Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Published April 10, 2020
Film info
- Title Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Director Robert Wise
- Year 1979
- Run time 2hrs 12m
- Genres Mystery, Adventure, Science Fiction
- Tagline The human adventure is just beginning
The U.S.S Enterprise proudly soars into cinema in the original Star Trek movie classic. When an unidentified alien destroys three powerful Klingon cruisers, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) returns to the newly transformed U.S.S. Enterprise to take command. Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and the cast from the acclaimed Star Trek television series mobilise at warp speed to stop the alien intruder from its relentless flight toward Earth.
Live blog
| Time | Comment |
|---|---|
| 0:06 | Hate me all you want but totally skipped the overture. |
| 3:05 | If these are Klingons, they’ve grown the bumpy heads since my TV show ended. |
| 7:04 | “Sir, it’s on a precise heading for earth.” Of course it is. |
| 12:08 | If they’ve got flying cars, why do they still need a bridge? |
| 13:00 | Ooh, redesigning the Enterprise, eh? |
| 17:54 | I feel like they’ve spent a lot of money on this model because we’ve seen every single angle of it. |
| 22:23 | I don’t want to stay on the ship I’ve just been demoted from. |
| 31:42 | Yay BONES. Not just Bones, but grumpy Bones! |
| 36:30 | The first Captain’s log, hooray! |
| 39:22 | Oh, I know what’s different, there’s not endless bleeps and bloops on the bridge. |
| 45:31 | “It’s an obsession.” Tell me about it! |
| 52:27 | It’s taken us an hour, but we’ve got the three of them in the same room. |
| 59:00 | It’s not helpful to Spock really, trying to concentrate and there’s a big countdown being shouted at him and Kirk going Spock, Spock, Spock. |
| 1:07:39 | Wow, it is taking them a long time to get where they’re going. |
| 1:14:33 | Spock with the age old method of bashing things with a hammer. |
| 1:25:48 | I feel like this isn’t going to help Decker’s mood. |
| 1:37:00 | Wait, what? |
| 1:43:22 | “An answer? I don’t know the question.” |
| 1:52:11 | You know it’s bad when Mr Sulu is left in charge! |
| 2:04:57 | I sort of can’t work out if this is a love story or not. |
| 2:07:43 | “Thataway?” I mean, you couldn’t be more vague. |
Thoughts
Oh man, this is not a good start to the movie series. I loved the original TV series on my recent viewing and somehow managed to convince Mr C to give this movie a go and it was such a misrepresentation of everything good about Star Trek.
The only highlight of the movie was seeing the familiar faces. It was good to get a glimpse of Starfleet and how that part of things works, but that was overshadowed by literally everything else. Very little characterisation, against a neat mystery to unravel but that could have been told in half the time.
I don’t mind a slower paced movie, but this was borderline static. There’s literally six or seven minutes of watching Kirk staring at the Enterprise in silence, as his little shuttlecraft moves very slowly around the whole thing. The entire ship. And other moments where the team were clearly showing off their special effects but dragged it on for far too long.
It’s such a weird change from the tone of the TV show, too. Obviously that’s only 40 minutes or so, and thus you are plunged straight into the action. The Captain’s log catches you up and on you go. Here, we had a drawn out hour before they even started on their trip. It’s like the producers suddenly realised they had two hours to fill and lost their minds with the power.
It hasn’t put me off wanting to watch more because I know the next one is going to be much better, but I just find it astounding how bad it actually was!
Rating: 1 / 5
