Review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) by Kai82 — 06 Mar 2020

It has an awesome start and a great final act but nearly everything in between feels stretched out. I recently discovered that it was planned for a never produced TV series Star Trek Phase Two before the decisions was made to use this as groundwork / plot for this movie.

This explains a lot. Also some shots are far too extended. Someone made the comment that they want to capture the feeling from 2001 A Space Odyssey. This is accredited by the fact that Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich did the visual effects here and in the past for 2001.

While no failure it does not work as good here as it does in 2001. I might sound to negative but I enjoyed this movie. It is more that I used fast forward to skip parts of it. What should I say about the cast? You have a team of pop culture legends.

Kirk, Spock, Mc Coy, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty and Uhura are know by people that have never even watched Star Trek. I like the crew and characters so there is no way that I complain in the slightest way. We got 2 new characters with Ilia and Willard Decker.

Ilia has not much time to shine but delivers a really good performance. Willard Deckers character is someone who was interesting enough that I want to see more of him. Story: The set up for the story is great and could easily lead to a 10/10 movie.

The revelation and the conclusion of the story is brilliant and had potential. I will admit that this is a hit or miss case. It can also be viewed as failure by some. Overall it was an enjoyable movie with some lengths that started the movie franchise.

Bonus knowledge. A German comedian had made a good joke about Scotty. Kirk: Scotty how long does it take? Scotty: 4 weeks captain. Kirk: You have 2 hours. Scotty: I will do it in 1 ;-).