For today’s review I thought I’d tackle a film that I’ve long been a fan of, even when it wasn’t popular to like it. It’s the first installment in a cinematic universe, which normally would mean that it should also be the best, but in this case the film was so infamously panned by both critics and audiences that it almost killed the franchise dead before it began.
I’m talking of course about the one and only STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE.
Quick Recap! When COVID shut down everything in early 2020, I started an online bad movie night get-together with some friends that we eventually dubbed “Bad Movie Monday”. The premise was simple: We’d torture each other every Monday with the worst trash we could find, tell a few jokes, cheer each other up, and in the process maybe discover some weird obscure cinema that we might never have seen any other way. This series of reviews will feature highlights of those nights so you can all share in the fun and maybe get some ideas for your own movie night.
The massive popularity of Star Wars, and how it redefined not just science-fiction but also mainstream cinema, cannot be overstated. Before Star Wars, science-fiction movies were kind of a hard sell for most studios. They were fairly complicated to produce compared to something like a Western. You couldn’t just get a couple of guys who knew how to ride horses and bang one out in a week. You needed people who knew how to do special effects, and there were only a handful of those in all of Hollywood. So they required huge investments in time and money up front while at the same time often barely breaking even at the box office. Take something like Metropolis, arguably the single greatest and most iconic science-fiction movie ever made. It cost 5.3 million Reichsmark to produce in 1927 and earned 75,000 Reichsmark. I did some very quick math, so pardon me if my numbers are wrong, but this would be like making a $22 million dollar movie today that would gross a piddling $310,000 dollars. Even something far more successful like Forbidden Planet still managed to cost around 2 million dollars to produce in 1956 while only earning 2.8 million dollars. So studios, not completely unreasonably, felt that Science-Fiction and mainstream audiences did not mix.
Enter Star Wars.
After Star Wars, every movie wanted to be the next Star Wars. Because George Lucas’ little film didn’t just break even or make a nice tidy little profit. It made a, pardon the language, FUCKTON of money. It made Scrooge McDuck swimming in his own personal bank vault filled with gold coins amounts of money. It made “WE’RE ALL GONNA GET LAID!” money. Not just that, but it made even more money with toys and merchandise, which had never been much of a thing until then. Sure, at the time, some movies and TV shows would occasionally have soundtracks or collector cards or novelization or Halloween costumes, or even toys, and it was certainly seen as a way to make a couple of extra bucks. However, with Star Wars a lot of that stuff wasn’t just a side hustle, it became more profitable than the movie itself. George Lucas made $100 million dollars between 1977 and 1978 just selling toys, and you know what happens when rich studio executives smell money? They go crazy and they want MORE MONEY. So every dumb, third rate script with a space ship or a laser gun in it that would normally have been tossed in the trash was suddenly dusted off and greenlit on the off chance that it would bring in the big bucks. That’s why the post Star Wars seventies is just filled with garbage movies like LASERBLAST, STARCRASH, THE ALIEN FACTOR, and a host of others. Gone was the thoughtful intellectualism and artistry of the late sixties and early seventies which had given us films like 2001, Solaris, Phase IV, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Zardoz, and even George Lucas’ own THX-1138. Those were too fancy pants for people. Now we knew what the public craved. The cinematic equivalent of big bucket of BBQ sauce with extra cheese. No need for meat, just sauce.
So of course, the most logical film to make in order to copy that success to would have to be based on one of the few previously existing properties that already resembled Star Wars, which was Star Trek. The original 1966-1969 Gene Roddenberry produced TV show, despite having a tiny budget, still managed to take place on strange faraway planets and have colorful aliens and robots as characters. Occasionally, there would even be space battles with bad guys. It wasn’t a perfect fit with the formula that George Lucas had stumbled upon, but it was close enough. So of course Star Trek: The Motion Picture absolutely did everything it could to be 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This movie couldn’t have been more doomed had the grim reaper been in the background when they signed the contracts. I’m amazed the sun didn’t go dark and seas didn’t turn to blood. In the annals of bad financial decisions, the one to make an arthouse/hard science-fiction Star Trek film in the middle of a sci-fi fantasy boom certainly has a special place. I’m the first one to wax poetic about how I love art more than anything, but I also understand that movies need to make money. What a crazy, wonderful decision this was. Thank you Gene Roddenberry.
I’m telling you all this as a way to sort of explain why people panned the film in 1979. It wasn’t because the film itself was bad. Although MOTION didn’t help itself with its cryptic story, dry delivery, and glacial pacing. No, they hated it because it wasn’t Star Wars. Even Trekkies thought it would at least feel like Star Wars, and it didn’t. Not even in the slightest.
However, may I make a confession? I LOVE THIS FILM.
It’s true. I love it. I love every slow paced second of it. I love the overture that makes the beginning of the film feel like the video is broken. I love the utter seriousness in which it comports itself. I love the long takes that lovingly show you every inch of the special effects. I love the weird Jerry Goldsmith score with doomy echoing booming noises that would be more at home in a biblical apocalypse movie. I love the fact that there is a character called Ilia, presented in a completely dead serious way, whose sexual prowess is so amazing that she can KILL YOU with her vagina. No, it wasn’t Star Wars. None of this was Star Wars. However, I will tell you what it was though: It was Star Trek.
The humor and camaraderie was mostly missing, true, but every other mad dumb second of this film is pure Trek goodness. One thing I’ve always noticed that people overlook when talking about the TV show is that it’s essentially an anthology of great science-fiction stories that just happens to have a recurring cast. Most people correctly note that Star Trek is very leftist and progressive, but they forget that it’s also about a lot of high minded ideas. It’s not just about action and adventure sprinkled with some witty dialogue. This is why I’m of the opinion that WRATH OF KHAN took the series in a direction that it’s never been able to recover from. Don’t get me wrong, I love KHAN. It’s my favorite film in the bunch. However, I often wish that the franchise would stop endlessly trying to emulate it. Other than a few welcome exceptions like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, too much of Trek has been plagued with storylines about classical literature quoting madmen with doomsday weapons wanting to take over the universe. It’s getting old.
Anyway, onto the review! I first watched this movie forty years ago, and even back then I found it compelling, hypnotic and fun. Yeah, the pacing is glacial, but the atmosphere of the film is without equal. It’s like having a beautiful dream taking place in the world of Star Trek, and you can totally lose yourself within all those detailed sets and special effects. There’s something to be said for a movie that doesn’t let story get in the way of immersion. I had actual Motion Picture toys when I was a kid, and I would play with them as I watched the movie. It was great. I have nothing but fond memories of that.
The film was directed by the legendary Robert Wise who, if you’ve never heard of him, is someone whose work you should go check out as soon as possible. He made the original 1963 adaption of The Haunting, the original 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain, West Side Story and a very good submarine movie called Run Silent Run Deep. All of which are worth a watch.
As for the screenplay, it was apparently worked on by an eclectic mishmash of people, including Gene Roddenberry himself, but credited to Harold Livingston because he was probably the only person willing to put his name on it.
The story is fairly straightforward, so I’ll try explaining it in my usual convoluted way.
An incredibly powerful and destructive energy cloud of immense size is heading towards Earth, and the newly refitted Enterprise is sent out to intercept it with Admiral James T. Kirk in command. Much of the crew onboard are the same familiar familiar faces we knew from the series, other than the Enterprise’s current Captain, a man called William Decker, and the bald Ilia, which is the alien woman that I mentioned earlier. She is so erotically charged that she has to take a vow of celibacy just to serve on board the ship. There is also, briefly, a Vulcan called Sonak who is killed during a gruesome transporter accident. Spock, who had left Starfleet to pursue the study of Vulcan logic, returns as the ship’s science officer after sensing an intelligence at the center of the cloud and becoming convinced that there must be a ship inside controlling it. Once in range, the entity behind the cloud, calling itself V’Ger, kills Lieutenant Ilia in order to create a robot copy of her in order to investigate what it calls “The Carbon Unit Infestation” aboard the Enterprise. It considers the ship itself a living being and the people inside a kind of parasite, as if it’s a dog with fleas. The crew try to convince V’Ger, through the medium of the Ilia probe, that they are intelligent. As they do so, they discover that this physically identical robot duplicate of Ilia also has her memories. She still seems fond of Decker, with whom she had been lovers with once. As the Enterprise travels deeper within the cloud they finally encounter the ship, which is several hundreds of miles long and dwarfs the Enterprise. The ship then opens up and literally pulls the Enterprise inside in order to study it. With no other option, Spock disobeys Kirk’s orders and uses a space suit and booster pack to go explore the vast interior of the ship. There he sees that it contains a holographic array that shows everything the ship ever encountered. People, other ships, planets, whole galaxies. He attempts to mind meld and discovers that the ship and V’Ger are one and the same. It’s an intelligent machine, and the reason it is headed to Earth is because it believes that its “creator” resides there. By now, the cloud has dissipated and the ship has parked itself in Earth’s orbit. The crew venture out to the surface of V’Ger, which now has oxygen and gravity, to speak to it directly. They discover that V’Ger is in fact the Voyager 6 space probe, sent from out from Earth hundreds of years ago to explore the universe and learn everything it could. Not long after being sent out by Earth Voyager/V’Ger went through a black hole, emerging in a different part of the galaxy, and crashed on a planet populated by machines. These machines saw it as one of their own and upgraded it with enough technology to accomplish its mission of literally knowing everything. However, after learning everything it can about the universe and gaining sentience, it still feels a huge void. V’Ger is beginning to ask itself existential questions like “Is this all there is?” and it can’t answer them even with the vast knowledge it possesses. So it has returned home in order to ask these question directly to its creator, which unbeknownst to it are humans. Now that it’s around Earth, and has readied missiles in order to purify the planet of its “Carbon Unit” infestation, it’s sending out the old Voyager code in order to force “The Creator” to show themselves. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, with Commander Decker and the Ilia probe in tow, realize that V’Ger wants to merge with the creator in order to gain imagination, insight and intuition. Qualities it does not possess as a purely logical machine. Decker, wanting to save the Earth and understanding that merging with V’Ger is the only way to be with Ilea again, accepts to become one with V’Ger and he and Ilia and the ship and the cloud all vanish in a spectacular flash. The crew of the Enterprise then posit that they’ve just witnessed the birth of a new life form. Roll Credits.
Admit it, that sounds pretty epic doesn’t it? Yeah, there are incredibly dumb bits like a wormhole sequence where the Enterprise warp engines fail. It’s a completely superfluous scene that adds nothing except special effects cost. It looks kind of neat, but it stops the movie dead. Also, don’t get me started about the Red Alert Klaxon that sounds every ten seconds. It gets real old real quick. Gene Roddenberry was apparently responsible for many of the film’s weirder ideas. Still, doesn’t that sound refreshing compared to modern movies and their numbing never ending action scenes? There’s lot of moments in MOTION PICTURE with characters just talking and thinking. It’s so rare to see that nowadays.
#1 – I think the film starts off on the wrong foot by calling itself THE MOTION PICTURE. How pretentious is that? Not plain “Star Trek” or “Star Trek: The Movie” but Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It’s mildly alienating.
#2 – The Overture, as beautiful as it sounds, is pointless. I personally love it, and it’s only three minutes long technically, but some people may feel a little impatient listening to the whole song.
#3 – The opening scene of the Klingons attacking V’Ger is epic. In fact, a lot of this movie looks grand. Must have been amazing to watch on a big screen.
#4 – It’s become a joke by now that the Enterprise is always the only starship within range, but Motion Picture really pushes the audience’s suspension of disbelief here. Because, in the movie, the Enterprise is docked in orbit around EARTH. Are you telling me that Starfleet has no other ships to send out from its own Headquarters?
#5 – Likewise, the Enterprise being “refit” is an unnecessary explanation for why the ship looks different. They could have just not mentioned it. Or they could have actually used the fact that the ship was recently refit as a reason it was the only one they could send to intercept V’Ger. Because it had the most advanced weapons if it came to that. I know. I know. I’m overthinking this.
#6 – I love McCoy’s swinger attire when we first see him. I always make jokes that he became a gynecologist after the 5 year mission from the original series.
#7 – The scene where Sonak dies in a transporter accident is genuinely disturbing. There’s no gore, but the transporter chief’s line of “Enterprise. What we got back… didn’t live long.” will haunt you far longer than any foam latex appliances ever could.
#8 – The loving shots of the V’Ger ship are amazing. I could watch hours of just that.
#9 – Other than three Klingon ships trying to attack V’Ger at the beginning of the film, there are no space battle scenes of any kind.
#10 – The ending still manages to leave me a bit speechless. It’s a smart thoughtful moment, another rarity in modern cinema. I miss films like this. Films that fail, but fail grandly.
One last thing. Thinking about it now, this movie is arguably the first “art” film I ever saw and it probably is what started me on my journey to loving art and culture. These days, I don’t want to watch the next Superman or Flash or whatever the hell is the flavor of the month superhero movie. I don’t want to watch dumb Hollywood blockbuster films. I’m fifty years old. I’ve spent at least 2/3 of my life watching this stuff, and so I want to dedicate the rest of my time in the Earthly plane to things that are beautiful and weird. I want to watch more Beau is Afraid and less Avatar 2. This is where my journey into art began. This movie was the birth of a new me.
I think that’s rather appropriate.
