"The Voyage Home" takes top environmental film honors

[Rat Boy]

From TrekMovie.com

Wow. Beating out Charlton Heston and Al Gore? That's one hell of a feat, especially for a film that isn't overtly as environmental as either Soylent Green or Inconvenient Truth. I for one welcome our Star Trek overlords.

 

[Kegek]

Eh, given those options, I'd go for:

Charlton Heston orates:
It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people.

Star Trek IV is no more or less believable than the other Star Trek films. It's not the only one to have an allegory, but it's allegory is probably the most transparent (even more than Star Trek VI).

 

[The Old Mixer]

Does it even count as allegory? They were dealing with the actual problem (albeit in a fictionalized situation), not a fictional stand-in for the problem.

 

[Sisu]

If it is about environmental issues, isn't it an Al-Gore-ory?

I'm going now

 

[Kegek]

Well, I'll let it pass because they want to save the whales because

* Those whales will be able to communicate with an interstellar probe, thus preventing it from depopulating Earth.

So far, environmentalists have used a variety of arguments on why perserving humpbacks and other animals was useful, but none of them have involved their ability to communicate with extraterrestial life.

If you think about it, leaving the menacing alien factor out of the equation... future Earth was doing fine and dandy without the humpbacks by all accounts. So if I'm cynical I could find subtextual refutation of environmentalism there: We screwed up, but the future turns out okay anyway, if it wasn't for these aliens with very odd needs.

 

[Maurice]

Or perhaps the point of the film is that it's easy to think of things as not being useful, so it's easy to rationalize letting them die because they aren't "important". And, yet, how that kind of thinking could turn around and bite you on the ass because the "useless" thing could end up being really important. Sure, the film does it in a ham fisted fashion, but I think I state the point accurately.

 

[GodThingFormerly]

^ I suggest that having an alien probe attempt communication with the smallpox virus would have made for a vastly more interesting film.

TGT

 

[SmoothieX]

^ Or a virulent strain of genital warts.

 

[Phantassm]

^^Fine film IMO.

 

[ancient]

The most interesting allegory in STIV was the fact that the Earth was being threatened by a probe. By a long, smooth shaft, complete with...

It was looking for a hump...

I have to stop hanging around this place.

Though a film in which an alien probe attempts to hump the Earth and make babies would be interesting...oh wait. TMP. Nevermind, damn, how did they screw that up?!

 

[Kegek]

It didn't want to fornicate with the Earth. It wanted to attain monism with God. Essentially, somewhere in outer space being repaired by mechanical aliens the Voyager probe opted for an esoteric form of Hinduism.

Anyway, I think the best way to improve The Voyage Home... is have the probe call for dinosaurs. Then Kirk and Spock go back to the age of Ray Harryhausen. And battle dinosaurs. And Spock mind-melds with a dinosaur. Then go back to the present and unleash the dinosaurs on Earth. Then when the probe is gone, they release a giant space ape from a museum to do battle with the dinosaurs. Spock also mind-melds with the space ape when it's dying.

Hey, I'd be more amused.