Things Star Trek:The Motion Picture Got Right

Why would they need to explode? It's very clear from the rest of the film they were digitized, and stored.

The Starfleet station was in the imaging chamber, and the Klingons were in Spock's mindmeld (along with a spoiler of the Voyager probe).

Not only do I roll my eyes at that notion, but in point of fact I never said one way or the other how I felt about 2001.

Silent Running? Intelligent? Pffffft!!! BWahahahahahahahahahaha!

You aren't paying attention. The question was asked what TMP did wrong. The fan service shots was my answer, which includes the long shots of Vger. And like it or not, from an objective standpoint, that did hurt the movie, even if there was more wrong with the movie in terms of plot and characterization. Wasting time not developing the plot or characterization also hurt the movie.

Movie length doesn't matter as much as keeping a consistent pace.

Which is what I'm getting at.

Remember that if you ever contemplate criticizing a movie for excessive nudity, sexuality, or mindless action. Those are all fan service, it's just that nudity and stuff like T'Pol's catsuit are the things that get thought of more as fan service and criticized for it.

You did imply that you didn't like much of the opening.
Nevertheless, the word "if" is in my post, you notice that?

You obviously have a very conventional, plot-driven approach to movies. Not everyone has the same view. Lyricism and beauty can be appreciated for their own sake, quite apart from how they contribute to plot or character development.

But you didn't realize that until two hours later.

I don't. It wastes a lot of time to get the point across that the apes started using tools because of the monolith's influence.

Which doesn't change the fact that it's still just a movie, and that it isn't immune to criticism.

I'd also go for character-driven if it's done well enough. When it comes to 2001, I view it more as an art film than a movie for that reason. I'll get into it a bit more when I actually get around to writing a full review of it, but while I don't see it as bad, I'm not blowing a load in my pants over it either.

Gee, really?

They can be, but if it takes away from the plot or character development they still hurt the movie overall.

It's Star Trek, you have to think a little sometimes.

They "hurt" the movie when measured against your arbitrary ideal. According to mine, they help make it among the best ever produced.

Where? The thread title and OP is "Things TMP got RIGHT"

The long tedious flyovers in V'Ger are NOT fan service. None of us went to see, or re-watch, that film for the "way cool shots of V'ger!"

Two different subjects, in my view. if you have a need to develop plot and characterization - and frankly the plot was pretty well established but that's another disagreement for another post - and you have both a lingering "fan service" shot that might be 30-60 seconds overboard, AND you have 4 or 5 minutes (at least) too much drag in the V'Ger shots, it's pretty obvious where you remedy your situation. Had Wise chosen to take 5 minutes of the V'Ger shots and contribute it to characterization (in my view, best done before Enterprise leaves earth) then the "fan service" shot would never even be discussed because it IS not only fan service but characterization.

consider, where else in the film do we see Scotty as anything other than a mechanic? Where else do we get some backstory on what happened in the meeting with Nagura? Heck, come down to it, that sequence was basically the "love theme" of the film establishing the Enterprise as not only one of the main characters, but the love of Kirk's life (and ours as fans).

Can one quibble over 30 odd seconds? I suppose. but when there are great sweeping lulls in the film later on, with acres of fertile ground to cut time for the objective you seek, those debatable few seconds really don't become an issue at all.

Because that sequence is not only fan service but it tells the audience - especially those who are not hard-core Trek fans - a LOT about why this asshole Admiral felt the need to push around the boy scout captain.

It's not what you are getting at when you want to cut up one of the most emotional moments - hell one of the very FEW emotional moments - in the film.

You want to rag on the V'Ger shots i'm right there with you. but that's not what i'm replying to.

What the fuck do the two have to do with each other?

First of all, if a film has a lot of "mindless action (Hiya JJ!) that's because it's an action film. if you throw a car chase in the middle of "The English patient" I think we could all recognize what would be wrong with that.

But that's entirely beside the point. Questioning whether or not THIS fan service works does not by implication make it exactly equal to any or all other fan service. A scene can - and this one is - be fan service AND character development at the same time.

And just as an aside, I've never looked at nudity on screen and said "lame fan service alert!"

either it's a raunch film that I'm watching BECAUSE it's raunchy (like Porky's or something) or it's a relatively brief scene. I don't recall a lot of movies (that I thought were anything like good movies - I'm not talking about "Kill the Cheerleaders in the Shower" type trash) in which I thought the nudity was showhorned in or was inappropriate to the character (i.e. Jamie Lee Curtis in "Trading Places" was a hooker, it stood to reason she wasn't uncomfortable with her tits out) - far more often I've laughed at the strategic placement of sheets, or the ridiculous idea that a woman has sex with her bra on, or that she's covering herself in modesty right after having had crazy sex with the man in the room (i.e. the popular "take the sheet with you for cover when you get up for the bathroom" business)

but I'm getting far afield of the subject.

Which episode was that?
When was the moral of the story ever less ham fisted than Shatner?

"The Man Trap", being about VD, and "trouble with tribbles", being about welfare families took me a few tries to see....

didn't McCoy order "short arm inspection"? What kinda gun did you think he was checking?

I thought it was Mexicans? What, with the deportation to the Klingons... Either way, it wasn't no "Modest Proposal".

Back to TMP though. I think the comparisons to aspiring for 2001 are apt, but I also think it's where they went wrong. Despite pretensions to the contrary, Trek was never that deep. GR and co. ain't Kubrick.

In ST:TMP, I could understand the long looks at the Enterprise.

But not the long looks at V'ger.

Why?

There is an unstated rule in movies that

"if you're having long scenes without dialogue lookiing at something then it better be something that really kicks ass".

For example, Independence Day had some pretty long sequences as the alien ships settled over cities, but those things were easy to see and understand with easy reference points to make the scene more spectacular.

But the production crew on ST:TMP let down on V'ger.

For most of the movie, V'ger appeared to be nothing but a huge undefined cloud or a huge dark round blob.

If you want people to stare at it for minutes it better be kick ass cool looking.

Ridley Scott mentioned something similar.

The shots of V'ger remind me of the new producer who arrived on SeaQuest DSV for the third season when it was being changed to SeaQuest 2032.

Most people considered the "2032" version to be at least decent.

The producer asked the special effects people on the series

"when can we make the underwater effects clearer?"

The person in charge of special effects said


"We can already do that but it's murky underwater."

The producer reportedly exploded


"Who gives a damn that its murky underwater? People watch television to see cool shit!!"

I have my own rule about special effects scenes. Particularly in science fiction movies.

"The viewer should not have to concentrate too hard on the screen to follow what's going on".

Lots of science fiction and action movies suffer this problem today. Fight scenes where you can barely tell who is fighting whom, much less who is winning. Space battles with so much swooping and shooting as to be incomprehensible (even DS9 during the Dominion War sometimes went over the line).

[YT="Yeah, well..."]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c[/YT]

And it's not just my own arbitrary ideal, it's the standard used in analyzing visual media and while it varies from person to person on how much is too much, everyone agrees that there is a such a thing as too much. Too much sex and you might as well make a porno. Too much of stuff like showing off every angle imaginable for a model used in a movie, and you might as well just take pictures and publish a book. Stuff like that.

Post 31.

Someone thought it was pretty cool, because they sure put a lot of it in there. I'm sure it was fan service for someone who liked that kind of VFX or maybe that cliched sci-fi sense of wonderment that just didn't quite measure up to the stargate scene in 2001.

What character development took place in the scene showing off the new ship? Two characters were looking at it and reacting pretty much how you would expect anyone to react. There was nothing there that would add up to character development that couldn't have been done in 1/4 of the time it actually took in the movie.

It's an excuse to show off a model, which they were able to do anyway in other shots. It's also one of the many scenes and disruptions in the already slow pacing that earns this movie the nickname of "The Slow-Motion Picture." Plinkett even made a crack about it in his Abrams Trek review in that while he likes the movie, part of the reason he "likes" it is that he can go out and run errands during some scenes without actually missing anything.

They're all examples of fan service.

I've never called it lame, but I have said "fan service" when it was pretty obvious that that's what it was, even if I still enjoy seeing naked women.

It's pretty easy to tell when something is just fan service because it stands out as much as lame attempts to censor nudity and the like to get the rating down or to air it on TV. Nudity isn't automatically fan service just because it's nudity. Something only stands out as fan service if it doesn't seem to be a natural part of the story, whether it's nudity or just showing off what the VFX artists can do.

Dayton nice thing about Lord of the Rings was it had big battles but you can easily identify which side people were on.

Catch, tatou at trek tfsar b'er bev vge'r, que don't think sao dtyoan?

speaking of movies with over long visuals that contributed nothing toward the plot...

[YT="speaking of movies with over long visuals that contributed nothing toward the plot..."]vmuT8UeTk4s[/YT]

A standard which varies is not a standard at all. Your view as to 2001 being "hurt" by its lack of focus on plot or character are not those held by most critics.

Really? Wow, I guess my instructors in film school forgot to teach us that part. And I still got my BA in Film Production from CSUN without them ever teaching us that. Damn, I feel so cheated!

So I guess the entire first and last 30 minutes of 2001, not to mention the entire opening sequence of Contact, sucked because they didn't follow the "unstated rule".



The whole point of the V'ger flyover was so that we could experience the mystery of what V'ger was along with the crew. We were seeing something strange, beautiful and mysterious that we've never seen before, so the purpose was to help give us a sense of awe. If TMP had been edited correctly with the pacing fixed back in '79, I think audiences would have responded much more positively. But by the time the director's cut was released on DVD, special effects like these were much more commonplace and the sense of mystery was gone.

Well....you are a Ghostbuster instead of a director...

WTF is wrong with Silent Running? I thought it was a very good sci-fi film.

I won't deny that the new directors cut released on DVD was great improved.

But you've admitted that the editing and pacing in 1979 was off.

If that were the case then there would be no standards in film at all.

Probably because it makes up for it in other ways, like making the audience ask semi-intelligent questions about the role of humanity, technology and evolution. But it still could have done without a lot of the extended sequences of nothing.

It had some cool names and some good VFX, but nothing made sense in that movie and it was all about a tree-hugger who killed all of his crew mates and some would-be rescuers to save some trees that'll end up dying not long after his sacrifice anyway.

"Think"???!!!!???? Why do you hate America, Diacanu?

There is no standard for "analysing visual media". That's just your arrogance in thinking that your own subjective view is some sort of absolute.

That's a basic rule of filmmaking of any kind. Even the "filmmaking" that you see on the local news.