TUC and Meyer over TFF and Shatner is that it feels like the crew work together better in some ways. There is less lionizing of Kirk and more effort to work together.