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Why was Star Trek: The Motion Picture only so-so?

barnbuddy

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it suffers from being compared to "Wrath of Khan," which is the best or second best Trek movie of all.

I was so pysched in 1979 to have any new incarnations of Trek that I was satisfied withST The Motion Picture

but....

I think creating new characters (the alien bald chick and the capt Kirk wanna be)

didn't help. It also had no humor, unlike ST IV, The Voyage Home (the one with the whales.)
 
I think Gene Roddenberry's deep involvement in this project was the root of the problem. I don't think he had a clear philosophy for the future, but he sure as hell wanted to portray something, but it was muddled. He forgot to have fun with the Enterprise and its crew.

Just compare and contrast the early seasons of ST:TNG and later ones and see the night/day conversion of that show after Roddenberry had his final "beam up".
 
Oh, many reasons....

To sum it up, it took itself WAY too seriously.

The director, Robert Wise, (the same man who directed "The Sound of Music" - hard to believe) had little knowledge of the Trek legacy, except that this was a BIG DEAL, and adding to the confusion was our good friend, William Shatner, who somehow had even LESS of a feeling for the "tone" of the series.

Add to that it was filmed in the wake of "Star Wars", in which all science fiction films seemed to be contractually obligated to repeat, (hence the guardsmen that looked like stormtroopers) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Things lightened up for the sequels, and it's odd that one of silliest ones (Star Trek 4 - Save the Whales, or something like that) worked the best.

meh

Go figure.
 
Joshua_me said:
The director, Robert Wise, (the same man who directed "The Sound of Music" - hard to believe) had little knowledge of the Trek legacy, except that this was a BIG DEAL, and adding to the confusion was our good friend, William Shatner, who somehow had even LESS of a feeling for the "tone" of the series.
Click to expand...

Mostly this. Wise had never seen even a single episode of Star Trek.

(He also made The Sound of Music.)
 
I have a fondness for this movie; I was ten when it was released. It was a BIG DEAL. Even though it wasn't the best, no one had seen any live Trek since 1969. I think people wanted to like it, but as it aged and the later movies came out, it became known as "The Motionless Picture". It was very epic and grand and such, and I think the other suggestions about Roddenberry and Wise are correct. I think the remastered version tightens it up a bit.

I think Roddenberry wanted to make a true space opera and in some ways he succeeded. After the Borg were introduced, Roddenberry was asked if V'ger had encountered their home planet; I think he basically said yes. This was absorbed into the novels (I think the Shatnerverse novels) and explains why the Borg did not assimilate Spock in those novels, because he was already part of the collective due to his mind meld with V'ger.

Sorry for the long post. Long time Trekkie here; just finished the latest Voyager novel this morning.

L7
 
The story line had some potential, but it, and the characters, were way overshadowed with "Let's see what we can do with special effects!", and "Hey! Check out the new 'Enterprise'!" #-o

Though "Enterprise" is, indeed, a central 'character', in all her incarnations, it's her crew that brings her to life. There was no "Life" in this movie! And, I had breathlessly anticipated it for so long! ](*,)

Keep smilin'!! :kiss:(*8*)
Chaz ;)
 
It was way too long for the (small) amount of plot it had.

The fly-by scenes of the new Enterprise were simply wayyyyy too long. It was clearly to show off the special effects. When you start off on the wrong track, it's hard to get back on.
 
It might have made a good one hour episode (in fact, it was mostly a remake of the Nomad episode).
 
I was a kid when the tv series was new and I saw ST The Motion Picture when it was released.

In my opinion...

They got sucked into the "Big Tent Event" mentality and totally forgot what made the little tv show so popular.

It was the first ST to make the leap from the low budget television series classic, which had a lot of heart and soul, to the big screen epic drawn out mess of a typical theatrical release.

We still see this happen today.
Television can make some remarkable entertainment when it wants to but most things made for theatrical release are blown way, way out of proportion.

Special Effects alone do not make a good film. They should almost always be the background, not the main character. Case in point: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Two and a half hours of F/X. I know, I know, it's Michael Bay's style but I needed a Dramamine.
 
The director's cut is just a smidgen better, but yeah, it was overly ponderous, long and humorless.
 
bw92116 said:
Well, Kubrick did direct Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, and he was something of a loose cannon himself, no?
Click to expand...
Yes, but Sellers was talented.

( I kid )

Kubrick will always remain a mystery to most of us. I think maybe he lost his own "loose cannon side" as he grew older.

Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall still bitch about Kubricks' obsessive attention to detail during the filming of "The Shining", (which was 1980, I believe, would have been around the same time as Star Trek)

Jack has said, "Just because you do multiple takes all day long doesn't make it a better movie..."

So, who knows what could have happened.

(One thing is for sure, there would have lots of tracking shots with that new (for the time) Sony steadycam that he was obsessed with....)
 
I discovered Star Trek when I was a kid around the same time I discovered Doctor Who, and I've been a sci-fi nut ever since, and if there is one thing you can count on from a sci-fi nut, it's an opinion on everything sci-fi. :D


Here's my two cents.


The main problem with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and don't get me wrong I love it, is this...

Gene Roddenberry was in the process of bringing Star Trek back to TV. They had sets designed, and were working on a new ship model and were working to resurrect the show.

Leonard Nimoy decided he wanted out, so they created a new Vulcan character to take his place, and so on. Then Star Wars became such a big money maker, that the suits at Paramount, who up to that point had little use for Sci-fi asked the question, "What do we have that could compete with this?"

The new series was scraped and a feature film was put into production. Once that happened Leonard Nimoy wanted back in, and the Vulcan character that was going to be in the new series was killed in a transporter accident at the beginning of the film.

One of the biggest problems with the film as I remember it, was that the studio wouldn't budge on the release date and the film went out before really being completed.

I remember watching it as a kid, (and I watched it and re-watched it as I do all my sci-fi shows. I'm re-watching Star Trek Voyager right now actually. !oops!) and I couldn't help but laugh at the scene where... I think it's when Kirk was going out in the space suit to go after Spock, and you could see the scaffolding and soundstage because the CGI hadn't been finished. #-o

Editing is a very big part of making a movie. The pace of the movie is set in editing (unless I'm just talking out of my ass here) and they didn't really have enough time to spend on that with this film. You add to that a creator with one vision, a Director with another, and a bunch of studio suits who just see dollar signs, and...


Again I loved it, and if I can go all super geek here... :D I've always been one of those people who thinks... at the end of the movie when Decker and the v-ger version of Ilia get it on, and explode in an orgasmic joining of man and machine, that they very well could have found themselves on the other side of the universe and with that joining of man and machine, been the birth of the Borg.

Well, my time and two cents are up.
 
I watched this movie 100 times when I was a kid. I loved it then. Looking back on it, it was pretty weak. It's my least favorite of the Star Trek films. The ending was just so bad!To date, this is the only Star Trek film I haven't bought on DVD.
 
Yes its definitely a slow burn type of movie. Compared to what was being made at the time, I think it was a superior movie, a thinking man's movie. Compared to the other Trek films, it is a bit, too long, too serious, and too shallow on the characterizations. Still, I love the movie, if it did not succeed, there would have never been parts II to VI.
 
I'm also in the minority, I liked it. The argument that it took itself too seriously is rubbish. The Star Trek television shows (original and TNG) took themselves more seriously than other shows. The movie did not age well because it has been followed up by so many sequels. But when it first came out, it was a big deal because that was the first we seen anything of Star Trek since the original series was cancelled 10 years prior.
 
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