Star Trek the Motion Picture

I had a lot of fun reviewing the James Bond series, and I've been thinking about tackling another franchise for awhile.  I just wasn't sure which one.  And then I had a chance to see the 40th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture on the big screen and I thought, why not Star Trek?  It would be fun to watch all these movies again, especially the original cast films that I grew up with. But then I thought more about it and I realized I would have to suffer through Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek: Nemesis again, and I really started to have second thoughts.   I know that makes me hypocritical. I've been talking a lot lately about giving movies a second chance - especially films in beloved franchises, where there are often certain expectations going in that will effect your enjoyment, and that's not really fair.  I am older and hopefully wiser now, and maybe it would be worth watching these films with fresh eyes.

But then again, well, Star Trek V: The Final Fronter and Star Trek: Nemesis.

So that's to say that I am skipping reviewing the whole franchise for now.  Someday I may muster up the courage, but I don't think I have it in me at the moment.  But I do want to spend the time on Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  

First, let's just do a quick summary of the plot.  There is an alien presence called V'Ger which is rapidly moving towards Earth, leaving a wake of destruction in its path.  There is only one available starship in between V'Ger and its target, and that is the Enterprise, which is under the command of a new captain, William Decker.  But this mission is too critical to be left in the hands of a rookie, and Starfleet sends Admiral James T. Kirk to assume command and find a way to stop V'Ger's relentless advance.

So that's the plot.  Now, let's go back to where this film came from.

In 1977, the world changed.  A little movie called Star Wars came out and changed the landscape of cinema forever.  Suddenly, every studio wanted to have its own space adventure - including Paramount.  Paramount was in a lucky position.  It already had its own popular science fiction property and one with a built-in fanbase.  Weirdly enough, Star Trek had not been particularly successful when it was broadcast in the 1960s.  Ratings were always a challenge and the show was canceled after three seasons.  Fans who watched the show were extremely vocal, even launching a letter writing campaign to save the series, but to no avail.  Star Trek was gone...until syndication saved it.  Throughout the 1970s, the show became more and more popular, and its fanbase grew larger and louder, and even started organizing conventions.  Paramount started thinking of ways to cash in and revive the series.  There was a short-lived animated series and then some failed attempts to get a movie off the ground in the 1970s.  This project would have included work from Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) and Ken Adams (the brilliant James Bond production designer), so that's a tantalizing what if!  Sadly, these efforts came to nothing.  Finally the studio began working on a new show called Star Trek: Phase II, featuring Stephen Collins (7th Heaven) as new captain William Decker and Persis Khambatta (Megaforce) as his love interest Ilia.

And then Star Wars was released and was a huge hit.  When Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released, that sealed the deal.  Audiences wanted science fiction, and Paramount was going to deliver.    Immediately, Star Trek: Phase II the series was canceled and the story of its pilot episode was expanded to become the plot of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  William Decker and Ilia were still featured characters in the film, but the studio knew there would be a fan revolt if they didn't bring back the beloved original crew from the series.  There was some resistance, but they eventually got Kirk and Company back in the saddle.  For a director, while they considered young hot shots like Francis Ford Coppola, the studio decided on the reliable and Oscar-winning Robert Wise (The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Stood Still).  The production was not an easy one.  The script wasn't finished when filming started and was constantly changing throughout production.  The writer Robert Livingstone and Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenerry continuously argued, with both working on script pages hours before scenes were to be shot.  The editing was rushed, and the day of the premiere, Robert Wise had to run the film straight from the edit studio to the movie theater.  When the film ended, many in the audience felt deflated.  Reviews were mixed.  The film's pacing was so sluggish that critics jokingly called the film Star Trek: The Motionless Picture.  There is no denying that the movie was a big hit, making over $80 million.  But the film cost  $46 million to produce (making it the most expensive film ever made at that time) and the studio probably spent just as much on marketing, so the film was considered a disappointment.  Even today, it seems most people write off the film as boring and kind of silly, and definitely inferior to its immediate sequel, Wrath of Khan.

Well, that's not necessarily fair.  Wrath of Khan is the best that Star Trek has to offer.  It's a science fiction classic that every subsequent film in the franchise has aspired (and failed) to equal.

So does Star Trek: The Motion Picture deserve the hate?  Look, I am not going to lie.  It is not a great movie.  There are some major problems with it.  The movie is indeed sluggish and incredibly slow.  There are endless minutes of the crew just staring out into space.  And while the superb special effects by Douglas Trumbull and the tremendous musical score from Jerry Goldsmith help alleviate the problem, there is only so much they can do.  We don't need 6 whole minutes of Admiral Kirk staring at the Enterprise lovingly before he boards.  I'll talk more about that scene later, but 6 minutes is lot of screen time of him just staring at a ship.  The film does its best to integrate Decker and Ilia, but their presence is still...well, I don't want to say they are pointless because both are absolutely integral to the plot.  But we don't care about them.  We care about the original crew.  And every minute we spend with Decker and Ilia is another minute we wish we were with Kirk and Spock, making the film feel even longer.

Conceptually, it is a bit of an odd duck.  The studio wanted to have their own Star Wars, but instead seemed looked to 2001: A Space Odyssey for inspiration.  Which in of itself is not a bad thing.  Star Trek is best when it is about ideas.  But you better know what you are doing, because not every filmmaker is Stanley Kubrick.  And you better give your director time to properly tell that story because its not something you can rush.  There are parts of the film that just seem kind of sloppy.  It feels incomplete, with scattershot pacing and an anticlimactic ending.  It feels like a rough cut in many places, and I know Robert Wise always felt he didn't have the time to really finish the film the way he wanted.  In fact, in the 1990s, when director's cuts were all the rage, he was given a big bag of money to go back and finish the film the way he originally intended.  I will say this director's cut is an improvement. The pacing is better and everything is much more polished and complete, but it isn't a game changer.  Many of the problems still exist and this new version wasn't going to change anyone's opinion of the film.

And can I take a second to complain about the costumes?  From the ghastly brown onesies to whatever the hell William Shatner is wearing in this picture, the costumes are just a nightmare.

I don't want to come down too hard on costume designer Bob Fletcher.  He was a great designer who is also responsible for the incredibly cool red costumes that the original crew wore in their other films.  But for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it is almost as if Robert Wise told him, "This movie is going to be monotonous and dull.  Can you make costumes to match that?"  In which case, Fletcher succeeded spectacularly!

So that is a lot to not like about Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  I completely understand why people don't like this film.  But at the end of the day, I DO like it.  That might be a bit surprising after everything I just wrote, but I genuinely think Star Trek: The Motion Picture deserves the rewatch. It's not great, but it is far from the worst of the franchise.  In fact, I would say it's actually probably better than half of them.

The film is stunning to look at.  As I mentioned before, the film features some beautiful special effects work by Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Bladerunner).  Some of the model work is truly amazing, especially when the Enterprise is exploring V'Ger.  And the score by Jerry Goldsmith is truly fantastic.  This is easily one of his most brilliant and complex scores.  With Trumbull and Goldsmith firing on all cylinders, its no wonder that Robert Wise thought audiences would sit still during the endless space watching sequences.  As I mentioned before, near the beginning of the film, Kirk takes a small shuttle to the Enterprise in dry dock.  We see the ship as Kirk sees it - little by little, getting larger and larger as the shuttle gets closer, until finally the full iconic ship fills the frame, accompanied by the booming orchestra.  The music is lush and beautiful like a love theme.  And honestly, it is a love theme.  This is James Kirk returning to the love of his life, The Enterprise.  And it is a great sequence...for about 4 minutes.  Unfortunately, the scene is 6 minutes long. But Goldsmith and Trumbull really do come close to pulling it off!

I also like the fact that the film is not just a space adventure.  As I said, Star Trek is best when it is about ideas.  And I really admire a film whose villain just wants to know what its next stage of evolution is supposed to be.  It is asking questions about existence and humanity.  That's interesting and worthy of discussion.

And when it comes down to it, it's just hard to not like that original crew.  Shatner, Nimoy, Nichols, Kelley, Koenig, Takei, Doohan...this group has such an easy and terrific chemistry that I just like watching them go on adventures together.  They are innately watchable.  Yes, nostalgia might be playing a part in me saying that, but not as much as you might think.  Take the reboot Star Trek, for example.  That is a better film and that cast of actors is really great, but their chemistry pales in comparison to the original crew.  They had already been working together for years, and that familiarity is what makes this original crew the best.

So that is my defense of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  I know I said I lot of negative things about the movie.  And I stand by my opinion of those flaws.  But what I am trying to say is that while I acknowledge all of those problems, I still kind of dig this movie.  I think Star Trek: The Motion Picture deserves to be reconsidered.  It's smarter, deeper and more beautiful than you might be giving it credit for.


MVP:

There are only two real contenders for the MVP.  The first is Douglas Trumbull, the special effects mastermind, whose work here is really astonishing in places.  The second is Jerry Goldsmith, whose iconic music has gone down in history.  For long stretches of music, the movie abandons dialogue and completely leans on the work of these two to carry the film - especially in the lengthy V'Ger flyover sequence, which is about 412 minutes long.  But I was never bored, though I should have been, and that is a testament to the work of Trumbull and Goldsmith.  As a film score buff, I'm going to give the MVP to Goldsmith.  I think without him, the film falls flat.  It would still be pretty looking, but it would also truly be the "Motionless Picture" that the critics joked about.  He gives the film its life, he gives Starfleet its heroism, Kirk his one true love and V'Ger the sound of the unknowable "other."  With the exception of Star Wars, this is probably the greatest science fiction score ever written.  And the fact that it did not win the Academy Award (losing to a charming, but slight A Little Romance) is one of the craziest Oscar snubs of all time.

BEST LINE:

Spock: "V'Ger must evolve.  Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe and it must evolve. What it requires of its god, doctor, is an answer to its question, "Is there nothing more?" 

TRIVIA: 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture has a number of fascinating tidbits of trivia.  As I mentioned, the film was such a mad dash to the finish line that a number of crazy things happened on the set.  One rumor is that the V'Ger model was so big that they were filming one side of the structure while the effects team was frantically trying to finish building the other side!  But I think my trivia is going to focus on the languages spoken in the film, especially Klingon.  The Klingon language was created by linguist Mark Okrand, who even released a dictionary in the 1980s, a bestseller that contributed to Klingon becoming the most widely fictional language spoke around the world.  But Okrand wasn't starting completely from scratch.  The first time audiences heard the guttural, menacing language of the villainous Klingons was Star Trek: The Motion Picture.  It was just a few words ("Wly cha! HaSta! cha ylghuS! 'eH...baH!" meaning "Tactical!  Visual!  Stand by on the torpedoes!  Ready...Fire!"), but it was enough to set the tone and the feel of the language, and provided fertile ground for Okrand to build the language from.  And those first words were written by none other than Scotty himself, James Doohan!  To top it off, he also wrote the Vulcan dialogue that was used when Spock was talking to the priests.  That is a fun bit of trivia!