I actually like TMP. I guess it was way to thinky for people who wanted a good shootem up. Star trek did always have more action for the fans, but I think the idea played out nice. I guess it did suffer from the transition from old TV to movie sets and effects. So we really did get introduced to the next level enterprise and a cast that had to be reformed. I kind of like the crew that was coming back together and were becoming more loyal to themselves than starfleet.
I guess I can take some more time. This was the first really interesting thinking sci fi movie I had gotten into. In it is a great idea of intelligent design and an idea that showed even though we might have a intelligence behind our presence and evolution we may not understand it when we see it. It was also one of the first times I had really seen the idea of a machine race. I know the series had these ideas in different episodes, but this was right around the time I was really finding them. I had yet to see TOS as a fan of it's messages, and had more just watched it as a space adventure. I like the thinking movie experience. 2001 was great. I like things like The fountain. even Moon which I think dragged very slowly was a good film. I can sit there for a philisophical payoff that does not overexplain things. TMP was a movie that combined the explorative adventure with a philisophical payoff. Thereal problem with the fifth movie was that it did not make you think. It was all just adventure vs an empty philisophical backdrop. TMP was slow, but I think it was the directors choice to make the situation very hopeless, and to pull the audience into an isolated bubble. This put the crew in the only position to go forward despite being right near earth to put it in immediate danger. For it to work it had to take earth out of the picture while also keeping us next to earth because it was the origen which was going to be destroyed. When you go through an hour episode of this sort it is not so bad, but when you get to a long movie people get bored easy. Even though I like it I would have to be in a mood for it. But TMP is one of the reasons I prefer star trek over a Star Wars. Trek is so much more grand in universe and philosophy than star wars.
Problem is, TMP is merely a retread of the TOS episode "The Changeling." Originally, it was basically going to be the story we saw in the TNG finale. Harlan Ellison pissed off some studio execs, so his script got axed and they went with a retread of a previous story. Robert Wise, the director of TMP, reportedly hated Trek, so he was a bad choice. Even if he could get his buddy to narrate the trailer for him. Like TFF, there were some good ideas in the TMP script, but they weren't properly developed.
I like TMP but it’s definitely got a very different tone compared to the later movies and even the original series. The warmth, humor, and action seem to have been leached out of it. It’s not fun. But it’s a good movie that takes its time and makes you think. Definitely more 2001 than Star Wars. There are probably too many scenes of the crew just standing around looking at the view screen, there could have been some more dialogue and interactions between characters. Star Trek V has entirely different problems. It could have turned out much better but I think budget cuts and a rushed schedule crippled the movie. If you read the novelization there is actually the core of a really good story there. But I’ll still rewatch any of the TOS movies any day over Nemesis or any of the modern Trek shows.
I’ve seen a lot of the Modern Trailers videos, they do a really good job. As for TMP, I hated it as a kid. I couldn’t sit through, but now I appreciate it a lot more. It’s definitely like a feature leangth episode though.
I've seen it edited down to 22 minutes (IIRC) which is...stupid. But I do agree that with tight editing the film, which I consider fairly good all things considered, could get much much better.
The flyby? I could watch those beauty shots set to that music for 66 minutes. When I was sitting in the theater at 16 watching that I literally teared up with joy.
Sadly, the effects for the DC were not done in hi-def, so we'll probably never see a Blu-Ray or 4K release.
Yep, but the Bluray of the theatrical version still looks pretty damn good, aside from where the effects were obvious.
