(watched as part of a broadcast-order franchise group-watch)
This movie came out in the middle of a month-long gap between TNG episodes, before the last four episodes of TNG S2. I suspect it's going to feel very weird jumping from TNG back to TOS movies!
Back to the classy opening titles. I like this arrangement of the opening theme, too.
The opening is cool. Enigmatic, and a bit of a Mad Max vibe. (edited)
More location shooting for this rock-climbing bit, too. Good stuff.
More Mad Max and Star Wars vibes on that planet, with the Mos Eisley style bar (though SW never had three-boobed cat strippers!).
They're going back to the 'this is a new ship that hasn't had all the wrinkles ironed out' beat from TMP again, which I can't blame them for - solid narrative sense to put your heroes on the back foot again.
Straight into the broad comedy stuff with the main crew, though - this perhaps feels like a bit of an admission that the light-hearted tone of Voyage Home is the best fit for the ensemble at their current age. Don't know if they could pull off a Wrath Of Khan again, even though it's only 7 years later.
All the visual and special effects are strong so far. Good starship shots, matte paintings, compositing etc. Funny to see them save budget on the shuttle picking up Kirk et al by just shining a big light - you'd never see a more modern Trek movie doing that.
The Kirk/Spock/Bones dialogue is still great. Amazing how evergreen that chemistry is. (edited)
The majesty of the shuttle approach and docking to the Enterprise is a bit less than it used to be, but nice that they're still taking a few moments to do it.
I see Kirk still has a female crewmember in a skirt to take his coat for him.
It's interesting to see that they're keeping the 'I hate those Klingon devils' stuff in, even though regular Trek viewers are now used to seeing Worf on the Enterprise and generally less fraught relations with the Klingons. Intentionally making the TOS crew seem a little bigoted and retrograde is a bold choice.
Spock's eyebrows look a little more drawn on than usual!
Well, it's nice that Uhura's singing finally got used in a story beat, I guess, even if she did have to strip in front of the crew.
Ha, great to see Shatner still doing some unconvincing karate chops.
And neck-pinching a horse is a fun move, even if tactically nonsensical.
Oh wow, I remember that 'Scotty hits his head' gag was in the (tv?) trailer and endlessly amusing, I don't think I'd ever realised that it's actually a very contrived way to take him off the board rather than have him actively on either side.
Oh well, at least he passed the Venkman test of not copping off with a possessed horny woman. Not sure TOS Scotty would have.
A few more ropey effects showing up as it goes on!
This God thing comes out of left-field. I think that's the big issue with this movie: it's full of good stuff (that scene where he's attempting to 'turn' McCoy, Spock and Kirk was very effective) and it's fairly pacey but the structure is pretty flimsy. There's no strong throughline because you don't know what Sybok wants, you're not sure for a long time what the nature of his hold over people is, the Klingons are just hanging about on the edges to show up for a bit of jeopardy when needed...
Funny moment when Eden turns out to look like Southern California and Sybok is awed while Kirk just has a 'I've seen this at least thirty times before' look on his face.
A really messy ending. Suddenly they're looking for God, and they get through this impassable barrier with no issues or unique approach, but then he turns out to be a Wizard Of Oz with laser eyes (and it's unclear how Sybok knew to come to this planet, or if it's a coincidence that there's a godlike alien on the one they happened upon, or it's read their minds somehow and played into what they were looking for), and then they try to do an action movie ending which is far too low-budget and goofy to work, and then there's an empty gesture towards some sort of character arc between the lead trio, a butt joke and then that's the end.
I like a lot about it, including the deeper thematic stuff even though it's under-served, but it has a lot of issues with structure, pacing and scale. I think I would have preferred a return to the TMP tone for this one.
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