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Star Trek: We can haz special effects
Jun. 7th, 2015 09:50 pmI finished watching Star Trek: The Original Series and--oof, that third season. So I decided to started watching the movies, starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Which should really be called Star Trek: Look! We Have a Budget.
That movie is so bad, in such a Star Trek way. It has more special effects shots than Star Wars. And yet the only shots fired in the entire thing are in the very beginning, and we watch them blip into nothingness. The plot doesn't show up for an hour. There is more than ten minutes of watching Kirk's shuttle approach the Enterprise. There's a transporter accident with no plot bearing. They pierce the warp bubble, leading to fifteen to twenty minutes of slowed down images and distorted sound--again with no plot bearing. I decided at a certain point that this wasn't so much a movie as something like the Pink Floyd laser light show I saw at the Planetarium last year. Just swelling symphonic music and wooshy visual effects.
And because it's Star Trek, at the end, they talk their way through the problem.
I can see more redeeming value in it now, having seen the series and caring about the characters, but that's a bad movie right there. Even worse when I looked at the wikipedia page and discovered it cost $46 million, largely because all those plot stultifying special effects had to be done last minute and at great expense. It was so late getting through post that there was no time for a test screening, so they never got feedback that they might want to tighten up the pacing a bit.
Next up Wrath of Khan, which I already know I love. Only one of the films I haven't seen is five, but I watched all the other ones without any attachment to or knowledge of the characters, so it'll be interesting to see them again.
That movie is so bad, in such a Star Trek way. It has more special effects shots than Star Wars. And yet the only shots fired in the entire thing are in the very beginning, and we watch them blip into nothingness. The plot doesn't show up for an hour. There is more than ten minutes of watching Kirk's shuttle approach the Enterprise. There's a transporter accident with no plot bearing. They pierce the warp bubble, leading to fifteen to twenty minutes of slowed down images and distorted sound--again with no plot bearing. I decided at a certain point that this wasn't so much a movie as something like the Pink Floyd laser light show I saw at the Planetarium last year. Just swelling symphonic music and wooshy visual effects.
And because it's Star Trek, at the end, they talk their way through the problem.
I can see more redeeming value in it now, having seen the series and caring about the characters, but that's a bad movie right there. Even worse when I looked at the wikipedia page and discovered it cost $46 million, largely because all those plot stultifying special effects had to be done last minute and at great expense. It was so late getting through post that there was no time for a test screening, so they never got feedback that they might want to tighten up the pacing a bit.
Next up Wrath of Khan, which I already know I love. Only one of the films I haven't seen is five, but I watched all the other ones without any attachment to or knowledge of the characters, so it'll be interesting to see them again.