Star Trek: The Motion Picture directed by: Robert Wise

 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture stars William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Persis Khambatta, and Stephen Collins.  It is directed by: Robert Wise, written by: Harold Livingston, from a story by: Alan Dean Foster, and produced by: Gene Roddenberry.  It was released theatrically on December 7, 1979.

 

The road to the production and release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a long one, proposed as early as 1968 as an origin story for the series.  Gene Roddenberry’s development on the script for a proposal began in 1975 and would go through several iterations before Roddenberry was approached to relaunch Star Trek on television with a pilot written by producer Harold Livingston from a story by Alan Dean Foster.  Contracts for the cast were written up, other episode scripts were prepared, and then in 1977 two films, Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were released as cultural phenomena so Paramount cancelled the television series and asked to convert the pilot back to a two hour film.  Star Trek: The Motion Picture would adapt the script to include the entire original cast including Leonard Nimoy who had declined to appear in the rebooted series, but was fine taking on the role of Spock for a film.  In terms of talent behind the production, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is stacked, from two time Academy Award for Best Picture winner Robert Wise in the director’s chair, to Jerry Goldsmith composing the score, Ve Neill working as one of the makeup artists, and the special effects by Douglas Trumbull and up and comer John Dykstra, the production was clearly assembled with care to bring the franchise to the big screen.

 

The talent behind the camera means that the film is a visual feast for the eyes for its entire runtime.  Obviously the special effects team of Trumbull and Dykstra have a reputation, especially for Trumbull’s work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, work that is largely reflected here.  The special effects are largely framed to give the viewer a sense of the vastness of space and the eerie phenomena occurring in the film’s actual plot.  Look no further than the way that the film treats the reveal of the Enterprise to Kirk and Scotty in the film’s first act, it’s a nearly dialogue free sequence allowing Goldsmith’s score alone to enhance the panorama shots of the genuinely impressive model.  While I am not in Star Trek fan circles, a common criticism of the film is that it is too slow, but I would strike back at that notion.  When the film looks good, it is up there with some of the best visuals in terms of filmmaking, a lot of the actual plot being communicated on-screen visually without dialogue.  The aforementioned reveal of the Enterprise tells the story and uses the visuals with Goldsmith’s score is saying more than any of the dialogue could actually state.  There is however an issue with some of the visuals, while the models are incredibly impressive, the compositing has a tendency to be incredibly hit or miss, especially whenever there are spacesuits as the focal point of shots.  The third act of the film is where these issues become the most apparent, with Leonard Nimoy’s spacesuit being perhaps the worst offender though that may be because it’s the spacesuit that has the most screentime.

 

Robert Wise as a director is also incredibly good at getting some excellent performances from his cast.  Every returning character is given some extra element of depth beyond anything that was done on the original television series.  William Shatner as Kirk undergoes an incredible arc of learning to actually loosen his grip on the Enterprise and adapt to the time that has passed him by.  Much of the film he is foiled by Stephen Collins as Willard Decker, his replacement.  Shatner’s best moment is actually portraying Kirk’s big mistake in demoting Decker from his position as captain to take over.  It’s a pretty subtle performance from Shatner, and it elevates Stephen Collins’ performance.  Collins and Persis Khambatta as Ilia (and the probe of V’ger) are actually the weak links in the cast, stilted delivery even outside of where it would make sense in Khambatta’s case really brings down the film.  In fact, there are several issues with the script to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, mostly originating in the fact that this was a television pilot converted into a featured film.  Harold Livingston’s experience was as a television producer and writer, and has written a script from a story by Alan Dean Foster who worked primarily as a novelist.  There is also the general influence of Gene Roddenberry, the film itself is perhaps the purest distillation of Roddenberry’s vision of the future for better and for worse.  The dialogue throughout the film has a tendency to tell and not show, even when Wise is explicitly showing on screen what is being said.

 

This has a knock-on effect at key moments in the climax, a climax that is intentionally not action oriented, to undercut the emotional effect when the visual medium of a film should be able to rely on the visuals.  The first half of the film really does this incredibly well, but the second half of the film is where Star Trek: The Motion Picture really does begin to fall apart.  The central premise of a mysterious object heading towards Earth that the Enterprise needs to investigate, with the original crew coming out of retirement to do so, is honestly a perfectly good premise.  Each character introduction is also a great way to push the idea that this is pushing the crew into the future, from Nimoy as Spock being ready to give up his emotions, to James Doohan as Scotty giving the support to the engines, to Walter Koenig, George Takei, and Nichelle Nichols all getting more personality than the original series, to DeForest Kelley as McCoy being pressed back into surface (and sporting a great hippie dad look).  Once the film gets going and the Enterprise gets to the anomaly, V’ger, later revealed as Voyager VI, the pace of the film almost runs out of steam and doesn’t actually know where to go until we get to the reveal of what V’ger is.  Ilia becoming a probe could push the ideas forward, it does start to crystalize the theme of humanity’s progress and eventual ascension to a higher level of being, but the connecting tissue to get there and show the humanity still in Ilia doesn’t actually work.  The necessary beats aren’t hit to allow the ending of the film where both Ilia and Decker ascend to become higher life forms and the Enterprise is back, including the crew’s camaraderie being restored.

 

Overall, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a feast for the eyes and in terms of filmmaking it is a beautiful film.  The first half has some genuinely stunning visual storytelling courtesy of Robert Wise, and even the second half is beautiful if several sequences need to be shortened to really elevate what the film was doing.  The film works its best when the original cast are being brought back together and pushing together their relationships as a view of humanity and it doesn’t work when the sweeping romance between Decker and Ilia is used as an ascension of humanity theme.  Robert Wise is a director I have nothing but admiration for, Jerry Goldsmith a composer who elevates the entirety of the film with one of his best scores (good enough to have its main theme reused for Star Trek: The Next Generation).  There is a masterpiece buried in this film, but in terms of the theatrical cut doesn’t end properly for the film to work as the masterpiece it could have been.  Still, it’s a film I’m going to be revisiting.  6/10.