Thursday, January 2, 2014

Is there nothing more?

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - 3/10
I accidentally watched the director's cut which has 12 more minutes of footage, which I am assuming were an extra 12 minutes of glory footage of the Enterprise as Captain Kirk is ferried to it. Oh my god, the waiting and the plodding and the taxi-ing and the wistful stares and the waiting in this movie. It's a movie made for the people who liked the show, which is so odd, because this is a fairly large movie for what amounted (at the time) to a relatively small minority of people. It assumes a familiarity with all the characters, barely introducing them, hardly setting up their roles – meanwhile focusing on two people who no one cared about previously (and no one cares about during). There is a poppiness to everything which I enjoyed. The visual aesthetics are a hummable tune – Uhura's hair, Ilia's lack of, Shatner's way of speaking – but my god. As much as the new Star Treks are derided by old Star Trek fans (and none of them are really defending this movie, mind), they did a great job of defining who everybody was and having forward momentum.

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