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Star Trek: The Motion Picture Movie Review

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 science fiction film directed by Robert Wise and starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. It’s such a disappointing feature.

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“Enterprise, what we got back didn’t live long… fortunately“

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Admiral Kirk resumes command of the Starship Enterprise in order to seize, examine, and hopefully stop a destructive space shuttle that is spotted approaching the Earth. I did not like this script at all. The movie is basically about a giant menacing cloud, so of course it ended up being incredibly boring, even more so than due to its excessive runtime.

The movie was an admirable effort for its ambition and artistry. However, I do not expect amazing effects and artistic scenes from Star Trek. I expect some fun action adventure elements and especially philosophical themes and dialogue. Thus, this was an example of an utterly miscalculated attempt to change the source material into something that it was never meant to be. ST should not be ‘2001’ nor did they ever manage to emulate it successfully enough.

As for the characters, they are okay, but far from memorable as the emphasis is never really on any single character, but just an ensemble as a whole. William Shatner was significantly older than in the show itself, but reliably suave and charming. Spock is also good, but underutilized in my opinion. McCoy and Scott got a couple of nice moments, but overall individually speaking most characters suffered due to the nature of the script.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is definitely fantastic in terms of special effects. It looks terrific for 1979, especially in its bright, colorful palette and the massive cloud of energy is quite memorable itself. The score is also excellent, and the production design is definitely splendid. The acting is good as well. There are some quite artistic moments here and the movie was interesting for trying something different, but it mostly failed in that area and the entertainment values are very slim, which was surprising to me given that ‘The Original Series’ was so lighthearted and spirited.

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Rarely has there been a more misguided transition from the small to the big screen than in the case of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Yes, its special effects are excellent for its time, the same goes for the production design and the score, and the characters are solidly depicted. But the movie is too boring as it’s not only overlong, but also its plot about a massive cloud of energy did not leave much room for fun action/adventure elements obviously and it’s lacking thematically speaking. The movie just never felt like Star Trek enough for me. It tried more to emulate ‘2001’ without ever feeling like a proper companion piece to TOS itself.

My Rating – 3