Review - Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

[Serafina]

Everyone, thank Chuck for this Christmas Present!









I will comment on it later, because i lack the time to review the review right now.

Oh, and another one:


Regards
Fina

[tim31]

The magnificent bastard.

[Ghost Rider]

LOL, oh thank you Chuck. Like when asked "This or Nemesis" I still picked this one for the couple Kirk moments, but to be honest the single line he utters to godinglingwhatever.

But really, this movie was hilarious in what the ideas wanted to be but that they were everywhere and portrayed as inadvertantly as some of the worst and most incomprehensible.

[Darth Lucifer]

OMFG!! I actually blew Red Bull out my nose during the part of the review that shows Kirk and Sybok in the shuttlebay.

[Mayabird]

Something I've never seen addressed which bugged me - so, this traumatizing event happens in someone's life and breaks them inside, etc etc, but what about before then? Before Bones pulled the plug on his dad, etc.? Was Sybok just happening to stumble on the people who'd had such an event, or was he using his magical Vulcan mind powers to find the ones who had that happen, or just tricking people into thinking so?

Yeah, yeah, I know, probably no thinking about this went into the movie, nobody cared, all the rest of it is bad, it's just a dream sequence about Kirk's fears of getting old, etc etc. Just wanted to get that out.

[Bounty]

Was Sybok just happening to stumble on the people who'd had such an event, or was he using his magical Vulcan mind powers to find the ones who had that happen, or just tricking people into thinking so?

I never thought of that but now that you mention it... at least in Spock's vision the thing that pains him is something structural (his father doesn't accept him) which he just visualizes in that birth scene. Huh.

I don't think Sybok is actually fixing anyone; it looks like he's just brainwashing them into thinking they're better. Hell, I'd even believe he doesn't even realise his "cure" is just happy thoughts that don't actually take away pain.

[Gramzamber]

Judging by the dialog, "each person carries a secret pain", the film takes for granted that everybody has something that has scarred them mentally.
I suppose that can be true to an extent, though here it carries it through to assume everybody has a personal trauma that's so great that removing it will make them your loyal and unquestioning ally.

[Patrick Degan]

Hmm...

It seems that the story of this movie would have flowed a lot more smoothly if Sybok had pulled this whole "share your secret pain" Jedi mind-trick on Starfleet officials or even a Federation high commissioner, who would have then been "inspired" to send a starship to discover ShaKaRee and God —and choosing the Enterprise as the most capable ship to do the job, captained by their most experienced space explorer, Kirk. At once, you dispose of the entirely redundant terrorist/hostage subplot which goes nowhere, the Klingon revenge/glory quest subplot which really only sets up a climax as easily handled by the gunners on the Enterprise as by Spock on the Bird of Prey and is therefore also redundant, the whole "crew-turns-against-Kirk" subplot which is entirely unnecessary and unbelievable (and also disposes of the unanswered question of how Sybok overwhelmed Kirk's crew so swiftly) and also essentially goes nowhere once the ship is actually on its way to ShaKaRee, the idiotic broken ship in-joke subplot which only very clumsily set up the hostage rescue by shuttlecraft landing battleporn but afterward goes absolutely nowhere.

Let's have St. John Talbot be the Federation high commissioner who is the political power behind this mission, who got zapped by Sybok's Jedi mind-trick early on and gives that character a more expansive role than what we got of him as a hostage who starts off as a chain-smoking drunk. Keep Kirk's scepticism over the whole idea of finding God. You can still have the scene in the observation lounge when Sybok tries his Jedi powers on the Big Three and brings out the revelation that this whole thing is entirely down to Sybok corrupting people to pursue his own God quest. Rest of the movie flows on to ShaKaRee and the revelation that the whole vision was fake and that Sybok's God is merely his own ego writ large and that "God" is actually evil.

Now, maybe the resulting movie which follows from these changes still has plot-holes, but nowhere near as gaping ones as the film we actually got.

[DaveJB]

I'm surprised there was no mention of that scene near the end, where Kirk says "I lost a brother once," at which point Spock and McCoy both look shocked, and Kirk adds "I was lucky to get him back." Um... so what happened to Kirk's actual brother, who both Spock and McCoy witnessed the death of back in TOS? Did Kirk posthumously disown him or something?

[Gramzamber]

I'm surprised there was no mention of that scene near the end, where Kirk says "I lost a brother once," at which point Spock and McCoy both look shocked, and Kirk adds "I was lucky to get him back." Um... so what happened to Kirk's actual brother, who both Spock and McCoy witnessed the death of back in TOS? Did Kirk posthumously disown him or something?

Poor old George Samuel has always gotten the shaft, first he turns up dead. And Shatner plays his corpse. Then he's ignored in STV. Then he's cut out of 2009 Trek and renamed to "Johnny".
Face it, he's the cutting room floor's bitch.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm surprised Chuck didn't bring up the whole 'STV is just a dream Kirk has while camping'. I prefer to think of it that way.

[Crossroads Inc.]

I'm surprised Chuck didn't bring up the whole 'STV is just a dream Kirk has while camping'. I prefer to think of it that way.

Ooo. I LIKE that explanation! Kirk McCoy and Spock go camping, Kirk sleeps, dreams, then they finish camping talking about the meaning of life... End of discussion!

[Mayabird]

Back a long while ago Bounty (IIRC, and sorry if I'm misremembering) made an argument that the movie really was a dream symbolizing Kirk's fears of getting old. I remember it making a lot of sense. In fact, a little search-fu and hey, what do you know?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Back a long while ago Bounty (IIRC, and sorry if I'm misremembering) made an argument that the movie really was a dream symbolizing Kirk's fears of getting old. I remember it making a lot of sense. In fact, a little search-fu and hey, what do you know?

here is the quote:

This thread would be even more fun if they had stuck with "center of the universe" for the destination. Then we could say that everyone in the movie was hallucinating.

And thus the whole thing that happened was just a pretty lucid hallucination by Kirk, Spock, and Bones in Yosemite, due to Spock not knowing the right kind of mushrooms to pick?

The whole movie was a dream. Think about it:

- All the nonsense happens between the camping scenes.

- The events of the movie are a reflection of Kirk's fears: being put back into action while he's unprepared, geting screwed by Starfleet, losing his crew and losing, above all, his friends.

- Events from the camping trip are mirrored in the dream: the fall from El Capitan/the fall from the turboshaft, musing around the campfire/musing around the steering wheel.

- The broken and unreliable Enterprise is another fear of Kirk; that no ship can live up to the original.

- The movie follows dream logic: characters appear when needed (Spock in the turboshaft, Scotty in the brig, Spock in the BoP) and reality warps to accomodate the "story" (70+ decks, the mysterious wheel room, unicorns).

- Kirk ate gods for breakfast, so it's no surprise they show up in his dreams. The fight against "god" is Kirk's subconscious idea of a generic adventure. Likewise, a Klingon is his idea of a generic villain.

- In the end, Spocks saves his ass, just like he saved Spock's.

When you look at the movie as a nightmare, a reflection of Kirk's subconscious fears and desires, it actually, somehow, makes *more* sense. In fact, it starts making a *lot* of sense

It makes SO much sense now!!!

[CaptainChewbacca]

That's what you get for having beans and whiskey before bed after having a near-death experience.

[RedImperator]

There are a couple bad Trek episodes that work better as dreams. "Threshold" actually works pretty well as Tom Paris having a nightmare.