TMP is the best film. It is not 'tedious' at all

[Cryogenic]

Its funny because TMP gives me the same impression.

I think the performances in TMP are a little stiff and remote, but also more particularised than what you see in later films. That's not to say the later films aren't enjoyable (ST V is pretty strong on this front), but TMP was very well-directed. It may be that they were trying a different aesthetic with the first film, even on the level of acting, and it didn't work as well as they hoped. But also notice that "The Big Three" are pretty much their old selves at the end of the film, suggesting that the starchy nature of the performances was deliberate, as the characters struggled to bring themselves back into alignment.

Damaged? Interesting.

Damaged and degraded for some, improved and remedied for others. That's the nature of subjective beliefs. I actually do enjoy the Meyer films (maybe TUC more than TWOK). But their various flaws/limitations are very manifest to me now, much more than when I first saw them. By contrast, TMP has only continued to get better.

 

[fireproof78]

improved and remedied for others. That's the nature of subjective beliefs. I actually do enjoy the Meyer films (maybe TUC more than TWOK). But their various flaws/limitations are very manifest to me now, much more than when I first saw them. By contrast, TMP has only continued to get better.

Ah. Fascinating.

Personally, I hold TWOK up only because a non fan made it and the technical work is well done. It is not an enjoyable film for me and the biggest flaw is the damn importance placed on it.

TMP is visually enjoyable but the characters suffer at the beginning leaving me less interested in rewatching it.

 

[Cryogenic]

Ah. Fascinating.

LOL! Opinions -- we all have 'em.

Personally, I hold TWOK up only because a non fan made it and the technical work is well done. It is not an enjoyable film for me and the biggest flaw is the damn importance placed on it.

Interesting. I find it to be terribly overrated.

But I can also see why people find it so satisfying. I just don't agree.

TMP is visually enjoyable but the characters suffer at the beginning leaving me less interested in rewatching it.

I think TMP is very strong on the characters -- with respect to its own methods and intentions -- throughout. But it operates on a bigger canvas, and maybe the people in it look smaller by comparison. Essentially, a lot of fans seem to want Trek to be character-led, rather than ideas-led. TMP places ideas ahead of its characters, but its characters certainly aren't ignored. In fact, I think they're used pretty dang well. The supporting characters do suffer a bit in TMP, however. But they were never really the main focus of the series, and in a feature film, you can only do so much. Given these factors, I feel comfortable continuing to admire TMP as a beautiful work in its own right.

 

[fireproof78]

Interesting. I find it to be terribly overrated.

It is.

Given these factors, I feel comfortable continuing to admire TMP as a beautiful work in its own right.

It is visually beautiful but the characters are lacking for me.

 

[plynch]

Roddenberry supposedly rewrote many to all of the S1 scripts, which I like for their more play-like wordsy-ness. (I'm late in responding to comments above about his writer creds.)

 

[Cryogenic]

Roddenberry supposedly rewrote many to all of the S1 scripts, which I like for their more play-like wordsy-ness. (I'm late in responding to comments above about his writer creds.)

Yup. I also need to catch up on this thread. Looks like there are some good comments on the first five pages before I jumped in.

 

[JaxsBrokenHeart]

While I think WoK definitely benefited from being a contrast to the tone and pace of TMP, by that same token I think Motion Picture has managed to carve out a greater legacy because its the only real Trek film of its type. Whether or not a more idea driven, ponderous movies like it would have been commercially successful is impossible to say, but its status as an almost "what if" direction for what cinematic Trek could have been, does render it all the more special than it would be otherwise.

 

[Pauln6]

TWoK is great for its pacing and musical score, and Spock's death is one of the best in cinema history. As I got older though the flaws in the story have become more annoying and I find that TMP holds up so much better than any of the other TOS movies, despite its flaws.

 

[DonIago]

It's a shame we never got a Trek film that successfully combined the loftier ambitions of TMP with the warm characterizations of most of the other films.

TVH probably came closest in the sense that it had another mysterious entity(?) inbound to Earth, but of course that's not what the majority of the film is about.

 

[Jadeb]

This thread has turned very interesting. I’ve enjoyed the recent discussion.

Probably my fault. I started off by saying that he didn't have the maturity, and that really involved two different things. One was the emotional maturity to approach the subject. The other way is maturity as a writer, the ability to translate his ideas to a quality script. I focused on the latter after that post, but I still think the former is true as well.

Re: Roddenberry’s maturity as a writer, I wonder if his work on TMP benefited from the mores of the time and the need to deliver a mainstream PG film. Without attempting to defend censorship, art sometimes finds nuance through the need to work within social confines. I could see ‘70s Roddenberry wanting to make a very erotic film and then having to do it through more subtle means than in, say, TNG season 1.

And that’s not to mention all the collaborating artists who may have picked up the themes in the work and given them fuller expression. In this case, the visual effects folks, for example, may have played Gene Coon.

Also, as an aside, I suspect that TMP’s reputation has benefitted from the diminishment of 2001 in the public consciousness. The similarities came with baggage both for people who loved 2001 (and found TMP lesser) and those who thought it had infected Star Trek with airs and pretentions.

 

[Maurice]

Spock's death in TWOK is very TV. would not put it up there with the great anythings of cinema. Very good but not great. Heck, I tear up more at the climax of The Iron Giant than I do Spock's demise.

 

[Pauln6]

Spock's death in TWOK is very TV. would not put it up there with the great anythings of cinema. Very good but not great. Heck, I tear up more at the climax of The Iron Giant than I do Spock's demise.

Maybe Up, Bridge to Terabithia, Beaches, ET, and the destruction of the Enterprise in STIII have the edge...? Most movie deaths are either drawn out and tiresome or a relief to see the back of an annoying character. I'm sure that it's actually caring for the character bumps it up a level.

 

[Cryogenic]

That Ewok dying in "Return Of The Jedi" is sadder than Spock's death. Fight me!

 

[Jadeb]

i’ll take the relative restraint of Spock’s death over Discovery’s big tears any day.

 

[dupersuper]

Spock's death in TWOK is very TV. would not put it up there with the great anythings of cinema. Very good but not great. Heck, I tear up more at the climax of The Iron Giant than I do Spock's demise.

Soo-per-man

That Ewok dying in "Return Of The Jedi" is sadder than Spock's death. Fight me!

With log based jungle traps?

 

[gottacook]

Also, as an aside, I suspect that TMP’s reputation has benefitted from the diminishment of 2001 in the public consciousness. The similarities came with baggage both for people who loved 2001 (and found TMP lesser) and those who thought it had infected Star Trek with airs and pretentions.

I continue not to understand claims that perceptions of TMP were ever influenced by 2001.

I was as much a fan of 2001 during its first decade as it was possible for a young person to be; I first saw it in Cinerama in spring 1968 at age 11 (months before first seeing Star Trek on NBC starting with "Spock's Brain") and two years later owning/studying the massive paperback The Making of Kubrick's 2001, playing the two LPs (yes, there was a "volume II" that featured related music not actually in the movie), buying Clarke's The Lost Worlds of 2001 upon release, etc. I saw it every chance I could, probably six or seven times before TMP was released (always in theaters, of course, or maybe a university film society showing).

It never once occurred to me, upon seeing TMP twice during its original run and then a few years later in the ABC broadcast version, to think of 2001 for even a moment. (Nor did any of the many reviews I read in December 1979 mention 2001; they concentrated on differences from the TV series.) I have many problems with TMP - only a few of which were addressed by the Director's Edition DVD - but the same would be true if an "ideal" version of TMP had been released in 1979.

It wasn't until I visited this site that I ever came across the idea that they should be compared. In my opinion a more apt comparison would be with Peter Hyams' 2010 (1984).

 

[DonIago]

Having seen 2001 for the first time in decades recently, I can see some stylistic and pacing similarities with TMP easily enough. They're both somewhat deliberate films that also have moments of grandeur, something that it can likely be argued sets TMP aside from the other Trek films. It's also easy enough to argue that in the case of both films the focus is not primarily on the humans.

 

[Jadeb]

Yeah, it’s the grandeur, the pacing, the cinematography, the relatively high-concept ideas and the distant, chilly tone. The long, languid tours of the Enterprise and V’ger naturally invite comparison — just add some Strauss. Thematically, both films are interested in man’s relationship with technology and potential future evolution, and both climax with the birth of a posthuman lifeform.

Tonally, TMP is night and day from the fun romp of Star Wars, which came out two years earlier, and quite different even from its source series. So it gets lumped in the “smart but sterile” category with 2001, which isn’t exactly bad company to be in (except for suffering by comparison).

 

[gottacook]

Well, I can agree that the focus isn't primarily on humans in 2001, although TMP insisted that "the human adventure is just beginning" in many of the posters/ads and at the conclusion of the movie itself. Yes, one could say that both films end by showing a process by which a human transcends, or is made to transcend, into something else (but in very different ways). The major and overriding difference, however, is that whereas TMP presents us with attempts at analysis ("V'ger is a child," etc.) and ultimately reveals Voyager 6, 2001 is interested in the mystery itself and insists on remaining ambiguous, and that has a lot to do with why it's remained memorable.

 

[Jadeb]

I tend to think the human aspect of TMP is underappreciated -- both Kirk and Spock go on very human journeys, and the film concludes by restoring the TOS status quo it initially denies us. But I can see why people find it chilly and remote. I can imagine how fans must have felt at the time -- it must have been cold water in the face after TOS's warm mug of cocoa.