Star Trek The Motion Picture – 1979
Many people believe that the odd numbered Star Trek films are inferior to the even numbered ones. For the older movies, there may be some truth to that belief, but I actually like the plot of the franchise’s first big-screen venture. Star Trek The Motion Picture was not one of the better feature film in the franchise because it had pacing that made glaciers look fast. But the special effects were not at fault. The cinematography, the set design, and the aesthetics of the film were fantastic, with maybe the exception of the pajama-like costumes.
The original budget for the film was $15 million, but by the time the troubled production was completed, just days before its premier, the budget had ballooned to an incredible $46 million. This was mostly due to the special effects. When the original optical effects team was unable to complete their tasks on time, Effects Supervisor Douglas Trumbull was allowed as much money as he needed to meet the film’s premier date.
But I have to say, the effects, slow as they were, were mostly pretty phenomenal. Still, there were a few things that looked a little shoddy, and so I’ll quickly go over them. In the beginning, there was a scene in which three Klingon ships are flying towards the camera. The telltale black outlines that marked substandard compositing effects were completely visible. Also, the giant Ilea Spock encounters on his space-walk looks like a badly computer-generated figure. And lest I forget, the early-generation CGI wormhole through which they passed looked pretty ridiculous, though this one is forgivable since CGI was still in its infancy.
And then there were the good effects, slow as most of them were. The Enterprise has to fly into the massive interior of the mysterious space cloud known as V’Ger. The glowing shapes and shadows are made to look humongous. Unfortunately, though they looked fantastic, they were shown much too slowly. It went a long way to portray the alien vessel’s size, but it also made for a long and dull sequence that brought the pacing of the film to a near halt.
There were photon torpedoes, alien obliteration weapons that spouted writhing lines of electricity like what you might see coming from a Tesla coil. The electricity would seem to consume entire ships and space stations, starting at one end and moving to the other. That was a pretty cool effect. And the alien probe that looked like a religious pillar of fire also looked great. And finally, there was the climactic and ethereal joining of V’Ger with its creator. It all looked pretty unique and larger than life, transcending the original Star Trek TV show from whence it came.
My only complaint about the visuals of the film is a mild one. They made the choice to make nearly every effect, except the orange wormhole, blue. Almost the entire movie seemed to be filmed in shades of blue, black, and white. There was really nothing wrong with this choice, except that the limited color pallet got a little boring after a while. But blue or not, slow or not, the effects were visually stunning!