We’re really cutting things down to the wire this week! I bet you thought that I had forgotten about you, huh? Well fear not! I might have been a little bit at a loss as to what to review this week as I’ve been so focused on Halloween stuff over the last month that it never occurred to me that I should think beyond that. Can you blame me though? We live in a society where we don’t even get to finish with our Halloween celebrations before we’re forcibly thrust into the Christmas season. Technically, there’s a holiday in between those two where we get to gorge ourselves on food, and try to pretend that we’re not spoiled, entitled people, but that holiday has mostly become a token stepping stone to further the Christmas rhetoric. I’m talking about Thanksgiving, of course, and it really is a holiday that gets overlooked quite a bit in the rush to prepare for the grand finale that Christmas has become over the years. I’m sure there are a lot of Thanksgiving movies and specials that have been made over the decades, but I’ve never heard of them, nor do I wish to try and watch one in preparation for this article as I might feel obligated to continue that trend throughout the rest of the month. Instead, I’m going to focus this month on films that I’m thankful exist. These films may not be masterpieces. Some may even lead you to question my sanity, but each hold a special place in my heart for one reason, or another. Consider this my attempt to stave off Christmas for just a little longer as we spend the month giving thanks for all of those movies that really bring me joy!
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier has the dubious distinction of being on of my first beloved films. I really latched onto this movie when I was in high school, which if you read my Day 1 post, is when my interest in film and the arts really started to blossom. We’ll get into the why behind my love for this film after we take a brief look at the film itself. This movie was released in June of 1989, and was directed by none other than William Shatner. That whole situation came about because after the success of Star Trek IV, Paramount wanted to continue the momentum. Shatner held out, and pushed to direct now that Leonard Nimoy had told his story. The year 1989 is important to the story of Final Frontier as there was a huge writers strike going on at the time, and so it was difficult to get any noted screenwriters to do any work on the script. It’s also the year that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out, but more on that in a minute. Shatner had a grand vision for his film. He wanted to adapt the Inferno portion of Dante’s Divine Comedy for Star Trek and ask the really hard questions. As such, he and his crew got to work on the script treatment and storyboards, but as can happen sometimes, the budget was cut. This left Shatner, an inexperienced director, scrambling to see what he could afford to leave in the film and what would need to be cut. The answer to that question ended up being the entire third acti.
As Shatner himself explains it, no one around him was helping him to monitor expenditures and so by the time they got ready to film the third act, there was no money left for anything extravagant. So what did that leave audiences with? Well, the movie primarily revolves around a Vulcan named Sybok who believes that he’s found the cradle of life for the entire galaxy. He uses his sick Vulcan mind meld skills to ‘take away people’s pain’, and convert them to his cause. After he gains enough followers, he goes to the ‘seat of government’’ on a forgotten backwater planet and kidnaps a Terran, a Klingon, and a Romulan in a bid to get someone to stage a rescue attempt. This is where we start catching up with Kirk and crew. Most everyone is enjoying shore leave after saving Earth in the previous movie, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are enjoying Yellowstone. Kirk, specifically, is getting more intimately acquainted with El Capitan… By free climbing it. I really don’t like heights, and this sequence of scenes always gives me the willies. Spock uses some rocket boots that I didn’t even know I wanted until I saw them to pester Kink and if you don’t know where this is headed, then you need to sit a few days in a middle school science class and learn about a little thing called gravity. Kirk falls from the rock, Spock uses his boots to save Kirk in the nick of time, and Bones chews the both of them out mostly because he suffers from an incurable case of crankiness, but we’re treated to a fairly entertaining and enlightening philosophical conversation on mortality. This is the scene where Kirk famously declares that he knows that he will die without Spock, or McCoy around. I’m sure the writers of Generations we grateful for that little tid bit of inspiration. The men share a meal around the campfire, there’s some hilarious banter as they attempt to sing camp songs, and then we get to see what some of the other crew are up to.
As it turns out, Scotty and Uhura are trying to get the Enterprise whipped into shape as apparently this ship was built poorly. That’s when everything starts to come together for the plot though. Enterprise receives orders to recall all key personnel, and go to Nimbus III, the hind end of the galaxy, to rescue our three previously established hostages. There’s a lot of attention paid to the fact that the ship doesn’t work, but when the crew need her to come through, she manages so it’s more of a gag than a peril. Anyway, on the way to Nimbus III, the Enterprise crew get access to a video where Sybok names his terms, and it turns out that all he wants is a starship, very convenient since Starfleet just sent one. Spock has a deja vu moment, and then we’re introduced to the other complication of the movie, Captain Klaa. He’s a strapping young Klingon fellow whose only desire in life is to blow things up in honorable combat. His ship gets wind of the hostage situation and his immediate conclusion is that this will give him the chance to fight against a Federation starship, thus proving his mettle as a warrior, and he’s even more ecstatic when he learns that Kirk’s ship has been dispatched.
Our crew finally arrive at Nimbus III, but oh darn, the transporters don’t work. As a result, an armed SWAT team, lead by Kirk and Spock, have to take a shuttle down to the surface, but they can’t land too close, or else they risk detection. So they land an undefined distance away, and because Shatner is a world renowned equestrian, they hijack horses to get from where they are to the city where the captives are being held. They ride in like a dust storm, and there’s a pretty exciting firefight. Kirk goes to save the hostages, but lo and behold, IT’S A TRAP! The ‘hostages’ disarm him at gunpoint, and insist that he take Sybok and all of his followers back up to their ship. It’s at this point, that we find out that Spock and Sybok have a history, although we’re not told any specifics. Somehow everyone piles into a shuttle and they all head back up to the Enterprise, but the Klingons have arrived to mess crap up, and once they realize that Kirk is on the shuttle, they target that. Sulu has to do some might fancy flying in order to get everyone onto the Enterprise, but he does, and then there’s a fight! Kirk and Sybok duke it out until Spock puts a stop to it and Sybok’s guards take Kirk, Spock and McCoy to the brig. Here, there’s some great banter, then there’s morse code. Scotty uses it to tell the gents in the brig to stand back while he blows a freaking hole in the wall! They do a jailbreak and as they’re running around the bowels of the ship, Scotty knocks himself out ironically. The rocket boots make another appearance during the escape sequence as well.
The three amigos are able to make it to the observation lounge of the ship where there’s a hidden emergency subspace radio. Kirk gets a message out before Sybok shows up, but SURPRISE, it’s intercepted by the Klingons! It’s at this point that Sybok tries to brainwash our three heroes with his mind meld mumbo jumbo. We find out that McCoy’s deepest regret was taking his ailing father off of life support a mere two months or so before a cure for his disease was found. I always wondered about that one. Don’t they have medical journals in the 23rd century. Spock somehow remembers the moment of his birth and the general disdain that his father expresses toward him n that moment for his half breed heritage. Kirk refuses to undergo the process and makes a speech about how his pain adds to who he is, and how he lives.Sybok decides to cut his losses and invites the other two to join him on the bridge. Spick refuses, and McCoy follows the crowd. In the meantime, they reach the fabled cradle of life, and Sybok relinquishes control of the ship back to Kirk. It’s decided that Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sybok will go down to the planet to have a heart to heart with God.
They do, and as it turns out, this version of God is kind of a douche. He wants to join with the ship so that he can ‘spread his wisdom across the stars’, but we all know that he just wants to blow stuff up. He shoots eye lasers at Kirk and Spock because the had the audacity to question his cover story. Sybok attempts to diffuse the situation by joining with the creature. This is after we find out that the whole idea of this planet and this god are just manifestations of Sybok’s obsession with doing something great with himself, or... something. Kirk, Spock and McCoy hot foot it back to the shuttle, but ‘God’ has rendered it inoperable. Luckily, Scotty has managed to get just enough power to the transporters to beam up two people. Three guesses who Kirk commands him to beam up. Then Kirk runs the crap away because ‘God’ is shooting eye lasers at him still. Kirk climbs to the summit of a rather large hill, and just then the Klingons also show up! Kirk seems doomed, but the Klingon ship shoots ‘God’ and it’s destroyed. Then they beam Kirk over, and it’s revealed that Spock was manning the guns the whole time. Kirk didn’t die because he wasn’t alone people! He WASN’T ALONE! There’s a celebration after some crow eating from Captain Klaa, and then the trinity attempt shore leave version 2.0 where Spock finally gets the point of campfire songs, and then the credits roll.
Sarcasm aside, there’s a reason why this film became one of my most beloved. In high school, I wasn’t very familiar with the original Star Trek series so episodes like Who Mourns for Adonais that deal with aliens masquerading as gods weren’t well known to me. So for me, this was pretty avant garde subject material where Star Trek was concerned. I liked that they were willing to look at the possibility of the existence of a higher being in the quirky Star Trek way. Beyond that though, there’s a lot of really good character development. Spock is still coming off of his death and resurrection, McCoy is trying to recover from having Spock’s soul in his brain, and Kirk is left to try and maintain balance throughout the ordeal. When there is humor during the movie, it’s pretty spot on. Shatner wrote himself as a witty, sarcastic devil may care type, and pretty much all of the cast get moments to shine within their respective characters. Jerry Goldsmith scored the movie, and as usual, he did a fantastic job. The score is mysterious, but contemplative. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more bad than good in this film.
On the bad notes, as I mentioned before, the third act just fizzles out like a defective firecracker. This had a lot to do with budget cuts and Shatner’s inexperience as a director. The special effects are laughable, especially by Star Trek standards, and some of the gags are appalling. What I tend to find interesting about all of this now are the stories behind what led to all of this. As I mentioned, Last Crusade was in development at the same time as Final Frontier. This ended up being a crucial thing for at least a couple of reasons. First, Industrial Light and Magic were so busy doing special effects on Crusade that they couldn’t do them for Frontier. This left Shatner scrambling to find a different effects house, and the one that he contracted way overstated their abilities. Second, the role of Sybok had originally been written with Sean Connery in mind to play the role. But since he was attached to Crusade, he couldn’t do Frontier. The writers strike is a pretty important thing. When work on the script started things were fine, but when Paramount cut the budget, there were no experienced screenwriters to rework the script to fit the budget. It all ends up coagulating into a perfect storm of cinematic failure that I don’t feel is fair to lay squarely on Shatner, although like a champ, he has accepted responsibility for it., But remember those grand ideas? Shatner wanted the last act to be a sort of slide into the various levels of the depths of hell for Kirk as he sought to overcome the powerful creature on the planet at the center of the galaxy. There were to be rock monsters and rivers of magma. It might have been pretty spectacular. I like to imagine a universe where Shatner’s vision was realized in its entirety, and it probably would still have been a little messy, but it would have been a spectacular mess!
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