Star Trek Revisited Part III
Decided to re-watch the Star Trek films in order. It's been some time since I've seen them, and I never did watch the last two Next Gen films. Here's a few quick thoughts:
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Just so you know, we got this piece of crap because of lawyers and televangelists. After Wrath of Khan, director Nicholas Meyer refused to helm another film because he disagreed with changes paramount made to WoK without his consent. For Search For Spock, Leonard Nimoy was tapped to direct. As a result, Nimoy's and Shatner's lawyers engaged in a bit of legal "anything you can do, I can do better", only it didn't turn out that way. It turned out more like "you direct two pretty decent films, and I'll wipe my ass with the one after those". Since Nimoy got to direct the 3rd and 4th installments, Shatner got to direct the 5th. He is also primarily responsible for the cinematic abortion that is this film's story, inspired by watching televangelists. Great. Awesome. More "looking for God in all the wrong places" crap. Come on! Even Gene Roddenberry thought this movie was shit, and that's something coming from the guy who never turned down a chance to talk about finding God in outer space. Rehashing at least 3 episodes of the original series and the first feature isn't bad enough, but Shatner gives us jacked up hyper-action and Spock's heretofore unrevealed half-brother, a Vulcan so reprehensible he was cast off his homeworld and told not to let the screen door smack him in the ass on the way out. So we get a two hour, reduced to an hour and forty minutes via demand by the studio, of Shatner stroking himself in front of a wall of mirrors. Though he does look good in this flick, the only one in which he managed to stay the same pants size from the start of shooting to the end (no lie, for 4th movie, the costume department had to make him 12 different shirts because he kept falling off his diet). So, what do we have here... perhaps the worst special effects since Space: 1999. To save budget money, Paramount decided to use Chester's Bargain Basement Effects Hut instead of ILM, which was too busy anyway, and lots of rear projection instead of blue screen work. This gives the film the sci-fi equivalent of all those old black & white films where someone is driving a car at night, only it's painfully obvious they're in a car on a soundstage and night footage is being projected behind the car on a screen. I won't say this movie has the worst special effects ever, but they're damn close. The story is so bad, and the script is so shoddy, it's hard to believe anyone would approve either. Like with the first film, the screenplay was doctored by probably a dozen writers, all the while being subjected to cast member approval and suggestions. This is always bad news. At the end of Voyage Home, Kirk is rewarded with a demotion back to Captain and given a new Enterprise, which looks just like the previous one he blew up in Search for Spock. Despite having one of the best bridge designs, one that actually looks functional (Shatner insisted it be re-worked to look like a precursor to the Next Generation bridge set; in fact, many of the ship sets in this movie are redressed Next Generation sets), the ship itself is in less than ideal working condition, with malfunctioning doors and computer voices (my favorite is when they get in the lift after being pulled from shore leave and the computer voice asks "L-l-l-l-l-level please?"), not to mention offline transporters, which gives Shatner an excuse to do lots of work with shuttlecraft, none of which is remotely effective. Oh, and the transporters get functional just in time to save McCoy and Spock, but, *sad trombone*, can't pull Kirk's fat out of the fire, of course. Scotty spends most of the film yelling at subordinates and going on about how the ship just can't take it. In other words, he has now become a parody of himself. There is also a bizarre sexual subtext between Uhura and Scotty which comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere, and just feels forced and dumb. The film is almost too casual in it's approach to canon, characterization and dialogue, even after the extended Laurel & Hardy meet Abbot & Costello time travel of the previous film. This film takes that approach to it's most logical, extreme conclusion, creating Star Trek self parody. At one point, while on horseback (don't ask--Shatner has a boner for horses and he'd force them into his appearance in Star Trek: Generations, too), Spock actually says "Hold your horse, Captain." For reals. And this is after Kirk, Spock and McCoy, vacationing together in what must be a slashfic writer's wet dream, engage in drunken rounds of making s'mores and singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". And we get treated to it again at the very end, as if once isn't bad enough. Shatner throws in a deranged Klingon, Klaa, who not only decides that battling Kirk will help him score a home run with his bros back home, but who does his best Tim Curry as a Klingon doing Frank N Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with his own Klingonette Columbia. Seriously, all he needs is a bustier and some fishnets and BAM! In just seven days, I can make you a man. Shatner gives the secondary stars plenty to do (Chekov gets to be captain for a bit), which is both welcome (McCoy gets some good lines, and a hefty bit of drama when Sybok forces him to confront the pain of losing his father) and not so welcome (Nichelle Nichols has to do a semi-striptease fan dance to attract bad guys so Kirk, Spock, McCoy and their strike crew can steal horses). This whole film is some kind of bizarre Shatner wish fulfillment sequence in which he gets to cram all the macho Kirk stuff he can. And all of this because Spock's logic-eschewing half-brother wants to find God at the center of the galaxy and needs a starship to do it, but he's too much of a jackoff slacker to, you know, get a fucking job and buy one, so he engages in galactic terrorism to steal the Enterprise. This is the film that dares to answer the question Huh? The Klingon Captain Klaa is reduced to a wussy begging for forgiveness, so there isn't even a good mano y mano fistfight to offset the suckage. Sybok doesn't find God but, rather some kind of angry being who wants to break free of its imprisonment, a godlike being killed by a single phaser shot from a Klingon Bird of Prey. Wow. Some god. I mean, talk about letdown. In the end, the film was so savaged by critics and tanked, even after being number one at the box office for two weeks, that it very nearly kiled the franchise entirely. If not for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the desire to send off the original series crew in the right way, there probably would not have been a sixth film. For some unknown reason, the premiere for this film was held in Atlanta. An acquaintance of mine who is a huge Trekkie was there for it, involved as he has been for decades in Trek fandom. He told me a story about the premier. He said that the he was in charge of "taking care" of Nichelle Nichols and James Doohan, who arrived together in the same limo already severely hammered. He had to help Doohan into the theater. I think I would have gotten shitfaced, too.
Story: Honestly, someone break Shatner's fingers and cut out his tongue so he can't write anymore. The story is laughable dumb. This movie is the Ishtar of Star Trek films.
Effects: Egregiously bad. I mean, I've seen super 8 home movies with better special effects. The effects in this movie are like Milo Bloom putting deely-boppers on Opus's head to make "EP: The Extraterrestrial Penguin". Bad matte shots, bad everything. The use of rear projection in lieu of the more expensive blue screen makes everything look completely, sadly, fake.
Acting: Ham & cheese, with a side order of cheese, and a huge slab of ham. With ham on the side. Wrapped in gooey cheese.
Redshirts Sacrificed: None really. The only victim here besides Sybok (because, you know, Spock can't have anything nice, even if his half-brother is a fundamentalist whack job), is the dignity of the franchise. This movie is the equivalent of being caught in a sleazy nightclub giving head to a transsexual hooker while Ron Jeremy fists you while holding a can of Crisco.
Chekov Injury: None, aside from being brainwashed by Sybok.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Just so you know, we got this piece of crap because of lawyers and televangelists. After Wrath of Khan, director Nicholas Meyer refused to helm another film because he disagreed with changes paramount made to WoK without his consent. For Search For Spock, Leonard Nimoy was tapped to direct. As a result, Nimoy's and Shatner's lawyers engaged in a bit of legal "anything you can do, I can do better", only it didn't turn out that way. It turned out more like "you direct two pretty decent films, and I'll wipe my ass with the one after those". Since Nimoy got to direct the 3rd and 4th installments, Shatner got to direct the 5th. He is also primarily responsible for the cinematic abortion that is this film's story, inspired by watching televangelists. Great. Awesome. More "looking for God in all the wrong places" crap. Come on! Even Gene Roddenberry thought this movie was shit, and that's something coming from the guy who never turned down a chance to talk about finding God in outer space. Rehashing at least 3 episodes of the original series and the first feature isn't bad enough, but Shatner gives us jacked up hyper-action and Spock's heretofore unrevealed half-brother, a Vulcan so reprehensible he was cast off his homeworld and told not to let the screen door smack him in the ass on the way out. So we get a two hour, reduced to an hour and forty minutes via demand by the studio, of Shatner stroking himself in front of a wall of mirrors. Though he does look good in this flick, the only one in which he managed to stay the same pants size from the start of shooting to the end (no lie, for 4th movie, the costume department had to make him 12 different shirts because he kept falling off his diet). So, what do we have here... perhaps the worst special effects since Space: 1999. To save budget money, Paramount decided to use Chester's Bargain Basement Effects Hut instead of ILM, which was too busy anyway, and lots of rear projection instead of blue screen work. This gives the film the sci-fi equivalent of all those old black & white films where someone is driving a car at night, only it's painfully obvious they're in a car on a soundstage and night footage is being projected behind the car on a screen. I won't say this movie has the worst special effects ever, but they're damn close. The story is so bad, and the script is so shoddy, it's hard to believe anyone would approve either. Like with the first film, the screenplay was doctored by probably a dozen writers, all the while being subjected to cast member approval and suggestions. This is always bad news. At the end of Voyage Home, Kirk is rewarded with a demotion back to Captain and given a new Enterprise, which looks just like the previous one he blew up in Search for Spock. Despite having one of the best bridge designs, one that actually looks functional (Shatner insisted it be re-worked to look like a precursor to the Next Generation bridge set; in fact, many of the ship sets in this movie are redressed Next Generation sets), the ship itself is in less than ideal working condition, with malfunctioning doors and computer voices (my favorite is when they get in the lift after being pulled from shore leave and the computer voice asks "L-l-l-l-l-level please?"), not to mention offline transporters, which gives Shatner an excuse to do lots of work with shuttlecraft, none of which is remotely effective. Oh, and the transporters get functional just in time to save McCoy and Spock, but, *sad trombone*, can't pull Kirk's fat out of the fire, of course. Scotty spends most of the film yelling at subordinates and going on about how the ship just can't take it. In other words, he has now become a parody of himself. There is also a bizarre sexual subtext between Uhura and Scotty which comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere, and just feels forced and dumb. The film is almost too casual in it's approach to canon, characterization and dialogue, even after the extended Laurel & Hardy meet Abbot & Costello time travel of the previous film. This film takes that approach to it's most logical, extreme conclusion, creating Star Trek self parody. At one point, while on horseback (don't ask--Shatner has a boner for horses and he'd force them into his appearance in Star Trek: Generations, too), Spock actually says "Hold your horse, Captain." For reals. And this is after Kirk, Spock and McCoy, vacationing together in what must be a slashfic writer's wet dream, engage in drunken rounds of making s'mores and singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". And we get treated to it again at the very end, as if once isn't bad enough. Shatner throws in a deranged Klingon, Klaa, who not only decides that battling Kirk will help him score a home run with his bros back home, but who does his best Tim Curry as a Klingon doing Frank N Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with his own Klingonette Columbia. Seriously, all he needs is a bustier and some fishnets and BAM! In just seven days, I can make you a man. Shatner gives the secondary stars plenty to do (Chekov gets to be captain for a bit), which is both welcome (McCoy gets some good lines, and a hefty bit of drama when Sybok forces him to confront the pain of losing his father) and not so welcome (Nichelle Nichols has to do a semi-striptease fan dance to attract bad guys so Kirk, Spock, McCoy and their strike crew can steal horses). This whole film is some kind of bizarre Shatner wish fulfillment sequence in which he gets to cram all the macho Kirk stuff he can. And all of this because Spock's logic-eschewing half-brother wants to find God at the center of the galaxy and needs a starship to do it, but he's too much of a jackoff slacker to, you know, get a fucking job and buy one, so he engages in galactic terrorism to steal the Enterprise. This is the film that dares to answer the question Huh? The Klingon Captain Klaa is reduced to a wussy begging for forgiveness, so there isn't even a good mano y mano fistfight to offset the suckage. Sybok doesn't find God but, rather some kind of angry being who wants to break free of its imprisonment, a godlike being killed by a single phaser shot from a Klingon Bird of Prey. Wow. Some god. I mean, talk about letdown. In the end, the film was so savaged by critics and tanked, even after being number one at the box office for two weeks, that it very nearly kiled the franchise entirely. If not for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the desire to send off the original series crew in the right way, there probably would not have been a sixth film. For some unknown reason, the premiere for this film was held in Atlanta. An acquaintance of mine who is a huge Trekkie was there for it, involved as he has been for decades in Trek fandom. He told me a story about the premier. He said that the he was in charge of "taking care" of Nichelle Nichols and James Doohan, who arrived together in the same limo already severely hammered. He had to help Doohan into the theater. I think I would have gotten shitfaced, too.
Story: Honestly, someone break Shatner's fingers and cut out his tongue so he can't write anymore. The story is laughable dumb. This movie is the Ishtar of Star Trek films.
Effects: Egregiously bad. I mean, I've seen super 8 home movies with better special effects. The effects in this movie are like Milo Bloom putting deely-boppers on Opus's head to make "EP: The Extraterrestrial Penguin". Bad matte shots, bad everything. The use of rear projection in lieu of the more expensive blue screen makes everything look completely, sadly, fake.
Acting: Ham & cheese, with a side order of cheese, and a huge slab of ham. With ham on the side. Wrapped in gooey cheese.
Redshirts Sacrificed: None really. The only victim here besides Sybok (because, you know, Spock can't have anything nice, even if his half-brother is a fundamentalist whack job), is the dignity of the franchise. This movie is the equivalent of being caught in a sleazy nightclub giving head to a transsexual hooker while Ron Jeremy fists you while holding a can of Crisco.
Chekov Injury: None, aside from being brainwashed by Sybok.