Time Capsule Series: 1984: The Terminator

It’s been a brief, but interesting look at this anomalous, but wondrous year that gave us so many beloved classics, and I think that someday, we may return to this timescape for even more cinematic adventures. However, we’re going to wrap things up for the time being as next week, something very exciting is happening. Next week, the new Nintendo Switch gets released! In celebration of both that and the first Legend of Zelda game that I’ve been able to buy since 1998, we’re going to take a look at this new electronic marvel and see what it really has to offer, and what it lacks, if anything.

That said, we’re going to end our little exercise on a high note today. We’ve already looked a couple of fine films, and there are so many more that we could look at, but today, we’re going to look at the crown jewel of 1984, James Cameron’s sci-fi classic The Terminator. This is a complex, and rich narrative so let’s jump in and take a look around!

By now, hopefully, everyone knows the tale of The Terminator. In the future, 1997 to be exact, a self-aware artificial intelligence called Skynet, decimates the human race. Their victory is all but assured, but then, a resistance leader named John Connor topples their initiative and beats them at their own game. To stop this from happening, Skynet sends a Terminator agent back to the year 1984 to kill John Connor’s mom from ever even conceiving John. As a result, the future humans have to send back an agent of their own to protect Sarah. This agent is Kyle Reese, John Connor’s friend and confidante.

The Terminator arrives, and immediately everyone starts dying, and everything starts exploding. Most perplexing, is there begins to be a series of focused murders in the greater LA area, specifically, everyone named Sarah Connor starts dying. Actual Sarah figures out that whoever is perpetrating the murders is simply gong in the order that the phone book is laid out in. The police get involved,  but per movie rules, they’re pretty much useless. Luckily for Sarah, there’s Kyle. Kyle Reese is a highly experienced, well trained operative with lots of surviving Terminator attacks skills. He teaches Sarah how to fire a gun, how to build pipe bombs, and of course, how to flee if things get too hot. Say what you will, but knowing when to exercise a tactical withdrawal is at least as important as all of the other stuff.

So Sarah goes to the club, and while she’s gone, the Terminator finds her apartment and kills her roommate. It also kills the roommate’s boyfriend, but he’s a jerk so we don’t really care. COming up empty, perhaps Sarah has dodged a bullet, but the Terminator figures out where Sarah is via the answering machine. So he goes to the club, and lots of people die horribly. Sarah nearly gets killed herself, but just at the last second, Kyle swoops in and saves the day! YAY! They abscond away to hide for a while so that they can regroup.

They end up at a skeezy motel where Sarah learns how to make those aforementioned pipe bombs, and by that, I mean that she and Kyle totally do it. It’s a touching scene really as two people who’ve known each other for less than 48 hours make the gigantic decision to bump naughty bits because they’re bodies are being flooded with adrenaline and endorphins from their near death experiences. Okay, so it actually might seem out of place, but there’s actually a good reason behind this one. See, Kyle is John’s dad. Um-hm. Couldn’t make that one up in a million years. Kyle Reese travels back in time, does his best friend’s mom, and becomes his best friend’s dad. I’m gonna give you a minute to let that one sink in… Just kidding, this movie is over 30 years old! If you haven’t gotten over the shock of that little revelation, then you need to do some meditation or something!

Anyway, the Terminator is pretty ruthless in its pursuit of Sarah and Kyle, but it takes it a minute to find them after their escape. But once he does, it’s all over. There’s a chase scene, and motorcycles, and the Terminator gets run over by a semi-truck. It’s all very exciting. Anyway, The Terminator commandeers the truck and chases Sarah and Kyle, and I gotta tell you, that’s one nimble truck, but anyway, Kyle blows it up, and we think the day is saved! However, the Terminator isn’t going down that easy, and the endoskeletal portion of the machine, which looks terrifying starts chasing them from the flames of the wreckage!

They all end up in some kind of factory where there are automated robotic arms, and awesome 80s computers, and a hydraulic press of some sort. The Terminator is chasing them, and it gets them cornered, but Kyle shoves his last pipe bomb in the Terminator’s chest, and blows it up! Surely, that’s the end, yes? No! The torso of the Terminator starts clawing its way around trying to choke the life out of Sarah, who can’t run because she took some shrapnel to the leg during the Terminator explosion. So they’re each clawing around, and it’s actually kind of intense, and Sarah finds herself crawling through that hydraulic press with the Terminator in hot pursuit. So she clears the press, lowers some gate thing, and just before the Terminator is able to actually get hold of her neck, she activates the press, and squashes the crap out of the Terminator! Terminated frakker!. She actually says that! Okay, not that exactly, but something very close to that.

In the end, Sarah is driving a sweet Jeep through the desert, and she stops for gas, and stuff. She looks visibly pregnant. A little kid screws her out of four bucks for a polaroid picture, and it’s the same picture that Kyle had at the beginning! Dun, dun, DUNNNN!!!!  She talks about the coming storm, and the perils that lay ahead, and then drives off into a liter thunderstorm. It’s a very bleak ending, leaving the possibility of a sequel wide open. Indeed, we’ve gotten a lot of sequels and such from this one film. We’ll not go into them all here, but there maybe future articles springing forth from this franchise yet.

So a watching of this movie for the purposes of this article leave me just the slightest bit baffled. (Not really, but we’ll get to that in a minute.) This movie is considered a staple within the pantheon of classic film. It sets a benchmark for cerebral sci-fi action films that few ever reach, and yet, it hasn’t actually aged all that well. Hear me out before you start writing those death threats in the comments! As with any movie, it’s a product of its time so I can forgive the styles of clothing and hair that were used. That’s just what was in at the time. But in context of 2017, the special effects have dated themselves ever so slightly. Sure, they were cutting edge back in 1984, but the stop motion is kind of jerky, and even the creature effects were sometimes a little off. I know, I know, they were ambitious for their time. Okay, so we can agree that for it’s time it was cutting edge? I’ll accept that, but I don’t think any of those things are the reason that the film has endured for so long.

I think the primary reason that The Terminator has become a staple within the film classics category is because it taps into a fear that is, I think, universal to every human being, the future. No one knows for sure what’s going to happen in the future, and some fates are actually worse than death so that unknown realm can be really scary if we allow ourselves to dwell upon such things. It was definitely a product of its time in many regards, but I think the base examination going on in this movie is still relevant today. Look at the march of ‘human progress’. As we grow, we mostly do so technologically. Every year, we find new ways to turn our free will over to machines. I can literally run most of my life via my phone, and when you stop to think about all of the ways that that arrangement could go awry, it’s a pretty scary prospect. That idea of technology rebelling is not new, but I think that it becomes more and more pertinent as the days go by, and as technology creeps further and further into our daily lives. Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad arrangement, but I can definitely see how it could be unsettling to some.

The Terminator taps into both of these facets of our existence, and feeds on all of the terrifying what-ifs that exist there. That’s what makes this a great film, in my opinion. Beyond that, there is so much to love. The atmosphere in this movie is dark, and it’s legitimately scary. The look of Schwarzenegger as the Terminator is unsettling. Once the ‘friendly’ exterior is removed, it’s even more so! The scope, and the pacing of this film are a perfect storm of unease as the viewer tries to remain calm. It makes it really easy to get swept up in this movie. The acting is mostly good. There are a couple of lines here and there that make you roll your eyes just a little, but for an 80s film, it manages to keep the cheese to minimum. The ‘romantic subplot’ was definitely rushed, but had to be there so what are you supposed to do? There really wasn’t anyway that that sort of thing was going to happen organically anyway.

The score for this film really adds to the ambience. It’s dark, it’s brooding, and at times, it can be completely unnerving. My only complaint there is that Brad Fiedel made the unfortunate decision, again in my opinion, to do the entire score with synthesizers! As a professional audio engineer, I can confidently say that there are really only a couple of places in movie scores where synthesizers are okay to use. One is as a place filler before the actual orchestrations have been recorded and mixed, and two is playing second fiddle to back up said orchestrations! DANGIT! Good compositions should never be rendered in synthesizers! Do you hear me Hollywood?! NEVER! Okay, that aside, here’s the rationale behind it. Even as you watch this movie, you know there’s synth. It’s not something that can be easily overlooked, and it pulls me right out of the experience every time it takes the spotlight in a scene. I understand why that decision was made, but holy crud, was it a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong,the arrangement of notes that probably ended up on the paper are brilliant, it’s just the execution via synth really drags down that brilliance. As an example, here's the theme the way it was originally presented. And here's an orchestral arrangement. Can we all just agree that I’m right on this point, please? Nah, it’s cool if we can’t just realize that you’re all kinds of wrong.

Enough of that. The creature effects in this film actually weren’t bad. I can tell that for 1984, they worked their butts off to make everything as believable as they could. That’s no easy feat to accomplish using only practical effects. Oh, and the gore is awesome! It just makes this film. I don’t think the movie would have been received nearly as well if they had shot for a PG-13 rating. The gore in the film, while not excessive, is effective.

And finally, let me just mention briefly some of the franchise, as we will be looking at pieces, if not all of it over what I hope are years of faithful reading. Terminator 2 was a brilliant! We’ll look at that one more closely later for sure. I felt like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the short lived TV series, was cancelled before it really had a chance to to what it was meant to do, and it was an awesome show. We’ll look at that one later too. As for the other ones, they all bring a little something to the universe, but they don’t ever really congeal in a good way. We may look at them anyway at points when I happen to be bored, and lacking any better material, but the fact that all of these sequels and spinoffs exist is just a testament to the impact that this original film had on people.

In all, an experience that I would recommend in case you haven’t actually seen it. To which I would ask, what are you still doing reading this article?! Go watch the movie! As I said earlier, we’re looking at the switch next week, and if it arrives early enough, I might give my first impressions of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Until then!

Time Capsule Series: 1984: The Neverending Story

We pick up today exactly where we left off last week, looking at films from the year 1984. Last week, we looked at the follow up to a beloved and renowned Star Trek movie. It was a good review. I recommend that you check it out. Today, we’re going full-on nostalgic because I’m an 80s kid, and this particular movie has kind of a dubious reputation.

The Neverending Story is a wonderful exercise in not saying what you can show. It’s one of those films where the audience is just dropped into the story without any context, and then the context is carefully built as the plot progresses. We start with the main character, Bastian, having a dream. He’s dreaming of roiling clouds of all things, but we’re told it’s his mom, who recently died, that he was dreaming about. This movie goes right for the nostalgic jugular from the start as the film opens with the pop song of the same name. I’d be really surprised if any of the readers of this fine blog haven’t heard it. It practically defined a generation. During the opening scene, we get shown that Bastian is having trouble with school, skipping classes, and generally disappointing his dad who is a grieving dick apparently. Dad tells him to forget his dreams and keep his feet on the ground, and thus the theme of the film is established.

Bastian heads off to school, only to run into a group of bullies. Man his life sucks. During the encounter, Bastian stops in a bookstore where he steals a copy of the titular book. The real world action at the beginning serves as the bulk of the context for Bastian, who is the main hero, but unwittingly so. He goes to school, and when he realizes that he’s missing a test, he hides away to the attic to read his ill gotten gains. This is where the show really gets interesting. We’re dropped into the realm of Fantasia. We find out through minimal exposition that a great nothing is devouring the land, and a handful of representatives have been sent to visit the Childlike Empress to plead for help. There’s a giant rock eating guy, and a goblin looking guy with a pet bat, and a gnomish looking guy with a snail. They’re not terribly important to the story, but they look really cool, and they do a good job getting things moving.

We cut to the capital, and some guy is talking about a hero named Atreyu. Atreyu shows up, but no one believes that he is who he claims to be because he’s a boy. But don’t let the age fool you, Atreyu is a bonafide bad a. He accepts the quest to save Fantasia a sets off with his trusty steed, Artax… who… dies in the NEXT SCENE?! Excuse me for a moment…

...okay, so Artax dies, and not well, but Atreyu presses on. He talks to a giant turtle who tells him that he needs to consult the Sphinxes to the south. But they’re ten thousand miles away. So that seems helpless. And in the meantime, there’s a giant wolf stalking Atreyu, and he’s about to eat the poor kid! Atreyu, look our! But at the last possible second, Falcor swoops in and saves the day! Yay Falcor! Falcor takes Atreyu to the south where the boy has to pass by the Sphinxes, who totally have naked boobs by the way. They vaporize anyone who tries to pass that is not possessing of true confidence. Atreyu isn’t, but he makes it past somehow anyway. Next, there’s a mirror thing, and it’s in the mirror that Atreyu sees Bastian’s face. This is the trippy cool part about this movie. As Bastian is reading, he’s not just a passive observer. He actually interacts with the story, and has an effect on how things play out to a degree. Because of this, as he’s reading, he’s going through some really cerebral character growth.. It’s the only effective use of vicarious character development that I can think of right now.

Anyway, Atreyu tries to go back to the capital, but he falls off of Falcor and has to fight the wolf thing. We find out that the wolf is helping the nothing, and he says something that I found really profound. He says that the reason that he’s helping the nothing is to rob people of their hope. He says that people without hope are easier to control, and those who have control have power. It’s a great tie-in to the the primary theme. Bastian is told to discard his dreams, and bend to the realities of life, but the movie is telling us that submitting completely puts us under the control of someone who isn’t ourselves. It’s pretty deep for a kid film.

Atreyu is once again saved by Falcor, and taken just as the noting consumes that last of Fantasia. There are bits and pieces floating around in space, but there’s nothing coherent left. However, the capital still remains, and Atreyu pays a visit to the Childlike Empress. She tells him that she knew that everything that happened was going to happen even before it happened. This pisses Atreyu off because this, and he presses for some existential answers. The Empress tells him that through his trials, he brought Bastian back with him to her, and that to save Fantasia, Bastian just needs to give the Childlike Empress a name. This is something that the naked Sphinxes already told Atreyu, but whatever. At this point, the narrative could have been handled just a little better I think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still great, but it’s a little too cheesy to match the tone of the rest of the film. Bastian has to reprogram his brain and think his way out of his dad’s terrible advice so that he can grasp that he is contributing to the story. At that point, he gives the Empress a name and the day is saved! The name that he gives her is Moonchild. There’s thunder and it’s hard to understand, but I got great ears and that’s totally what he names her, which is consistent with the book, actually. The funny thing is, there’s a point where Bastian muses that he would name the Empress after his mom, who he said had a beautiful name. So apparently, his mom was a hippie.

Anyway, Bastian gets to meet the Empress, excuse me, Moonchild, and she imparts him with a magical grain of sand that will rebuild Fantasia as he makes wishes. He therefore wishes to take flight on Falcor, and I guess he also wishes that all of Fantasia were made whole again because in the next scene, everything is back the way it was before the nothing. Even Artax gets resurrected. And then we get the most blatant bit of nerd wish fulfillment ever. Bastian wishes Falcor into the real world, and together, they bully the bullies! Now, let’s look at that ‘real world’ statement real quick. During a monologue, the Empress explains that there’s an entire multiverse of readers reading the stories of everyone. Bastian is reading about Fantasia, and in turn, someone in a different universe is reading about Bastain. It’s pretty convoluted, but it’s a nifty concept all the same.

So what can be said about The Neverending Story? Well, I love it! It’s hard to not get caught up in. The level of imagination behind it is spectacular, the vistas are breathtaking, the story is fascinating, and the music is fantastic. The acting can leave a little to be desired at times, but not too often. Also there are a couple of cheesy lines, but it’ s just a fun ride. There is a lot packed into a 90 minute runtime, which could have made it feel extremely disjointed, but it holds together well enough. It’s a wonderful representation of great 80s fantasy movies, and I’m not sure why, but I enjoy it a ton better than modern fantasy films. There’s a weight to it visually, and a general feeling behind it that just enraptures me. I dunno, but if you haven’t seen this one, drop everything and give it a watch! And stick around next week to see what other treasures we’ve dug up from 1984!

Time Capsule Series:1984: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

So I promised some big changes this year, and I'm keeping good on my word. A while back, I switched publication days from Friday to Thursday. This was out of necessity because I had a chaotic Friday schedule due to work. Now I'm in school, and have a chaotic schedule on Thursday due to that. Hence, the big change coming down the pipeline right now is that we're officially going to go back to where we were at the beginning, and publish on Fridays! But wait there's more! Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog! We started humbly with only a handful of readers, but we've grown far beyond what I ever thought we could. I couldn't have done it without all of you fine readers so thank you!

Now, I’ve been mulling over this concept for quite some time as I’ve tried to analyze this conundrum. And certainly I can’t be the only person thinking this, but 1984 was a really good year for movies. Don’t believe me? Chew on this:The Terminator, Ghostbusters, Amadeus, Repo Man, This is Spinal Tap, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Killing Fields, The Karate Kid. What do all of these movies have in common? They’re all rated above 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, and they all from 1984! The list goes on, too. If we keep going down the list based on rating, we’ll bump into classics like The Neverending Story, Romancing the Stone, Once Upon a Time in America, Beverly Hills Cop, Gremlins, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Revenge of the Nerds, Purple Rain, Police Academy, Footloose, Splash, Sixteen Candles, The Last Starfighter, Red Dawn, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Starman,Johnny Dangerously, and Star Trek II: The Search for SpocK, not to mention a film adaptation of the George Orwell classic 1984 because the irony of that situation was lost on no one. If you look at the aggregated Wikipedia page on movies that have a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 1984 has an astounding 11 films! Go ahead, look it up. What I’m saying is 1984 was kind of a fluke year for Hollywood.

Why then, was 1984 such a stellar year at the theaters? Was it due to our collective fears of this:

Had the studios been executing incompetent executives? I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of this mystery yet, but that won’t stop me from looking at a few of these films to see if there are any commonalities among them. I don’t think criteria is necessary, but if I start to see emerging patterns over the next few weeks, we’ll start to tabulate things a bit more thoroughly. Now before we do actually move on, just let me say that I know Rotten Tomatoes is not the most ‘scientific’ way of quantifying things, and I’m also aware that 1984 doesn’t even clock in as the year with the most 100% rated movies on the site. That honor would go to 2014 with a whopping 26 movies that carry that rating. However, 1984 has a huge collection of memorable films, and the highest rated films are pure, mundane entertainment, as opposed to documentaries, or foreign art house films. So am I being a little judgy in formulating my examination, sure, but I would like to be entertained through this experience as well. That said, let’s look at our first 1984 film!

Ta DA! Oh, come on, you had to have known this was coming. As far as this Trekkie is concerned, this is the lowest hanging fruit in our 1984 film examination. I could practically quote this movie in my sleep! That doesn’t make this any less exciting though! I love this movie. However, I will attempt to remain level headed about the whole experience. SInce we’re discussing the year this was released already, I won’t bore you with too much background. But we need at least a little bit. So this movie came about because Leonard Nimoy had grown tired of playing Spock for nearly 20 years, and he felt like making a clean break with the franchise would help him overcome his typecasting problems. That’s why Spock dies in Star Trek II. But then TWOK was super successful and Paramount wanted to chase a little more of that sweet, sweet money. That meant that it was time to strike a deal, and as a result of that deal, Nimoy got to write, and direct his own movie. Thus, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was conceived because it wouldn’t be much of a Star Trek movie without Spock in it.

Hence, after this:

And this:

And this:

We got the Spock is Jesus story. Ok, ok, I jest a little. But basically, after what is considered to be the best Star Trek film of all time, we were treated to the follow-up where everyone involved had to figure out a way to bring back one of the most beloved characters in Sci-Fi history, and undo one of the most poignant moments in cinematic history in a way that wouldn’t royally piss off the fans. That’s no small order. So how did they do it?

Well, TSFS picks up right where TWOK left off. The Enterprise is limping home after everyone narrowly escaped death at the hands of the formidable Khan Noonien Singh, all except a handful that is, and she looks terrible. There are temporary hull plates haphazardly attached to the superstructure, and wires and conduit are hanging out of the ceilings all over the place, and it’s just bad. Kirk and crew are hoping for a hero’s welcome when they return to Earth, but what they get instead is a jumbo sized kick to the junk. They find out that everyone basically has to sign an NDA concerning the events of the previous film, and oh yeah, we’re decommissioning the Enterprise. On top of all that, Bones has been acting incredibly strange since the end of the last film. Kirk is paid a visit from Spock’s father Sarek during which Sarek accuses Kirk of being an uncaring bastard because Kirk left Spock’s body on the Genesis Planet. We find out that when Vulcans are about to die, they can transfer their souls into another vessel, be it artificial, or organic so that the soul can live on. It’s further revealed that McCoy unwittingly became Spock’s soul’s vessel. Weird. However, this explains why old Bones has been acting out of sorts. So armed with this information, Kirk vows to return to the Genesis world and retrieve Spock’s body so that Spock can be properly put to pasture.

In the meantime, Kirk’s son David, and Saavik, played by not Kirstie Alley, return to Genesis to see how it’s developing. There’s a lot of oooh-ing, and aaah-ing as the discover the extent of the variety of climates that exist, and the proximity of each climate to the others. It’s literally unnatural, but breath taking all the same. But wait! There’s a lifeform reading coming from the surface! But wait there’s more! None of the Genesis scientists programmed in lifeforms other than plants! So now David and Saavik want to investigate, which the ship’s snooty captain is completely against. But eventually he relents and they get to do their thing. They discover that it’s just a bunch of space microbes that latched onto Spock’s burial torpedo and evolved to something that would more easily register on ships’ scanners. And they’re bummed. But they’re about to be more bummed because a rogue Klingon ship shows up and blows their science ship out of the stars! Now David and Saavik are stranded. To compound matters, they hear an ominous screaming in the distance.

We jump back to Kirk and crew, and Kirk is trying to get legitimate permission to go back to Genesis and retrieve the body of his friend. Of course the admiral tells him to shove it, but that’s okay because Kirk has a backup plan! They’re going to steal back the Enterprise, violate a treaty stipulation with the Klingon Empire, kidnap a mental patient, and sabotage the Excelsior in order to facilitate their escape. Great plan guys. But they do it anyway. They violate, like, a thousand laws, but they do successfully kidnap McCoy, steal the Enterprise, sabotage the Excelsior, and make their way to Genesis in order to get on that breaking treaty law thing. All sarcasm aside, this whole sequence is one of my favorite Star Trek movie moments. We get to see all of the different crew doing what they’re good at, and everyone plays a role. The entire plan wouldn’t have had a chance of success without the contributions of our heroes. It’s wonderful to see them rally together around their fallen comrade. Oh, and the music is fantastic!. On their way to Genesis, they try to raise the science ship, but get no reply. This leaves us in suspense, at least until they arrive. Then we get a tense battle between the Klingons and the crippled Enterprise.

By this point, Saavik and David have realized that the creature they’ve found is Spock, although he’s pretty young. They postulate that his body reset with the Genesis planet, and that his growth spurts are causing the planet to age rapidly and destroy itself. In actuality, David cut some corners that left the entire process unstable. Anyway, Kirk gets off a lucky shot on the Klingon ship, temporarily crippling them, but absolutely destroying the Enterprise in the process. This prompts the Klingon Commander, played by Christopher Lloyd, to try and force a surrender from Kirk. Lloyd does make one mistake though. As he’s talking about prisoners and their imminent death should Kirk not obey, he kills Kirk’s son. It’s a sad, but touching moment as Shatner tries to articulate the feelings of loss, and despair associated with such an event. To his merit, Shatner does a pretty good job. As a result, Kirk surrenders and tells Lloyd to beam over a boarding party to take the ship. It’s never that easy with Kirk though. He sets the Enterprise to self-destruct, and as the Klingons are beaming over, Kirk and crew beam down to the planet’s surface. The Klingon boarding party all die, and the Enterprise is destroyed in glorious fashion. If this movie has any failings, though, it’s the fact that the destruction of the Enterprise was a more emotional moment for me as a viewer than the death of Kirik’s son. I mean, we only met the guy in the last film, and to be honest, he was a little whiny, but perhaps more effort could have been made to get me invested in the character a bit more. I dunno.

Anyway, now stranded on the planet, Kirk, and his gallant crew must pit themselves against the wretched Klingons. This entire last bit doesn’t take too long to unfold as our heroes locate Saavik and Spock almost immediately. They seize control of the situation, but are again thwarted by Lloyd, who beams down with a disruptor and acts like the bad a that he is. Because prisoners were still a thing to the Klingons at this time, Lloyd has everyone except Kirk and Spock beamed up to the ship. Now at this point, the planet is tearing itself apart. There are flames everywhere, and giant chasms opening up all over the place. It’s pretty spectacular. There are words exchanged between Kirk and Lloyd, and then there’s the fight scene, and eventually, Lloyd falls into one of those chasms, and gets burned alive by magma. Kirk uses Lloyd’s communicator to get himself a Spock beamed up to the Klingon ship where they easily take the one guy hostage. Sulu is able to get the ship moving, and they warp away just as the planet goes up in a fiery ball of awesomesauce. They go to Vulcan, and there’s this ritual thing, and Spock gets his soul back, and McCoy doesn’t have to be two minds about everything anymore, and it just makes me so gosh darn happy. The implication is that now that Spock is back, the universe is as it should be, and we can all breathe a little easier now, and that’s the feeling that I personally have by the end of this movie, no matter how many times I’ve already seen it.

What’s to be said about this classic? Well, it’s not as beloved as TWOK, but I think that’s an unfair rap. TWOK was super intense because it primarily dealt with the themes of self-consuming hatred and revenge. Ricardo Montalban took those emotions and cranked them to 11. Shatner reciprocated tit for tat. There was a palpable feeling of tension in that film that this one didn’t need because thematically, that wasn’t what was being explored. In this film, we explore themes of loss, and anguish, and family. We look at those rare occasions when the universe gives us a second lease on something. We get to explore the ‘what if’ scenario of suddenly getting back something we’ve lost that was deeply important to us, and we get to see just how incomplete Kirk’s crew is without one of their core players. Because this was the focus, the tension was less. There were scenes that were more esoteric; that were meant to make the viewer do a little introspection. There was still a little action, and the heist sequence was really exciting, but it didn’t hit with the same magnitude that TWOK did, and I honestly think that it’s because TSFS didn’t have to. It could be softer because its predecessor played out at a fever pitch. It could take its time because, again, the previous installment had moved at a rather furious pace.I’m not calling the comparison an apples to oranges one, but what I am saying is TSFS benefitted in some interesting ways from the tone, pacing, and themes of TWOK.

From a production stance, I think this movie is really well done. There aren’t any plots that are left unresolved by the end, except what actually happened to that last Klingon that was kidnapped. I’m working on a novel about that right now, actually. True story. I felt like the acting was pretty solid. The special effects were, of course, excellent, and the music was incredible. The lighting, the framing of the shots, and a lot of other easily overlooked aspects were very similar to the previous film, and I wonder if that was done intentionally because it really helps to ground the film in that universe that Nicholas Meyer established in his film. I really enjoy that you could string these two films together and it would basically just seem like one long film. It’s a fun film, and a great ride, and I can’t recommend it enough! We’re just getting started with this series so stick around because who knows where we might go from here!