Except the fashions (McCoy's leisure suit and the aliens' ambassadorial robes, cuffs and sleeves) and hairstyles are very 1978.
The Motion Picture question..
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Except the fashions (McCoy's leisure suit and the aliens' ambassadorial robes, cuffs and sleeves) and hairstyles are very 1978.
I confess TWoK is my favourite but there's a lot to love in TMP. It's certainly my favourite Enterprise. I think with a bit more interplay and camaraderie between the junior staff in the latter 2/3 of the movie and a landing party featuring more than just the Big 3 and it would be a real contender for me.
My little Youtube comic was born out of a desire to explore what a TMP style Phase II series with Decker and Ilia might have been like.
What I meant was, for my own peace of mind re continuity, I pretend that TMP was closer to TOS than it was to TWOK in real time.
So, had they made it in '71, McCoy would have worn an Edwardian suit as a civilian?
(Spock did have a "Nehru" collar, as I recall, but those were gone by '71, I think.)
TMP is a great science fiction movie that shows us how interesting a simple (yet straightforward) story can be. It has its pacing flaws but it was a great starting point and is still by far my favorite Star Trek movie. It's the only one that I keep revisiting very often and this is the movie that got me hooked into the Star Trek franchise! Also it has a superb soundtrack and stunning visual effects that aged pretty well and are believable even nowadays.
Heck, a movie that has Blaster Beam sound effects can't be bad at all
Heck, a movie that has Blaster Beam sound effects can't be bad at all
Heck, a movie that has Blaster Beam sound effects can't be bad at all
Meteor.
Do you gents feel that STAR TREK: The Motion Picture holds up, after yay, these many decades? Does it feel dated? Or are you transported to a world that you find believable, interesting ... and, perhaps, even exciting?
It's a mixed bag. Conceptually it's still a fine science fiction story, some of the production design holds up, and the music would be fine even in a modern film, so clever was Goldsmith in his orchestrations. The hair/wigs and some costumes do date it in very noticeable ways.
Interesting you mentioning the hair - thank you, by the way, for your candor - because Shatner's hairpiece in TMP was probably the best he ever owned. I know he used those diet shakes to lose the weight and he really looked great in this movie. I don't even question his Command "Fitness." Personally, I love the look of TMP and when I do watch it, I'm as swept up in it as if it were new.
For all it's problems TMP had a grand, epic feel to it that for me hasn't been captured in any Trek film since (the new ones get close but are more 'blockbustery' if you get my meaning).
The special effects still look pretty good to me all these years later, the Enterprise flyby more or less my favorite scene in all of Trek and Goldsmith's score was utterly majestic and the best in the series (with 2 & 3 a close second and third)
A touch more action and a little more humor in the cast's performances and it would probably be my number 1 Trek film.
But V'ger has sod all to do with the Borg
The special effects still look pretty good to me all these years later, the Enterprise flyby more or less my favorite scene in all of Trek and Goldsmith's score was utterly majestic and the best in the series (with 2 & 3 a close second and third)
A touch more action and a little more humor in the cast's performances and it would probably be my number 1 Trek film.
But V'ger has sod all to do with the Borg
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Heck, a movie that has Blaster Beam sound effects can't be bad at all
Meteor.
Now, now, METEOR really sucks, but it does have Brian Keith saying FUCK THE DODGERS! and a nice mixed orchestration of US and Soviet anthems at the end of the movie.
Besides those 2 asides, METEOR is pretty much at the bottom of the barrel, with THE WHITE BUFFALO and THE HURRICANE remake and the last 75 minutes or so of THE DOMINO PRINCIPLE in terms of late 70s garbage. It's worse even than TELEFON, a movie I still can't believe Don Siegel directed.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
A lot has changed about my opinion of TMP over the years, but in the main, I remain schizophrenic about it, liking some things and just rolling my eyes at others. During the 90s I started just watching it in sections on laserdisc, fastforwarding to get to the cloud (the very part I went out for cigarettes on during my second, third, fourth and fifth screenings in theater), and my appreciation for the good vfx has only grown with the passage of time (which says a lot, since I thought it should have won the Oscar for VFX even back when I hated the movie.)
I think I could almost be at peace with the thing if a certain number of snips were made (like the guy fleeing epsilon 9), but since an edit-your-own-version option is not likely forthcoming (editing the music would be pretty impossible anyway, I think), I remain ambivalent.
I still watch it a couple or three times each year all the way through (TMP, TWOK & TFF are the ones I rewatch most, along with TUC ... the Nimoy films just don't grab me at all, though SFS has some interesting colored lighting choices), but if I could wave a wand to tweak the costumes and change the lighting to something that works for human faces, I'd probably watch it every 6 or 8 weeks.
I Second That Motion! Very well stated, Smellmet! Your post managed to mirror my own thoughts - and feelings - about this incredible achievement in the STAR TREK legacy. Despite it's shortcomings, The Motion Picture still has "legs."
The only thing that really bothers me is the dated hairstyles on some of the men in the background. And the cheesy, 70's porn star mustache on the guy Spock pinched before going on his spacewalk.
Never heard that said before, but it makes so much sense it's hilarious!
Didn't that guy just barely get nudged out of being Star Trek's first mustache by Scotty?
The cinematography is gorgeous, the effects look nice, the acting is mostly decent, and there is a kernel of an interesting idea there. However, the pacing is agonizingly slow. This would be fine if there was something going on (interesting character work for example), but there isn't. It's just long stretches of NOTHING happening. The plot was also too thin to support a full-length movie and Kirk comes across as both arrogant and a moron early on. In short, it's meh. Oh and the uniforms were looked really stupid.
I wish I had the skill to edit some of these sci fi greats. I'd use the TMP directors cut but leaving in all the character dialogue from earlier in the movie. What it really needs is some character scenes in the latter half though and that would take some serious CGI - lol.
I would however to back to TOS replace every random blonde yeoman offering Kirk a padd on the bridge with Grace Lee Whitney and all would be right in seasons 2 and 3 of TOS. Actually, thinking about it there are only about half a dozen TOS episodes that I care enough about to do that.
The movie I REALLY want to edit is Star Wars III. I'd edit out any reference to Darth Vader and leave Anakin burning by the Volcano, I'd edit out Padme's death, the naming of the children, Senator Organa's offer to adopt, and most of the bow-tying in the last half an hour. TMP is fine compared to that.
Wherever that poor crewman goes in Starfleet, he gets victimized by one of Enterprise's bridge crew. Gary Faga's character gets neckpinched by Spock in TMP, of course, but is also the guard (this time without the mustache) knocked out by Kirk in ST III.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Gary_Faga?file=Gary_Faga%252C_prison_guard.jpg
Oh, but no one can beat Kyle's mustache in TAS!
I'm not sure what the question is.
Do you mean the first mustache worn by someone in the Enterprise crew, or the first mustache on the show, period.
Because Harry Mudd certainly sported a mustache in "Mudd's Women".
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