Star Trek V - The Final Frontier

Rating:
Summary: ENTERTAINMENT, NOT PERFECTIONISM
Review: THIS IS THE WORST STAR TREK MOVIE I keep reading on Amazon. It should have been this, it could have been that . . . . I ask you here and now, is all that really so important? This is a film, which unless I'm missing something here, that was designed for entertainment. Yes, ENTERTAINMENT. Does not Science Fiction demand the suspension of standard beliefs that it may be accepted? One reviewer is hung up on how little time it takes for the crew of the Enterprise to reach the center of the galaxy, yet generously accepts the functions of the transporter, sythetic gravity and proof of alien races who speak fluent english. What??? Continually, I've read how people tear this and other films apart upon this difficulty or that bit of confusion . . .

Oh, it's not a bad film. It's ENTERTAINMENT, that's all; and I write to you that this is an ENTERTAINING film. Who cares what William Shatner thinks of himself?? Speaking only for myself, such petty matters prove too taxing to allow for the enjoyment of it all. This film approaches the subject of God, and determines that we cannot define Him. Is that really so tough to accept? If that can be accepted, then why can't the many so-called "flaws" of this film be accepted? After all, I've seen many, many films of less value; films which certainly weren't ENTERTAINING.

Good people, to get hung up on the kind petty details I'm reading here by others submitting their reviews is to rob oneself of the pleasure of the viewing experience, in my humble opinion. Let it all go, suspend belief as Science Fiction requires and have a good time.

By the way, the man who played Sybok, Spock's half-brother bad guy/good-guy antagonist who is determined to fulfull his visions to find God, did an exceptionally fine job - both underrated and overlooked. Put simply, I found his acting superior to the seasoned cast.

If it's such a lousy film which deserves so much criticism, then let someone else go out there and produce a different version. Until then, I still enjoy this film because it ENTERTAINS me, not because it satisfies a dememted need for perfectionism.

So enjoy it for what it is and leave it at that. After all, I never believed for a moment that I was to save my soul through watching this film. Whether one believes in God or not is hardly the issue here; for the character of man remains forever flawed when measured against, at the very least, the theology of God to the unbeliever, and the reality of God to the believer. As man is therefore not perfect as God is, how is it that the public is demaning this perfectionism from Hollywood? People, including me, make mistakes. BIG DEAL. There are so very many other movies out there which simply do not match the caliber of this one, flawed or not.

Yea though, the decision is thine own . . . Have a nice day.

Rating:
Summary: BEST DVD FOR WORST "TREK!"
Review: It is very funny: the best DVD release for a "Star Trek" movie since "The Motion Picture" has been given to the worst of the films: "Star Trek V - The Final Frontier." The movie has some good moments (outside of the search for God and the mediocre visual effects), and the DVD has some awesome special features to enjoy. I recommend the DVD just for the extras alone!
Movie Grade: C+ (3 Stars)
DVD Grade: A+ (5 Stars)

Rating:
Summary: Oh, for what could have been...
Review: If only they would have gone with Shatner's original story treatment, where the Enterprise journeys to H-E-double-hockey-sticks and Kirk gets in a fist fight with Beelzebub, kicking ol' Scratch's horn-tailed keester, of course. Can you say camp classic, kids?

Rating:
Summary: Great ORIGINAL Story. Trek V= Original!
Review: Hardcore Star Trek fans are funny. When the original series went off the air they cried, moaned, screeched, and shrieked at Paramount for ten years to give them back their Trek. In 1979 Paramount gave in and gave them Star Trek-The Motion Picture. A movie I loved and I am by no means a Trekkie. Star Trek TMP was the 3rd highest grossing movie of 1979 and it came out in December! Thats big money. Yet, for going on 25 years now, I've had to read and listen to people tell me how "bad or slow" TMP was. But when they understand that the story was original and keeping with Roddenberrys vision they lighten up. This is the case with Star Trek V. For some reason if a Trekkie has to deal with an original story they have a hard time digesting it. They start picking it apart and take it literal. Yes, I love Star Treks II, III, and IV...but they are not original stories. Trek II borrows from an episode of the original series. Trek III (my personal favorite Trek movie) continues on the borrowing from Trek II, and Trek IV blatantly rips off Star Trek The Motion Picture. Basic story line to Trek IV and TMP is there is a probe that will destroy Earth if it is not communicated with and the cast has to figure out how to answer the probe so it goes away. See? TMP=original. II, III, IV=unoriginal. This is a pattern for Trekkies. They love The Next Generation, Voyager, and whatever that new show is called that is running now. Yet they are all unoriginal. Even the TNG movies borrow from the original cast plot lines. Generations even needed Kirk in it because they had no idea had to be original. First contact borrowed the time travel premise, Nemesis basically remade Star Trek II, etc, etc.
Star Trek V is a VERY ORIGINAL STORY. The basic premise is a renegade Vulcan (itself an original idea) thinks God is calling to him and he has to go find him. Great idea! Throw in the fact that the renegade Vulcan is Spocks brother and a Klingon subplot and you have the makings of a fun Trek movie! And it IS a fun Trek movie! The only thing I will concede is the effects are not up to par with the other films. It looks like they were trying early CGI (computer images) and it didn't come off too well. But I still accept it. I also believe that Shatner did a great job of directing. Shatner gets a bad rap for no reason. The guy was known as being "difficult" but all he did was fight for his characters integrity when he didn't agree with something in a script. So what.

This 2 DVD set is awesome as well! Tons of extras and deleted scenes! Excellent commentary by Shatner! Notably missing from the commentary was Nimoy. Why? Shatner helped Nimoy with the commentary on IV. Why didn't Nimoy return the favor?
So, don't believe these picky Trekkers. A picky Trekker would put down even Mickey Mouse and not like him because mice can't speak. Check this movie out. If you have been hating on this movie for 15 years, then read my review again and remember this is an ORIGINAL story. Maybe you'll see it in a different way.
I sell more merchandise for TMP and V than I do for ANY other Star Trek movie or TV series. What does that tell you? Tells me there are alot of fans in the closet when it comes to the most original Trek movies ever made!
Finally, the best line ever muttered in any Trek movie occurs in Star Trek V when McCoy is referring to Spock and says "I liked him better before he died!" Very funny!

Rating:
Summary: Unintentionally funny special features
Review: I was taking a look at the special features and came across a couple of things that had me cringing in a 'so bad it's good' kinda way. 'Harve Bennett's Pitch' was just bizarre (I think this was made for the sales and promotion people at Paramount). He gives the Vulcan 'live long and prosper' salute and explains the meaning behind it (whether it's true or not I have no idea), saying that if you adopt the hand gesture that you cannot lie (never heard that one before!). He then goes on to say how great the film is and how proud he is of it while doing the v sign with not just one but both hands. Weird. Then we have the press conference. Harve Bennett starts things off trying to be amusing but is greeted with silence from the gathered press. William Shatner then goes on to introduce the regular cast who are all in costume and seem embarrassed as they quote rehearsed lines after Shatner hands the mic (briefly) to them. He then forgets Walter (Chekov) Koenig's name, introducing him as a colleague. Koenig, looking quite insulted, quickly takes the mic from Shatner and states his name.

We also get to see the Rockman costume that wasn't used in the film. It apparently cost thousands of dollars to make and looks like something that you'd see in an old episode of Lost In Space or Doctor Who. It's just as well Shatner was told that the budget wasn't large enough to make more of these costumes!

As for the film itself, it has its moments and the photography is terrific...but the comedic moments are mostly cringe-inducing. Scotty's "I know this ship like the back of my hand" scene is awful and an insult to the character; the camping scenes with Kirk, Spock and McCoy are forced and mostly silly; Chekov and Sulu getting lost in the woods is another insult to two great characters; and Uhura doing her fan dance is just jaw-droppingly stupid. It's a shame that the regular supporting characters are made to look foolish in the name of "comedy". Nimoy and his writers did a terrific job in the previous films giving the Enterprise crew funny moments without cheapening the characters, and it's a shame that Shatner didn't do the same here. It's no wonder that actors like Doohan, Koenig, Takei and Nichols were so bitter about Shatner for years.

Rating:
Summary: I suspect it's pretty good,and maybe even better than that.!
Review: I want to say something right away. That lady who plays Uhura would be my favorite pin up girl right now if I wasn't a happily married man, so whoever thinks she couldn't have done that great Arabian dance and look beautiful is gonna have to answer to me!

No, seriously, I have seen this movie for years and somehow ended up thinking that, odds up, it really is quite a gem. There's quite a few reasons.

All my memories of actually serving in the forces (which are few, but they're there) are about this tension that must surely exist between the functionalities which must be brought to bear in the life you have while doing it all. You are a soldier, but a lot of the time you are a drinking buddy, or an officer, or a football star, or the squad comedian. This goes on and on, and is the real evidence that you are, indeed, a live item. What of course happens occasionally is that sometimes this juggling act goes a little out of wack. Something weird happens,and the people in there say, ho, so who was this guy really? So it is here. Spock turns out to have had a troubled past. And we really do get to see this affect EVERTHING, as it would in real life. What is so interesting is how the disruptive element - Spock's brother - who has the potential to really cause a huge war - is eventually involved both with the characters's essential weaknesses, and finally, and ironically, his own.

I find this study so interesting, combined with the ongoing saga of "what happened after" The Voyage Home, that the errors or shortcomings matter not at all.

This isn't unreasonable, given that there is actually much to be admired in the photography and directing. It may be uneven, but it is very good very often.

I'm 43 now, and I would say that if I ever do a film of some 20's or 30's SF, which I would do if I ever was going to try that kind of thing, and it ended up half as good as this, I would be VERY pleased.

This film, I think, does really open up a lot of important and serious philosophical questions. You can trivialize these, but you would do so at your peril.

The film in many ways rightly ends without a great sunburst finish, and I think that the mysterious ending around a camp fire, singing "life is but a dream" is actually one of the most radical and daring things that these feature films have ever done. What is, indeed the nature of the events that have unfolded? What does it mean to loose a brother, and to face an angry god? (small "g")

And all the trekkies say poo, but I say that that's sometimes just the way it is, and Shatner had this film, in the end, dead right.

Good on you, bill!

Rating:
Summary: Failure on the Final Frontier
Review: With the record smashing success of Star Trek IV The Voyage Home, Paramount thought it had reached a crossover audience for the Trek franchise, and the studio handed the reigns for the fifth film to William Shatner. The production started optimistically, but was fraught with cost overruns and delays.

From just about any standpoint, this is not a good film. But the problem isn't the directing. William Shatner clearly knows how to handle a camera and draws fine performances from the cast (especially DeForest Kelley). The problem with Star Trek V centers on the script. There is an old Broadway saying, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage." The failure of this movie proves the validity of that truism. Since Shatner is listed as one of the persons behind the story here, he must bear his fair share of the responsibility for the problems with this story. Creating a script about the search for a tangible God, even if it winds up being a false God, sets the viewer up for disappointment. No matter how spectacularly the Almighty is presented on film, it can't live up to the real thing. In this film, He comes across as a latter day Wizard of Oz. Compounded with that are the problems with continuity within the Trek "universe," and overall tone: introducing Sybok as Spock's half-brother, and the use of the cast for slapstick humor, do not help an already implausible story. Small wonder Gene Roddenberry did not consider this film to be canonical Trek.

The special effects, which are crude and amateurish, do not help matters. The special effects during the original series were often sub-par, yet the old shows continue to satisfy even in today's CGI era. (Anyone with any doubts about that should simply check how well the Original Series DVDs have been selling on Amazon.) Here, the anemic visuals merely add to the problems because they are coupled to a weak script. About the most charitable thing one can say about this film is that it features a wonderful score from Trek veteran Jerry Goldsmith. But that is not enough to save this uninspiring quest.

Apparently, for this DVD version William Shatner asked Paramount for additional funding to create a director's edition similar to Robert Wise's edition for Star Trek The Motion Picture, and the visuals would have been addressed here. Paramount turned him down, and his commentary track (with his daughter) only emphasizes that that 15 years later, Shatner still doesn't get it. The problem with this film is not the special effects (bad as they are), it's the script. No amount of GCI can fix groan inducing moments like Scotty bumping into a bulkhead or the bathroom humor.

The DVD special collectors edition has a few interesting features. Most significant are the deleted scenes, and the case can be made that one of the scenes (an extension of the Sulu/Chekhov "lost in the woods" scene showing the 23rd Century Mount Rushmore) should have made it to the final cut. Cosmic Thoughts looks at spirituality in the Star Trek Universe, and A Green Future addresses environmental concerns in the present day and their impact in the future.

Recommended for completists only.

Rating:
Summary: Crane your neck for a behind-the-scenes peak at a disaster
Review: I saw this movie the first day it came out, and I am in agreement with the widespread belief that this movie is the worst Star Trek movie ever made. The Special Edition is worthwhile, though, because of the hours of extensive extra commentary and behind-the-scenes documentaries that are included.

The subtitle text commentary points out some of the movie's minor and obvious flaws. The audio commentary by Shatner sounds like torture for him as he explains what went wrong. I feel bad for him having to sit through the entire movie and comment. Some of the documentaries go into the problems that made the movie a failure. According to the documentaries, they couldn't afford to do the ending they wanted. Shatner had envisioned an action ending with monsters spawning from the planet and chasing the landing party through the rugged terrain. Without an action ending, the viewer is left looking for a philosophical conclusion that is just not there.

Although the commentary only scratches the surface of the problems in the making of the movie, I got a pretty good idea of what went wrong. Shatner muscled is way into the directing job. He lacked the experience and political acumen to get people on his side to "push back" on the producers regarding schedule and budget. He seems to fancy that Star Trek is all about Captain Kirk. His original idea for the plot was for everyone to be co-opted by Sybok with only Kirk unaffected. He admits in the interviews that he didn't know what job functions some of the characters perform on the show. At one point he appears to forget Walter Koenig's (who plays Chekov) name. This gives me the idea that he underestimates the importance of the other actors. It is sad that the movie was a failure because despite their flaws everyone involved clearly tried hard to make it good.

For people who don't know, here are the movie's failings:
-Slapstick comedy is mixed clumsily with serious ideas.
-There is almost no real treatment of the serious ideas brought up. The movie seems to take its search for God seriously, but it doesn't given the viewer any substance to draw you in.
-There are glaring technical flaws such as the Enterprise having more 78 decks and the Enterprise being able to reach the center of the galaxy so quickly.
-The fact that the Enterprise had technical problems and insufficient staff added nothing to the story. The way Sybok's group took control of the ship so easily and that the crew simply did not notice an approaching Klingon ship made the crew appear incompetent.
-Sybok said he chose Nimbus III because it had representatives from the governments. Why did he need to get representatives from multiple governments to steal a ship?

If you are buying the DVD, it's for the commentary. It really gives you an insight into what went wrong. Some Shatner's comments are bizarre. In one of the interviews Shatner carries on for minutes about how a rock climber desires to make love to the rock. In another interview he says that his greatest ability in the making of the movie was denial of the problems. I wonder if the people in charge of editing this video had a grudge against Shatner. If for nothing else, you can watch it with all the morbid fascination of reading the flight recorder transcripts from a plane crash.

Rating:
Summary: Not *so* bad...
Review: This movie definitely gets panned by everyone, even the most die-hard Star Trek fans. It's usually called "the worst of the Star Trek movies," although lately I've heard that Nemesis has taken that title. But in my opinion, this Trek deserves a chance, and it's not all that bad, and I'd like to defend this movie as not as bad as it's made out to be.
First, it features the best interaction between "the big three." As much as it can be said that the other characters suffer because the holy trinity of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are more prominently featured, these three characters are really the heart of the show. Trek V has by far the best interaction and chemistry between the three out of all the movies, very much in the vein of the original series. The movie also seems very much like an overblown original series episode, which is really not all that bad, especially for someone who loved the original series (which we all do, right?).
For almost any Star Trek movie or show, you have to suspend disbelief a little (or in many cases, a lot). Maybe for this one you have to suspend it a bit more, but if you look at it like that, it's really a fun movie. It's definitely campy (it *was* directed by William Shatner, after all), and it has the Shatner ego all over it. Just think about it- Captain Kirk goes out to find God (although at first reluctantly) and when he finds God, he beats Him!!! William Shatner beats God. I always love the scene at the end when Kirk tells McCoy that "maybe God's not out there, maybe he is right here" and he points at himself...Classic. And really, if you think about it, it is no more far-fetched than going back in time and bringing whales to the future.
I have always loved this movie. Some of it, I'm sure, is nostalgia- I saw it in the theatre when I was 9 years old. But as someone who grew up on the original series (in reruns of course), I really enjoy this one. You just have to look at it a certain way. Suspend your disbelief, and look at it as good somewhat campy sci-fi.
I won't go into the downfalls of the movie, such as the fact that the ship is just falling apart too much, or that the rest of the crew are portrayed as completely stupid idiots (probably again due to Shatner's ego and strained relations with the rest of the cast), or some of the big plot problems, because really all Star Trek movies have their downfalls (though admittedly this one has more than most). It's still not as bad as it's made out to be. Hey, it's better than Nemesis!

Rating:
Summary: It's Paramount's fault, not Shatner's.
Review: As was with the case of ST;TMP, Paramount gave the production only a certain amount of money to do the movie and a release date set in stone. So the production team really had to hurry to get a script finished, shoot the movie, edited it, put in music and special effects, and have it ready for release. But ILM was not available to do the effects work, so they had to go to a smaller effects company in New Jeresy to do the effects work. They took longer then useual to get the effects done and it ended up costing more money then Paramount was willing to give, so Bill Shatner had to cut a lot of scenes out of his movie in the editing room because the effects work was either not done or did not look good in the finished print. So what ended up saving this picture was largely the editing. The movie itself is not bad, it does not deserve the bad reviews it got. It was all the fault of Paramount by both not giving the movie the money it needed to work and a bad release date which did not work out because the bigger budget films of that year were released the same week. It add further insult to this, Paramount's Special edition of this DVD really is second rate. The interviews are terriblly conducted, even the people interviewed do their best to put some dignity on what was a difficult project to do where Paramount was of little help, and it marked the end of Harve Bennet's run as producer of these movies. It was sadly a sign of the mismanagement that Paramount would give to the Star Trek movies not long after this movie was released. Very Very Sad., and to this day, the Star Trek films have still not recovered.