Wednesday, March 18, 2020

FTM 531: BOLDLY GOING

Patrick and Adam Riske talk their way through the first six Star Trek movies.



Download this episode here. (51.3 MB)

Listen to F This Movie! on Spotify and on Stitcher.

Also discussed this episode: 4D Man (1959), Bloodshot (2020), In Search of the Last Action Heroes (2019), Mo' Money (1992), National Treasure (2004), Galaxy Quest (1999), Liar Liar (1996), Cover Girl (1944)

8 comments:

  1. Still listening, but just want to say that "The Wrath of Clown" was a thing of beauty. Thanks y'all for bringing some joy today.

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  2. Patrick, I understand not wanting to take away from F This Movie Fest by live tweeting movies at other times during the year. I think the key that has made all FTM's events fun is that they've always been participatory, from Junesploitation to SMM's 7 word reviews and even the live events like the Podcastathon, the Tobe Hooper tribute, and the 400th and 500th episodes of the podcast. I'm sure you could come up with some new fun way to celebrate some genre or era (era) of film that the community could get involved in.

    That said I also understand that just because many of us are stuck indoors right now it doesn't mean that we all have less responsibilities and more free time so I get that "hey Patrick, come up with some fun new thing for us" probably isn't a fair burden to put on you either.

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  3. Also, my first experience with Star Trek and one of my earliest movie going memories was seeing Search for Spock with my family in what is the only time I can remember going to the movies with my grandpa (he was a fan of TOS because of scantily clad, green-skin alien women).

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  4. I love just about any discussion on Star Trek. I'm old, but one of the benefits of being old is that I got to see all those movies in a theater, during their initial release. Believe me, when Kirk in Wrath of Khan said, "Here it comes..." the entire audience went completely insane with delight.

    I have a sneaking affection for TMP, despite all its problems. There is one badass Kirk moment (bluffing V'ger about knowing why "the creator has not answered"), and I think Spock actually does get a nice character arc. The bland production design and ponderous pacing are huge problems, though.

    I am totally of two minds on Search for Spock. I love it for all the character moments, and the stealing the Enterprise set piece (still my favorite in all 6 films). But I hate it because of the metric tons of bullshit they have to throw at us to pull the central trick off. Saavik was one of the best things about Wrath of Khan; here she's Spock lite. And yet, "Jim. Your name...is Jim," gets me every. single. time.

    My ranking of the first 6, best to worst:

    Wrath of Khan
    The Undiscovered Country
    The Voyage Home
    The Search for Spock
    The Motion Picture
    The Final Frontier

    Thanks for the podcast! You help fill the time in a witty and very entertaining way. In this, you are doing God's work.

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  5. Excellent episode, fellas. I have such deep affection for five of these movies, and a grudging respect for TMP. And since I bought the BD box set, I have never succeeded at watching just Wrath of Khan; every single time I go right into Search for Spock and Voyage Home. It's a really enjoy about trilogy.

    I highly, highly recommend reading Shatner's book "Star Trek Movie Memories" (a sequel to the equally enjoyable "Star Trek Memories" about TOS) and he goes into quite a bit of detail on the making of all six TOS films plus Generations. He discusses what happened on Star Trek V. It's really insightful, and I appreciate just how much he seems to recognize his own reputation and pokes fun at himself for a bit of it.

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  6. I can remember watching all of these films, starting way back when I was really young and only with a vague idea of that Star Trek as a franchise existed, but not have seen any of it. I was impressed by the scale of the first movie (TMP) and it definitely has a special place in my heart, despite its shortcomings. The idea of a man-made space probe coming back to earth, heavily evolved while its absence, blew my little mind.

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  7. Adam, I think I WOULD recommend watching Space Seed. If for nothing else to see what a force of nature the young Montalban is in that episode. And it adds a little context for Wrath. It won’t make Wrath a whole new experience but I think it’s worth seeing.

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  8. “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (ST:TMP) may be the most underappreciated and most unreasonably maligned single thing in all of Star Trek since the original series began airing. Typically, when a TV show makes the transition to a movie adaptation, it takes one of the following two forms. There’s the adaptation of a TV show which recently wrapped up on TV, or which is still running on TV, where the movie is basically a bigger-budget, more exciting, long-form continuation of the TV show, with the same production teams, principle cast, etc. Examples would be “Downton Abbey”, the two “Sex and the City” movies, the two “X-Files” movies, and “Serenity” (continuing “Firefly”). Then there’s the adaptation which takes the concept and characters of a TV show which hasn’t been in current airing for many years, perhaps decades, and reimagines the show as a movie, with an all-new cast (allowing for original cast cameos), for either serious or comedic effect, which may or may not be intentionally inconsistent with the nature of the original TV series. Examples would be “Miami Vice”, “The A-Team”, “McHale’s Navy”, “The Honeymooners”, “Starsky and Hutch”, “21 Jump Street”, “The Brady Bunch Movie”, and “Chips”. ST:TMP doesn’t fit either of these forms.

    ST:TMP made a TV series which hadn’t aired new episodes in 10 years cinematic, with the original principle cast, and same storytelling continuity (the Klingons’ new look is explained decades later in the “Star Trek Enterprise” TV series). ST:TMP took a sci-fi concept that was plausibly executed for the mid-1960s, but outdated in execution for the late-1970s, and made its execution sci-fi plausible for the late-1970s. When Star Trek began airing on television in 1966, the pinnacle of sci-fi movie special effects was “Fantastic Voyage” (1966). However, by the time ST:TMP was in theaters in 1979, there had been “Planet of the Apes” (1968), “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), “Star Wars” (1977), “Superman: The Movie” (1978), and “Alien” (1979). “Alien” was released to U.S. theaters in June 1979. ST:TMP was released to U.S. theaters in December 1979. When Star Trek first aired on television in 1966, the NASA moon program was several years underway, with the Gemini program nearly completed. However, the Apollo program was in its infancy. Between 1966 and 1979, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Five more Apollo moon landings followed. The space shuttle program began, and it’s first shuttle was named Enterprise in 1976, as a tribute to Star Trek, with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, and all members of the Star Trek main cast except William Shatner on hand for the dedication. Voyager 1 and 2 space probes launched in 1977. Computer technology advanced greatly. Video games appeared. By 1978, the golden age of video arcades was beginning. First generation home video game consoles appeared. ST:TMP had to bring Star Trek from 1969 into that world, with the same principle cast and continuity of the TV show, and it did it, without being a parody of itself, or “Galaxy Quest”.

    Because of this success, the movie sequel productions had a lot less to worry about. “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” made some cosmetic improvements to the look of the Enterprise bridge and corridors, it included the memorable Project Genesis computer simulation scene, it expanded on Federation starship design with the U.S.S. Reliant, and it created the iconic Federation uniforms of original cast movie Trek (with the exception of ST:TMP). Most people like the story and pacing of Star Trek II and some of the other sequels significantly more than the same in ST:TMP. But most of the foundation of Star Trek as an ongoing live action concern from 1979 on was built by ST:TMP.

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