Star Trek V: The Final Shit
I think "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" is the worst of the original cast Trek movies. Until I saw this movie that honor had gone to "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" but there is little doubt that "Frontier" is worse. The story idea is appealing but will likely be a letdown to anyone who watches it. The Trek-trifecta (Kirk Spock and McCoy) really own this story. "Frontier" is about their friendship. All of the other cast members are along to be manipulated or for comedy relief. There have been a lot of stories about Industrial Light & Magic being cut out of the effects budget for this movie. If that is the case it certainly shows as most of the effects in this movie are dreadful. From Spock's rocket boots to the animated shots of a speeding shuttlecraft these are the worst effects I've seen in a late '80s major motion picture. Director William Shatner's vision of the barrier that guards "Heaven" is not exactly awe-inspiring either. "The Final Frontier" also suffers when the scenes require the lovable cast members to do something physical. Their age (and weight) certainly hinders many of the action scenes.
Never understood all the hate for this specific episode. It's true that it's the episode that comes closest to parody, but given the age of the actors, how else could they approach the material other than with a knowing wink?
If you like the characters, this film also allows you to spend a generous bit of time with them, and there are some genuinely funny lines ("I liked him better before he died"). And if the film ultimately bites off more than it can chew (it's a film about looking for God) then at least it handles the subject better than the ponderous Star Trek - The Motion Picture, which covered similar territory.
I also think it's a mile better than Part III, which one - lacked Spock - and two - had very fake-looking set design. Maybe the biggest problem this film had was that Part III was made in 84 when those flaws were acceptable. Star Trek V came out in the late 80's and was competing with a new type of blockbuster in "Batman". I suggest you ignore conventional wisdom and give part V a chance.
A HUGE step backwards. The acting is as bad as in the first Star Trek flick and the SFX and costumes are laughable. Additionally the story is rather boring.
My advice to you: skip this crap-bag, there are much better Star Trek movies out there!
The script was horrible. Besides being boring it made me want to mute every time they had to say something. Bones tried to be funny and I felt embarrassed because I didn't mute it. Skip this one...
Even as a long time Star Trek fan I´ll admit it´s almost painful to watch.
The script is downright awful which results in bad acting. There isn´t any real suspense. Half of the dialogue is stupid (supposed to be funny but isn´t). Threw in another bunch of brain-dead Klingons and you end up with worst of the Star Trek movies.
Shatner wrote and directed this part. He once claimed that he passed all his knowledge about filmmaking to Nimoy. I´m glad Leonard didn´t used any of it in his movies.
Quite possibly the worst execution of a Star Trek film, while not even close to being a bad concept. Full of interesting, deep ideas that are never even explored by most of the main cast, while also forgetting entirely the levity and the chemistry between the characters that made the previous film (and send off) work so well. The only good thing about this film is it makes the next one look at least a little better.
How anyone can rate this farrago above 4 escapes me. As, evidently, did the logic of the plot, the terrible script, awful effects and flat direction escape the producers' notice before they released it to an unsuspecting public. Why does God need a starship? Probably the only memorable line in an otherwise entirely skippable entry in the Star Trek franchise.
I have generously given it a 4, but 3.6 would still be fair.
Notwithstanding an intriguing opening, this film is a mess. The notion of searching for God is an interesting one, but tonally this film is all over the place. It doesn't help that the film's attempts at humour are awful and unfortunately undermine the threat and more serious elements of the film. It is also obvious that the special effects are considerably worse than the previous entries, but this can't excuse some laughably bad decisions and awful dialogue. There is little to recommend here save for completists.
Its sloppy, has many moments that had me saying "that stupid", and Shatner can't direct his way out of paper bag.
But the performances save it, especially Laurence Luckinbill who is charismatic as hell as Sybock. Sybock deserved a better movie.
It starts with a camping trip of seniors. Nice for the nostalgia and the view from El Capitan but essentially boring. Retarded Klingons. Generic baddies. Why was the original series nor the movies never able to create a fascinating Klingon culture and society? TNG is about to fix this. Fitting the Enterprise. We had this in one of the movie's before. It's a waste of time filled with lame jokes. Almost nothing happens in the first 45 minutes. What a waste of time. There's only two memorable scenes in the first half: an amazing marshmallow machine and Uhura dancing and singing for us. Then more nostalgia: Kirk and his crew mates are captured and held in captivity. (That's basically what happened in every second episode of the original series). How often can one man imprisoned (and always escape)?
All this is topped with a sauce of religion and esoteric. Even this topic can be discussed in an interesting way. Many later episodes in the franchise have proved this. But here this topic is not discussed in a witty or intellectual way. What they find behind the barrier is extremely stupid. I refuse to go into details.
The movie is as bad as movie number I. Only uniforms look better.
PS: I'm not a big fan of Star Wars. Nimbus III is a shameless rip-off from Star Wars. But the copy is worse than the original. I'm angry since Star Wars wins.
IV was so good, but the whole time watching this I was saying is that it?
The amount of enjoyment you get from this film will depend on how well you click with the script's humour. Like Andrew Bloom points out in his review, the film is carried by the dynamic and pathos between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, although I would extend that to the Enterprise crew in general. I found the humour the saving grace of the film, which is a better overall watch than I remembered.
It's certainly one of the weakest Trek movies, alongside The Motion Picture, but it's still very enjoyable thanks to the cast's efforts and the dialogue rather than because of a coherent or satisfying plot. A promising first act is undone by the fairly shambolic second.
Still, it's an enjoyable if fairly frivolous watch. For non-Trekkies, this probably would be in the 5 / 6 territory but if you're a fan of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, then it's certainly not as bad as many fans like to say.
Not a great follow up to the last one and the most boring one so far.
Good relief for insomnia. 2/10 :thumbsup_tone4:
Watched this for We Hate Movies. Boy this started out with some real promise with the grandpas on their camping trip. Then they went back to space and shit got borrrrrrring. The humor in this is equivalent to an original play performed at your local dinner theater. And row row row your boat! Boooooo
Star Trek Beyond is gonna have to try really hard to disappoint now, geezow.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2017-10-02T21:53:14Z
[7.4/10] There’s usually something to recommend, or at least salvage, from even the worst Star Trek outings. A slog of an episode may still have a handful of funny lines, or a poorly-done installment may still have an interesting concept to parse out. For much of The Original Series, the redeeming element of even the shoddiest of episodes was frequently the relationship between Kirk, Spock, and Bones, the triumvirate that made up the core of the show. Even when the scenario was implausible or the situation contrived, the connection between those three almost always rang true, heightening the series’ strongest hours and buoying its weakest ones.
By dint of the famed odd-even distinction, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is considered one of the weaker Star Trek films, a reputation it earns. After a strong start, the movie falls apart with absurdities in its final act, and features heavy-handed interludes that border on the hokey before then. But it’s great strength comes in treating the show’s three man band -- the adventurous Kirk, the reserved Spock, the cantankerous Bones -- as something not only sacrosanct, but legitimately sacred.
In its way, Star Trek V is the franchise’s strongest embrace of secular humanism, the philosophy that permeated The Next Generation and other parts of the world spun off from the original crew’s adventures. It presents a dichotomy. On the one hand there is Sybock, the soothsaying cult leader who aims to meet the Almighty himself and lead his followers to paradise. On the other is Star Trek’s own holy trinity, who reject this messianic figure and his lofty promises, and even the godlike being they confront in favor of the strength and loyalty they have for one another.
What’s frustrating is that half of this approach is done subtly and charmingly, and half of it is loud and goofy. The best choice The Final Frontier makes is to lean into the rapport between its three lead characters. Despite the various issues behind-the-scenes, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley developed an on-screen rapport after two decades of playing these characters. The film plays the rock-paper-scissors nature of their relationship broadly at times, but it’s a combination that works. It’s time-tested, and the shared history of the characters and the shorthand of the performers carries much of the film.
But when the film drifts off toward strange interludes about formative, painful moments in the characters’ lives, or has them spouting shopworn banalities in the shadow of Sybock’s sermons, or features them, you know, staring down the literal face of God, Wizard of Oz style, Star Trek V loses the power of that central connection in ways that serve the plot but not really the point.
The plot sees our heroes’ shore leave interrupted by a hostage situation on Nimbus III, a Tatooine-like planet meant to be a shared, peaceful community for humans, Romulans, and Klingons that quickly devolved into infighting and squalor. After some character-reestablishing moments out and about, the Enterprise crew return to their malfunctioning new ship and ventures out to investigate. They find Sybock, the charismatic, Orson Wells-esque religious leader who aims to commandeer the Enterprise to take it past the galactic barrier at the center of the galaxy to find the divine, and Klaa the Klingon commander who wants the glory of defeating Kirk in battle.
The presence of two antagonists initially adds intrigue to the movie. Even before the reveal that Sybock is Spock’s half brother (which took some of the sting out of Star Trek Discovery’s strained familial connection for me), he makes for an intriguing enemy for the good guys. He exists as the yin to Spock’s yang, a Vulcan who is as brilliant as Spock, but who embraces emotion and salvation and, most notably, freedom from pain in a way that our favorite Vulcan eschews. His ability to nigh-magically persuade people to his side using some variation on Vulcan mind melding techniques gives him a unique ability to match his mythic presence here, even if the nature of that power gets jumbled in the finally tally.
Klaa is much more straightforward -- a traditional Klingon warrior who’s after Kirk for the thrill of the hunt. In truth, he and his crew seem like more of a throw-in, a standard adversary to heighten the stakes in a conflict with a mostly non-violent cult leader, but it presents two very different sorts of challenges for the Enterprise crew to have to handle at once.
The problem becomes that once these threats grow and bloom, they begin to lose focus and force. While the thrill of the unknown has always fueled Star Trek to some extent, seeing a floating head in the sky, claiming to be the creator, demanding starships and blasting people with laser vision is just too big and too silly to match the high-minded tone the film is going for. The way Klaa is talked down by a washed up Klingon General dovetails well enough with the film’s “power of people > power of deities” message, it’s underwhelming fix to the cheesy problem of a renegade god who can apparently be defeated with laser blasts.
Throw in a bewildering and demeaning “fan dance” and the heavy-handed symbolism of a ship’s wheel with “To Boldly Go” inscribed on it, and you have the makings of a ridiculous, almost nonsensical ending to a film that sets up interesting things for both its characters and stories, and yet has trouble paying them off.
What’s striking, however, is that however many problems exist with the film’s script and story, it’s a surprisingly well-shot and directed film with William Shatner himself calling the shots. Perhaps the credit belongs to cinematographer Andrew Laszlo instead, but this is the most visually impressive Star Trek has been since The Motion Picture.
Laszlo’s camera finds interesting angles in which to frame Sybock and his soon-to-be convert in the film’s Lawrence of Arabia-inspired opening. He captures the scenic beauty of Yosemite in the sweeping shots of Kirk’s ascent. He frames our heroes symmetrically as they march down a corridor, or all in a row as they step onto the paradise planet. The swirl of cloud-like vista, or the pink hue of the planet itself, all help create an atmosphere visually than the story has trouble trying to evoke with words and plot alone. Whatever qualms I may have had about Shatner as a director, he oversaw some of the best-shot and captured images in the whole of the franchise.
And for someone who had a notoriously contentious relationship with his co-stars, he presides over a film that values those found families and the kind of meaning found through long-held interpersonal connections, above the supernatural and divine. It would be too much and too far to call Star Trek V a rejection of religion, but it’s certainly an affirmation of the power, comfort, and perhaps even providence that stems from the people we surround ourselves with. It rejects promises and attempts to take away pain, Inside Out-style, resting instead on the idea that these experiences make us who we are, and bring us to the people who make our existence worthwhile.
The Final Frontier gives us that in the budding romance between Uhura and Scotty, in the funny friendship between Sulu and Chekov, and in the indelible camaraderie shared among Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy. The film loses the plot sometime between when the latter trio break out of the brig and when the credits roll, but even at its worst, it gains strength from the humor, heart, and hallowed place that those three individuals scratch out in the backdrop of silly, space-bound, and supernatural.