It would have been worse. Connery would have overshadowed all the other cast, and the movie would have been no better.
Sybok. Do you think he was doing the right thing?
- Thread starter urrutiap
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It would have been worse. Connery would have overshadowed all the other cast, and the movie would have been no better.
I would love to know your thoughts on your topic?
Likely some as yet untold deeply buried trauma. They often created new details rather than looking back at what they said already.
Was it playing Daddy Warbucks in Annie that sent him over the edge?
Sybok really believed in his quest to find God in the middle of the galaxy. He felt it was right but stealing a starship and kidnapping dignitaries and falsifying events in the name of galactic righteousness clearly was dumb.
Peter Cushing didn't elevate Star Wars.
Julian Glover didn't elevate The Empire Strikes back.
The huge list of names in the prequels didn't elevate those.
Without solid characters and plot, all the big names in the universe won't make a difference.
Also, who could have played Superman other than Christropher Reeve? (It's about an actor making that role feel reel with a sincere and believable performance. Reeve wasn't a big name and he proved big names don't matter. But the movie helped make him a big name. )
If this is a sincere concern….Wouldn’t a quest to find God be at least as much an inward journey as an outward one?
You might say the one thing Sybok did right was to heal McCoy of guilt about his father’s death – McCoy claims his pain is gone, and almost followed Sybok until Spock and Kirk persuaded him otherwise. Sybok also apparently healed J’onn as well as others on Nimbus 3, but then he made them accomplices in his deluded criminal ‘quest.’
The film would have been better in my eyes if Sybok had been a fellow student with Spock on Vulcan, but not his half brother – Shatner got talked into that relationship, don’t think it really adds anything. Sybok, or Zarr as Shatner originally named him, was written to satirize televangelists and/or the Ayatollah.
If Sybok really was a brilliant visionary as Spock said, he wouldn’t insist that the God who created the universe lives on a particular planet or in any geographical place….or imagine that the faces and voice of God would all be male.
True dat. Although I think there's some good themes and a worthwhile story somewhere in the film.
Definitely parallels between the two, beginning with the hijacked ship….though the TOS episode is a search for a hippie paradise, not God.
Shatner said in the 50 year Mission, about TFF: “So essentially that was my story: that man conceives of God in his own image…" [okay] "But in essence, if the Devil exists, God exists by inference. “ [huh?!]
Really don't know what to make of that statement or how it applies.
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I can't speak for Shatner but my initial impression is that if one treats the Devil as a being who exists to fight against God, the anti-God, as it is commonly portrayed, then the Devil existing would indicate something for the Devil to be against.
How does that apply? Well, Kirk says that maybe God isn't out there but in here.
Apparently some stuff...or whatever.
To answer the question up for debate...I'd say that of course Sybok wasn't "right." He violated interstellar law, and took hostages. He put lives in danger. He hijacked a key military asset (the Enterprise) and put its crew in danger. He risked a conflict with the Klingon and Romulan governments.
The key is that he felt he was "right." It's a great character because his obsession and his drive all come from a place of pure heart. He truly believes in his vision and his cause...and it's clear he thinks the ends will justify the means. If he had successfully (!) made contact with the supreme being, he probably would have felt vindicated...and justified. But clearly his actions were wrong. And he knows that in the very end when he says "my arrogance....my vanity..."
..and that was the point; Sybok's hubris--that he had a special connection to God above all others--was the perfect set up to lead him to right to the opposite (like those who join religious and secular cults in the real world), and pay the price for it. Apparently, he lacked Kirk's kind of belief (in the real deal), which is why he could challenge yet another false god, that time with his "starship" question. Somehow, Sybok could not comprehend the truth behind Kirk's reasoning / question, so he constantly set himself up to be used by that entity.
I have as well, but the impulse was to think of all of the painful events he's suffered on screen (Gary Mitchell's corruption/death, the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law, Edith, Miramanee, et al.), which would have been undeniably powerful fan-recognized tragedies Kirk would refer to.
That's so screwed up.
Yes. STV definitely has its moments, but most of its problems stem from the ill-conceived story. Whenever someone talks about "fixing" STV or TMP by updating the effects, a big part of me just wishes they could somehow reconceive their stories from the ground up, or at least put their screenplays through a few more drafts before they started shooting. The problems of both of those movies go deeper than what they look like.
I think Sybok is a case of “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” I think he wanted to possibly do something good, but went about it the wrong way.
No, he was not doing the right thing. Beware fanatics/cults of personalities who promise easy answers. The movie has its problems, but it was ahead of its time there.
Maybe Sybok genuinely thought he was helping people by taking their pain away. Even so he seemed completely unaware or unconcerned that he was leaving them so open to suggestion he was practically taking their free will away.
In the end, the point was it's better to look for god/answers within, by bettering yourself and opening yourself to the people around you, not by forcing dogma on those around you by force.
Maybe Sybok genuinely thought he was helping people by taking their pain away. Even so he seemed completely unaware or unconcerned that he was leaving them so open to suggestion he was practically taking their free will away.
In the end, the point was it's better to look for god/answers within, by bettering yourself and opening yourself to the people around you, not by forcing dogma on those around you by force.
