STIII - What's wrong with it?

[Garth Rockett]

TSFS is my second favorite Trek film, behind TWOK. Everything about this movie works. The crew interact very well, each member has something important to do in the plot, and the death of David and the destruction of the Enterprise pack quite the emotional punch. Plus, it has some of the funniest dialogue in any Star Trek movie. (My favorite being: "How many fingers am I holding up?")

 

[Brady]

The problem is it's too much an episode, not as much of a movie. Without being a trekkie, you can't appreciate the story, you won't care for the "hero" (Spock).

WOK presents Khan as the bad guy, being stranded by Kirk resolting in his wife's death. Anybody that doesn't know anything about Trek can still relate to Khan being the bad guy and enjoy the storie.

But SFP requires you to know who Spock his. Just seing the short video from the end of WOK isn't sufficient for you to understand the logic of his sacrifice and why he's such a dear departed friend.

Plus, the whole story is ultimately just a means of reviving the character and not as much a story in itself.

I think this is sort of petty. It is a direct sequel. Anyone who sees any sequel before seeing the first film is going to miss out on some things.

 

[GeorgeKirk]

TSFS was the first Star Trek movie I ever saw. I was 6 and the only Star Trek I'd ever seen up to that point was reruns on our 10-inch black-and-white TV, so it naturally seemed huge and epic at the time.

Unfortunately, it hasn't aged that well. The large number of implausibly cartoonish characters (Styles, Esteban, Kruge, Mr. Adventure) really hurts the film. The cheap production values and Apple II graphics may have made sense in 1984, but they hurt the movie in the long run.

I still enjoy TSFS more than the TNG films, though.

EDIT: I almost forgot, TSFS gets bonus points for introducing us to Frank Force, which, of course, is Leonard Nimoy's porn name.

 

[Basill]

TSFS was my first theater Trek film. I had seen TMP on TV a few times but just wasn't that into Trek. In fact I recall a neighbor friend gushing that he had just seen TWOK the summer it came out, and I promptly told him, "Shut up! Star Trek sucks! We're talking about Star Wars!"

Well, 2 years later I drank the Kool-Aid with TSFS and I've been devoted ever since.

I see it like cole slaw. Some people hate it and always will. Some people can't eat a bucket of chicken drums without it. I'm the latter.

 

[SchwEnt]

TSFS gets a thumbs up from me.

I think the problem may be that the good stuff is *really* good and the bad stuff is *really* bad. It's really a mixed bag, a tough call.
So depending on what aspect someone considers, it'll get a bad rap or maybe rave reviews.

 

[VulcanJedi]

Just watched STIII. First time in a long time. I enjoyed it quite a bit and wonder what's not to like. I'm assuming people don't like it because it's one of the odd-numbered movies.

I very much enjoyed STIII as a kid, and that's all that matters. Whereas STV was boring!

So, perhaps III has some silly ideas, I don't care--I enjoyed it. Fun battles, Klingon dogs, Christopher Llyod (who I believe created the template for Klingons for the next 15+ years)

 

[trevanian]

SFS has graduated to become probably my favorite Trek movie of them all.

Agreed 100%. I can't believe this. I was getting on here to make this EXACT same thread because I do not understand why Search for Spock gets any criticism. Kirk defying orders, stealing the Enterprise, blowing it up over Genesis- that is just classic. For me, it is a toss up between Undiscovered Country and Search for Spock, but Undiscovered Country doesn't have any sequences in it as awesome as watching Kirk and the gang steal the Enterprise.

SFS deserves more criticism than any trek movie, because little in it makes any sense PLUS it is made by committee with an uncinematic director deferring to a bad writer-producer and letting ILM design when they should just be executing somebody else's creative list.

The aging stopping when he is taken off the planet, the idiotic beaming down to a dying planet instead of to the other ship, the terrible staging of David's death that belonged on a radio show, not a feature film ... I don't think there is a single thing done right in the last half of the film, except for maybe the 3shot of Kirk, Scott, & Chekov during the self-destruct recital. And that doesn't get into the idiocy of a blimp hanger in space or any of the dozens of other things I've raged at in this pic over the years. I'd suggest that if the OP is serious about wanting detailed criticism, he should do a search, because there should be hundreds of pages on trekbbs just covering aspects of this pic alone. I've been in enough of them, I should know.

 

[JediKnightButler]

The TOS movie "trilogy" of TWOK, TSFS, and TVH were the most memorable of the Star Trek movies, at least for me, and pretty much the only ones I ever watch over and over. Like with ROTJ from Star Wars OT, I never realized that a lot of people disliked it in the first place. Although I do have to admit that the movie is kind of slow during the first part of the movie and again towards the end, there are a lot of really memorable scenes such as Kirk, et. al stealing the Enterprise, one of the more "classic" scenes in any of the movies before or after, as well as Kirk's decision to blow up the Enterprise with the Klingons on board. It was a pretty drama-heavy movie to be sure but the crew had just lost Spock, they were going to be losing the Enterprise, and then Kirk unexpectedly lost his son to the Klingons. It was also a neat reversal of Spock's decision in TWOK to sacrifice his life to save the crew ("the many") whereas in TSFS, Kirk (and his crew) sacrificed their careers, their ship, and Kirk, his son, to rescue Spock ("the one"). Pretty heavy stuff to be sure but it was rather well-written and it all still holds up for me rather well IMHO.

 

[Jeyl]

The thing I love about TSFS is how they handled the villain. The character of Kruge wasn't someone who had a past with Kirk nor knew anything about him and his history. All he knew about him was that he was involved with the Genesis Experiment. And when the two of them finally meet, it's Trek history. The Enterprise is crippled, the commander calls Kirk's bluff and Kirk is left momentarily but genuinely powerless.

 

[Bones2]

The film could have had a subtler title as well.

 

[Admiral Pike]

I find the early part of the movie (act 1) to be excellent: packed with humor, drama, witty dialogue and some really good character moments. The scene with Sarek is moving, and the part where someone (McCoy) has broken into Spock's quarters is dramatic. The scenes where McCoy impersonates Spock are hilarious, and there's also the sequence where they steal the Excelsior which is exciting.

But after that, the film slows down considerably, and suffers from some pretty bad pacing problems throughout.

 

[Maurice]

The problem is it's too much an episode, not as much of a movie. Without being a trekkie, you can't appreciate the story, you won't care for the "hero" (Spock).

WOK presents Khan as the bad guy, being stranded by Kirk resolting in his wife's death. Anybody that doesn't know anything about Trek can still relate to Khan being the bad guy and enjoy the storie.

But SFP requires you to know who Spock his. Just seing the short video from the end of WOK isn't sufficient for you to understand the logic of his sacrifice and why he's such a dear departed friend.

Plus, the whole story is ultimately just a means of reviving the character and not as much a story in itself.

I think this is sort of petty. It is a direct sequel. Anyone who sees any sequel before seeing the first film is going to miss out on some things.

Petty? Hardly the word that characterizes a fair criticism of a film that doesn't function well as a stand-alone. TSFS is basically an "UNDO" Control-Z to Spock's Death.

 

[cardinal biggles]

As aggravating as that is, it's nothing compared to the Control-Z that the end of TVH represents. The undoing of Spock's sacrifice is almost balanced out by Kirk's personal sacrifice to save his friend. On the other hand, where's the balance in making Kirk a captain again, and giving him a new ship?

 

[Gary Sebben]

I think TSFS as an undo goes further than just Spock. One of the things that is weak about TWOK is that Kirk is given an instant family to care about. His ship and his crew is not important enough to him anymore. And instead of dealing with it organically with the friends he's always known, he gets a wife an kid to snap him out of it. So David really had to go or it would become another one of those "Old hero and son replacement" things. Yuck.

But Kirk does come back hard in this movie in a way he hasn't been in the last two. In TMP and TWOK he's a HORRIBLE captain. In TMP he's whiny and bitchy and no one can stand him. In the end Decker is the hero. The only thing Kirk did right was pressing into the cloud when Decker would have backed off.

In TWOK Kirk is too knee deep in his midlife crap to be effective. He batches the initial Khan engagement by not raising shields in an obvious tense situation. Then he can't even make the decision to sacrifice a crew man to get the mains online. Spock winds up the hero of TWOK. Both of these situations arise because Kirk is a dope in these two movies.

TSFS we see Kirk pulling all the gambits and make all the tough choices to get his people home safe. Kirk is finally the hero of trek after five years and two movies.

 

[EmmanuelZorg]

It's a weak entry of the big trilogy but not as good as part 2 and 4. Christopher Lloyd really made this entry worth watching.

 

[Praetor]

I don't think that there's anything "wrong" with TSFS per se, but it isn't a particularly polarizing movie in any way. It's good enough to not be awful, yet sort of bad enough to not be great. It's a non-offender, so to speak, and I think it gets overlooked because it's sandwiched between TWOK and TVH, the latter of which I've always found to be a little inferior, personally.

Despite my obvious David Marcus bias, it's still not quite my favorite:

I think the major problem with it is that the plot does not grow organically, everything is contrived in order to bring Spock back at the end. This is similar to Generations which was geared entirely towards Kirk and Picard meeting at the expense of having the plot make any sense. I also don't like that fact that they chose to bring Spock back, his death in TWOK was a perfect exit for the character and bringing him back feels like a mistake.

I still enjoy the movie for the many great scenes mentioned above, and the dialogue is fairly well written. It certainly doesn't deserve to be lumped in with TFF and Insurrection.

Well said, good sir.

 

[TrekNut87]

I don't think that there's anything "wrong" with TSFS per se, but it isn't a particularly polarizing movie in any way. It's good enough to not be awful, yet sort of bad enough to not be great. It's a non-offender, so to speak, and I think it gets overlooked because it's sandwiched between TWOK and TVH, the latter of which I've always found to be a little inferior, personally.

This is my feeling as well. I didn't "hate" this movie at all, but I found the middle of the film to be incredibly dry and uninteresting and that, in my opinion, is what really drags it down.

 

[Danny99]

In my opinion, TSFS suffers from "peaks" in the action.

If the high points are stealing the Enterprise, destroying the Enterprise, Kirk/Kruge fight and the restoration of Spock, everything between those points is just dull. It builds up during those points, only to drop off into boring scenes with Grissom or Saavik/David.

 

[Admiral Pike]

I don't think that there's anything "wrong" with TSFS per se, but it isn't a particularly polarizing movie in any way. It's good enough to not be awful, yet sort of bad enough to not be great. It's a non-offender, so to speak, and I think it gets overlooked because it's sandwiched between TWOK and TVH, the latter of which I've always found to be a little inferior, personally.

This is my feeling as well. I didn't "hate" this movie at all, but I found the middle of the film to be incredibly dry and uninteresting and that, in my opinion, is what really drags it down.

Yes, the beginning and the end is great, easily on par with TWoK and TVH, but the middle section just feels like one long uneventful transportation route between point A and point B. It's almost as if they extended a short 50-minute episode plot into a theatrical movie, but didn't fill the remaining 50 minutes with anything substantial.

 

[Praetor]

For me personally, it's not necessarily the Saavik/David/Grissom scenes themselves, it's the pacing, overall. It just lags a bit around the middle.

<--I may be biased.