MOVIE REVIEW: "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979) · 12:35am Mar 15th, 2020
Good grief, how long has it been since I did a movie review around these parts? I don't even remember the last one I did. I think I was actually gonna do a book review of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, but then a certain friend of mine reminded me of this movie, I went and rewatched it, and here we are.
So without further to do, let's dig into my thoughts on...
Plot Synopsis: (copied from Ex Astris Scientia)
"When a huge cloud approaches the Sol system and threatens to destroy all life on Earth, Admiral Kirk assumes command of the newly refitted Enterprise, reducing Capt. Decker to his first officer. On their way to intercept the cloud, Spock, who sensed its presence when he was on Vulcan, rejoins the crew. When the entity that calls itself "V'ger" scans the ship, the Deltan navigator Lt. Ilia is absorbed and later returned as an android. Spock and Kirk find out that V'ger routinely scans and saves everything it encounters along its path. V'ger turns out to be an enormous machine built for the sole purpose of seeking for and eventually merging with the Creator of its distant relative, the space probe Voyager 6 that was launched from Earth a long time ago. The entity is accordingly unsatisfied when it discovers that humans, primitive "carbon units", were the Creators. But V'ger, in the form of the Ilia probe, agrees to merge with the Creator, in the form of Capt. Decker, to a totally new lifeform."
Okay, confession time. I may be just a teensy, tiny, itsy-bitsy bit biased when it comes to this movie. And the reason for that is because...it kinda changed my life forever.
I first saw TMP when I was about three years old, around the age where my memory really started retaining things. It was my first ever exposure to Star Trek, to the legendary Captain James T. Kirk and his crew, to the great Starship Enterprise, to the strange new world that Gene Roddenberry had created in the 60's.
I was awestruck. That's the only way I could really describe what I saw when I first watched it. The sights, the wonders, the beauty of space and the dark mystery of what may lie out there...it blew me away. And it left me with a craving. A burning desire to know what else is out there. How far can we go? Who might we meet? What might we learn? So many questions for a three year old mind...
The realization that came to me was a gradual one. There was no eureka moment. I just sort of slowly grew into the mindset. We may never have an interstellar United Federation of Planets (for reasons to numerous to count), and I'll likely be dead before we ever get serious about faster-than-light travel.
I may never get the chance to explore strange new worlds, or to seek out new life and new civilizations.
But I could sure as all get out create my own worlds to boldly go to.
And so here we are, with me looking back at the movie that kickstarted my imagination these seventeen years later.
And you know what?
I still love this thing. In fact, I'm gonna be bold here and say that this just might be my favorite Star Trek film.
Now, let's address the elephant in the room; the film's slow pace. Yeah, it's slow. This ain't one of those high-octane movies with lots of pew-pews and boom-booms and bright lights shining right in your eyes from virtually every angle. It's exactly the opposite. And yet, I don't necessarily think the slow pace is a bad thing.
For instance, the almost five-minute exterior tour of the upgraded and redesigned USS Enterprise NCC-1701. When this movie came out, it was the first time anyone had seen her in ten years, so you bet they were gonna take the opportunity to display her in all her glory on the big screen. And if you ask me, Enterprise deserves every second of screen time devoted to her, because she is absolutely beautiful. I mean...just look at her.
It's an amazing feeling that I get whenever I watch this scene. It's like...it feels like I've come home somehow. Like this is where I belong. I look at Enterprise and think to myself, "This is what we could be. This is everything that we could accomplish if we put our minds and hearts to it. Why aren't we there yet?!"
And then we get to V'ger. And if Enterprise is everything that humanity could accomplish, then V'ger is everything that we don't know about the universe.
V'Ger is huge, daunting, mysterious. It absolutely looms over everything else in the movie. It's full of blue hues, strange lights, odd shapes...the whole thing is just alien. It is the most foreign thing I have ever seen in a sci-fi movie. It took me years to realize that there was an actual ship inside the energy cloud that surrounds it; for the longest time I thought it just kinda faded into its different parts. V'Ger felt to me like a completely different universe. And all the time spent on showing it emphasizes just how alien it really is, especially in comparison to Enterprise. She's a speck in almost every shot that she and V'Ger share.
And now that I've grown up, I realize that, in spite of V'Ger's strictly cold, emotionless, mechanical nature, it's motivation to find its creator, to answer its question of "Is this all I am? Is there nothing more?" is...astonishingly human in its nature, especially for something like V'Ger. I mean, don't we all ask ourselves that question at some point in our lives? While I can't say I'm too fond of the movie's resolution to that, it's still a curious thing to consider.
And with that aforementioned maturity I also came to recognize other bits of characterization that I missed as a child, such as Spock's personal quest for answers, and his discovery that feelings and emotion are still just as important as pure logic. Or how Kirk's inexperience after years away from command show when he gets back into the chair, and his rivalry with Captain Decker. And going further on characters, I think the Director's Cut does a much better job of fleshing out the unfortunate Lt. Illia, showing her to be a genuinely nice and compassionate person who really doesn't deserve her death at V'Ger's electric hands.
At the end of the day, I think what I love most about this film is that, out of all the Star Trek films, this is really the only one where they really confront the unknown. And that has always been my favorite part of Star Trek; boldly going where no one has gone before. I'm not gonna be one of those idiots who screams that the JJ Abrams films and Discovery are "not true Star Trek" (they are, they're just not good Star Trek, and living in denial won't make it go away), but really, there's a distinct lack of discovery in the newer content, and even in the films immediately after this one.
Don't get me wrong, films like The Wrath of Khan or The Undiscovered Country are great films, and some of the best Star Trek has to offer. But this is the one that always gets me to wonder. This is the one that inspires me.
And how can I fault it for that?
8/10.
Live long and prosper.
Looking back, I don't actually see much wrong with the film apart from its pacing. That's where most of my criticism lay, and if it was fixed, I'd enjoy the movie a lot more than I do now. Every film has a few issues here and there, but I don't think we should let it distract us from our enjoyment of the film. People who have no other opinion of films they hate are blinding themselves, and I just want people to enjoy movies without a constant barrage of criticism. I realize now that I was a part of the problem, and I'm sorry for that.
As I've said before it was this film that inspired and partially led me into accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I am eternally grateful to Him for bringing this film into my life.
In my opinion, the film did have its positives, but overall...the film was too lackluster. I found the film to be too boring, slow, and agonizing, and it wasn’t something I had much fun watching.
But, I’m happy that you love this movie and that it made such a positive impact on your life.
5220685
Yeah, that's what I think too. I know that I'd definitely try to make things just a bit more tense during the final act of the film, when V'Ger enters Earth orbit and is getting ready to destroy the planet.
I don't think criticism of a movie in and of itself isn't bad. It really depends on how many things are wrong with a movie, what those things are, and how much of an effect they have on a given viewer. Different people won't necessarily have the exact same problems, but enough people say that there's the same problem, then I think it's at least something that should be looked at.
5220689
Oh really? How so?
5220717
Ah, well. At least we can all agree that the next one is awesome.
See, I'm really kinda wishing you'd move your review schedule up a bit, because I really want to see what you think of Star Trek V.
But if your Christianity-based comments regarding Trek are any indication (and I'm not trying to give away any spoilers), than I dare say you're gonna come back to this "boring, agonizing hunk of junk" and look at it as a masterpiece compared to what STV pulls.
5220720
Hey, no worries. I’ve actually decided that I couldn’t wait to see the rest of the original Star Trek films any longer, so as soon as I get a couple of reviews not relating to Star Trek out and posted, your wish will be granted.
5220720
It's a bit complicated to explain. If you're willing to listen.
5220727
Go for it.
5220726
I mean, don't rush yourself, and don't go out of order or anything like that. Do it at your convenience.
I liked this film, but I'll agree with AMU that it was slow, though the scene where Spock flies through V'ger's ship, theorizing everything, was awesome.
5221321
Everyone agrees that this movie is slow. How much it bothers people is completely subjective.