Released: June 1989
Director: William Shatner
Run Time: 107 Minutes
Rated PG
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Genre: Science Fiction/Action-Adventure
Cast:
William Shatner: Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy: Spock
DeForest Kelley: Doctor Leonard McCoy
James Doohan: Scotty
Nichelle Nichols: Uhura
George Takei: Sulu
Walter Koenig: Chekhov
Laurence Luckinbill: Sybock
David Warner: St. John Talbot
There’s an interesting thing among Star Trek fans: The best Trek movies are II, IV, VI, and VIII. Those would be Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact. They tend to ignore the other ones. Some rightfully so, others not so much. However, it’s something I personally don’t subscribe to. I’m as big of a Star Trek as much as the next guy, but I think each film, no matter how bad it gets, has some inherent value to it. Some people might call me crazy, but I still consider The Motion Picture to be the best Star Trek movie, because it really addresses the ideas and themes behind Star Trek. The exploration of ideas and certain philosophies tends to be sidelined among the other films in the franchise, but The Motion Picture dared to tackle some of these ideas head-on. Was it successful? I thought it was, especially now that I’ve grown up. That being said, I understand that people didn’t care for it. It did get pretty cerebral, but that was part of the point. It made you think. That’s what Star Trek is all about, at least from MY perspective. That being said, there were a couple of movies that most audiences and critics will agree are not particularly good Star Trek movies: The Final Frontier and Generations. Right now, I’m taking a look at The Final Frontier.
The story begins as Kirk, Spock and McCoy are on shore leave in Yosemite National Park, with Kirk climbing El Capitan. After a near-brush with death, the trio are informed by Uhura that their leave has been cancelled because on Nimbus III, ambassadors for the Federation, Klingon and Romulan empires have been taken hostage by a rogue Vulcan named Sybock. Sybock claims to have had a vision that God is waiting for them at the center of the galaxy, which lies beyond The Great Barrier. The story for Star Trek V is surprisingly very interesting. The themes that are present in this film, obviously include exploring the unknown and the possibilities of God’s existence. But at the heart of the story is a very strong theme about family which, again, is at the heart of Star Trek. Unfortunately, all this gets jumbled up, because the film surrounding the story is an incoherent mess.
There’s a lot of problems with Star Trek V. Most of them stem from a great deal of studio interference from Paramount. See, Star Trek IV was successful, because it managed to combine both Star Trek moments and a very light-hearted tone. It was a bit of a comedy. They wanted to duplicate that success, but the story that William Shatner wanted to tell apparently didn’t have enough humor in it, so Paramount forced him to find moments that could be funny. Here’s the problem, the story that Shatner wanted to tell had more in common with The Motion Picture than with A Voyage Home. There were a lot of things in this movie that could have worked if Paramount had let Shatner do things his way. He’s not a bad director. Far from it. He knows how to stage action. He also knows how to engage his audience with the characters because he knows them extremely well. He just wasn’t allowed to. Some people might also chock it up to Shatner’s ego, being put into check by Paramount, but I don’t know how much of that is actually true. Due to constant changes in the script and budgetary cutbacks, The Final Frontier suffered in nearly every way.
The special effects in Star Trek V were another massive problem for the film. Because of those budgetary cutbacks that I mentioned, and the fact that ILM wasn’t available, they had to go to a different special effects studio somewhere in New Jersey, I think, to do the effects for the film. The previous films used Industrial Light and Magic for a reason. Those guys are masters of their craft. The effects in Star Trek V are almost universally terrible. From simple animations to explosions, the visuals in this film are extremely half-baked. It’s like they didn’t even try. While Shatner may take some of the blame here, the majority of it can be laid at Paramount’s feet. The visual effects are god-awful and that terrible dance sequence by Uhura before the invasion was just terrible.
While there are definitely some really bad things about Star Trek V, there are also some really great moments in the film that deserve mention. The one thing that has been constant throughout all the Star Trek movies are the characters. Whether they’re the original crew or the Next Generation team, the characters in Star Trek are extremely interesting, even the villains. At the beginning of the film we see Kirk, McCoy and Spock go camping for their shore leave. Scenes like these really sell the character development in the film for me, because we get to see the relationships between these characters on a more personal level. Sybock, played by Laurence Luckinbill is also interesting, because he doesn’t come across as a straight-up bad guy. He’s not, he’s an explorer, but his quest is on a more spiritual level, because he’s actually looking for God Himself. He doesn’t want people to die, but he’s willing to break the law in order to achieve his goal. His development and his relationship with Spock is one of the most interesting aspects of the film. There’s a scene where things get really personal, because Sybock has this ability to show people their personal pain, and he shows McCoy his pain, which is McCoy’s dying father. This is absolutely one of the best, strongest and most personal moments I’ve ever seen in a Star Trek movie. We also see Kirk responding by not wanting his pain taken away. These are very strong character moments that are aided by one of the strongest musical scores in the entire franchise. The music by Jerry Goldsmith is absolutely one of the best scores that he’s ever crafted. There are definitely the big heroic themes which includes the main theme from the original film, but we also have the theme for the Klingons, which is stunning.
While many people consider The Final Frontier to be the worst Star Trek movie ever made, I would personally disagree. Is it a good movie? No. There are too many issues with the way the story progresses, the visual effects and some of the characters that aren’t fleshed out. While William Shatner wanted this movie to be something special, and it really could have been, Paramount decided that it wasn’t really what they wanted and forced some the changes the really brought the movie down. It’s a shame, there’s a lot of real potential here. Honestly, though, I think Generations was a much worse film than this. At least The Final Frontier didn’t have the audacity to kill Captain Kirk twice. Maybe it’s because I grew up watching this film a lot when I was kid, but I have a special place in my heart for this particular entry. Despite it’s MANY flaws, this is still a Star Trek film at its core.
Final Score: 7/10.