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Ayato
Jul 26, 2005

what
Directed by: William Shatner
Starring: Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Laurence Luckinbill



"What does God need with a starship?"

Released back in '89, this movie is generally accepted by most Trekkies as the worst of the original Star Trek series. It was released on the heels of the Leonard Nimoy directed film Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, a more comedic entry in the series (and one I also view with a deep personal hatred) which featured a nonsensical storyline about time travel and the plight of the humpback whales (Why Spock, why?). This time around, William Shatner took the directorial reins. Not the best idea.

I love watching bad movies. I really do. But I cannot stand this movie. It is actually extremely painful to watch. The reason?

It had incredible potential.

The movie starts while the enterprise is in for repairs, and the crew are out camping in the woods at Yosemite park and rock climbing. While they are out, the enterprise gets an emergency call, and it seems a Vulcan revolutionary named Sybok has taken important political hostages and is making demands. Now Sybok is actually one of the more interesting Star Trek villains. He is a Vulcan who has cast out the traditional Vulcan beliefs of logic being the most important virtue and instead preaches that the key to self knowledge is our basic animal emotions. This gets him expelled from the planet Vulcan and labeled a crazy extremist and outcast from his race. His is the sort of false messiah type character that I find so interesting in other literature, such as Paul in Dune Messiah or Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. Sybok eventually hijacks the enterprise and sets off to the center of the universe in search of god, who called to him in a vision. Sybok also uses his Vulcan power to read minds in order to "share others pain". He would read the persons innermost pain or regret and in the sharing, would lessen that persons burden. The person that he did this with would then become complacent and would go along with whatever Sybok wanted. In this way Sybok makes followers out of most of the crew members of the Enterprise. These sections of the movie tell us a lot about Spock, Burns, and Kirks pasts, and gives their characters much more depth. Eventually Sybok reaches the center of the universe and meets "god". Turns out that this is a not a god at all, just a powerful alien being that uses religion to manipulate others, and all Sybok had believed in and fought for had been a lie. This part of the movie is genuinely interesting and many parallels can be drawn to organized religion and historical messianic figures. The problem is that there are several (and I do mean several) painfully unfunny and cheesy moments in the movie where an attempt at comic relief is made that feel totally out of place. The dance scene with Uhura at the beginning and Spock, Kirk, and Burns singing "Row row row your boat" during the climax in particular stand out as some of the most unwatchable piece of poo poo scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. These are just the major examples though; there are countless scenes like this throughout the movie. If you want to try and make a film dealing with such weighty issues, at least play it straight and don't sell yourself short by adding useless and obtrusive comic relief bullshit. We aren't as stupid as you think. The Klingon subplot was also pointless and the special effects terrible. The effects looked like something from the 70s or worse. Some of the acting is also atrocious, but I guess that since this is a Star Trek movie it kind of comes with the territory.

One major reason behind this being such an unbalanced film is that because of Star Trek 4 being much more of a comedy, the studio was worried that 5 was going to be too much of a departure from what the public had just gotten used to, so they persuaded Shatner to add more comedic elements to the movie. That coupled with the fact the Shatner had never before directed and the fact that an entire 10 minute section of the movie during the climax involving "god" chasing after Kirk had to be cut out from the movie because the special effects made for the scene turned out so terrible all added to its becoming a complete failure, both commercially and artistically. Perhaps a director's cut dvd release could help things, but I kind of doubt it.

In any case, this is a complete train wreak of a movie. Thankfully Nicholas Meyer took back the directorial reins for the 6th and final film starring the original Star Trek cast and redeemed the series, though sadly the next generation series went back down the crapper with the terrible Insurrection and Nemesis movies. That’s a rant for another time though, ladies and gentlemen.

Note: You may be wondering why I chose to start with such an obscure and terrible movie to review. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I went on a Star Trek movie watching binge earlier the week because I was bored. The second reason is that...well...bad movies are just so much easier to write about than good ones.



RATING: 1

PROS: Interesting themes
CONS: Terrible execution

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098382/

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Yawgmoft
Nov 15, 2004
I liked it.

Granted, it's certainly not the best of the movies... in fact, it may be one of the worst star trek movies... but I enjoyed it. I liked the character development of Bones, Spock, and Kirk... wait, did Kirk have a dark past thing? I forget, the only one that stuck with me through the long haul was They discovered a cure one week later

Anyhow, in regards to the end... judging by the end and the wording of "And find something else..." always lead me to believe that it was Satan, and that was the place that God had cast him to when he fell from heaven

Oh! Right... the rating. 4/5

EDIT: To OP: You never submitted your score.

EDIT 2: Changing my score from 3/5 to 4/5. Watched it again tonight, and realized how much I loved it.

So sad that the devil's effects are so bad. And that is who he is, by the way.

Yawgmoft fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Jan 19, 2006

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Ayato posted:

Burns
Burns

That's Bones, you doofus. :laugh:

Anyway, this movie is a gigantic train wreck. As the OP noted, the movie had theoretical potential, but it is completely wasted. Shatner was a) Shatner, b) a directorial newbie, and c) shafted in various ways during the production, resulting in d) a monstrous disaster of a movie. Laurence Luckinbill may be the most dull actor to play a Star Trek villain. Most of the original cast gave their worst performances ever. The effects are lame; they didn't spring for ILM like they usually did, and the result was a cold turd. The comic relief was simply not funny. And so on.

1/5, because I have a vague memory of some small components of the movie being OK.

Sajuta
Nov 16, 2000
Star Trek V is a better movie to think about in your head than it is to watch. The premise sounds pretty good for a Trek movie. Enterprise is hijacked and is really forced into going so far and so deep that it really is where “no one has gone before”. The wonder, excitement and fear of what they might find prevails though the movie but we are ultimately let down with a parade of lovely effects and hammy acting. This would have been a great Trek movie if it was given to Frakes or someone as a Next Generation movie.

2/5

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