Delayed Reaction: Star Trek: The Motion Picture

The Pitch: OK, I guess this franchise won't go away quietly. Let's make a movie for it.

Kirk takes back control of the USS Enterprise to save Earth.

It sure would've been interesting to be a SciFi/Fantasy fan in the late 70s. The insane success of Star Wars alone would've been special to witness. Then Close Encounters does well too. Suddenly, Science Fiction is viable in theaters again. Superman broke big, proving that the blockbuster craze started by Jaws wasn't going anywhere. Then you have Star Trek, a decade ahead of the curve but trying to play catch up by the late 70s. There is no franchise with a history quite like Star Trek's (Firefly is the closest I've ever been able to come up with). It was too good, too early and audiences originally didn't know what to do with it. It became a syndication phenomenon that eventually convinced Paramount that it could have success in movies.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn't very good, but it isn't very good in interesting ways. This is the first time the franchise had money. The show had to do a lot with a little for a long time, then they suddenly had a lot of money to spend. It's like when a director jumps from indie movies to $200 million productions and doesn't know what to do with it -- cough, Jurassic World, cough. That's why this movie is best known now for going special effects crazy. It's like they had to get this all out of their system so they could get back to storytelling with later installments. Or maybe Gene Roddenberry just went crazy with all the freedom and needed to step away. (Probably both things) 

This, more than a lot of the Star Trek movies, feels like one big, expensive episode. It didn't surprise me to find out after the fact that it was adapted from an unproduced script of a planned revival series. The movie is a little dull. Everyone feels out of place and rusty, like they hadn't done this for a decade (I wonder why). It's odd, given the ease of the performances in later movies*. Maybe, like the budget, it's another one of those adjustments they had to get through so later installments could work better.

*Somehow, this is actually the last of the Star Trek movies that I hadn't seen. It's probably for the best, because this really wouldn't've made me excited for sequels.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend