Review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) by Liam C — 17 Jun 2014

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, this is Star Trek V. As is the case with most 'hated films' I fail to see what all the fuss surrounding this movie is.

Is it the fact that the last three movies, in what is known as the 'Spock arc', had deep themes and messages and this one goes for a more basic approach? Is it that the last movies had plots that had twists and turns and this one has a very simple 'find god' story line that seems like an easy grab for a sci-fi film? I do not know, nor do I care.

Saying that it is the worst out of all the Star Treks that came before it isn't really saying a lot. II, III, IV are all masterpieces in their own right, connecting with each other as sequels should and the first one was the launch of the movie franchise, while clearly not living up to any expectations certainly has its place for what it did.

It isn't all that difficult to work out that someone else is behind the camera this time, as the last three movies opened with the credits first and then carried on with the movie and this one had a scene before the opening credits.

It doesn't sound like much but its little things like that, that add up over time and considering I've been watching these one after another it is noticeable. While I did say earlier this one goes for a more basic approach, the movie is not without its deep character moments.

A scene early on in the movie, that I mentioned at the start of this review, that has gone down in infamy for its sheer absurdness and it felt strange at first but upon further inspection and taking into consideration the scenes that come before and after it, that scene in particular offers up some very deep character moments, namely, they talk about death.

And I dare you to not be singing that song by the time the credits roll around- its infectious! I prefer a story that is character driven as opposed to having a good story but with characters no one cares about and given the very nature of this story that is about pain and what is the point in all of existence, I'd say those were pretty good themes, even if it doesn't reach the depth of the previous movies, like I stated.

Another good section of this movie is when it is debated if keeping pain is a good thing or not and some characters pain is manifested on screen in a very clear, deep and haunting way, its a very good scene.

Despite all of this, it isn't perfect, clearly, While the story does have its moments, there do appear to be some things that are not answered, or not answered very well. I will not name them because of spoilers but you'll know them when you see them, especially during the ending.

To be fair, some things are indeed explained but they are done casually in one sentence and if you aren't paying attention, you will miss it. However, there are theories to explain some of the things that are not explained in the movie, namely a dream theory and while these are good, I don't think going that far to explain some of the films shortcomings is a good thing, it seems like people are making excuses to defend a film.

There is notably more swearing in this film and I would like to think this was done because of what the characters learnt from the previous film but I highly doubt that. There is also some good acting going on here, like usual but Laurence Luckinbill gave a very good performance as Sybok and was redeemed in the end, Kirk has an amazing line to the 'God' entity and McCoy is great like he usually is, but is given some good background when Sybok relieves him of his pain.

If this was an episode of the show, which to be fair, some other episodes did try this sort of concept, I doubt it would have been hated as an episode that 'nearly killed the franchise' like this movie was labelled.

Really? This was labelled as such and I still cannot really see why. With a back to basics story, some well done character moments and some fine acting to boot, The Final Frontier is a satisfying, albeit unneeded, sequel.