Star Trek: The Motion Picture

We've reached an interesting turning point. If you asked me to watch The Motion Picture right now, I'd say "sure" and sit down and do it. And enjoy it, that part is key. The Motion Picture marks the point on this list where I no longer find it painful to watch the movies I'm talking about. So from here on out I'll have more good to say about these films than bad.

A novel idea, to be sure.

But lets get started with some SPOILERS, shall we? The bad guy is a space probe looking for its creators. Turns out it's the Voyager probe. Except it's like, Voyager 5, or something, so, you know. We never launched that. But whatever. It's now an artificial intelligence trying to find Earth, that falls in love with the dude Kirk demoted so he could captain the Enterprise because Kirk's a jerk. And after falling in love with this dude the probe becomes... one... or something... with him... and then it disappears? Leaves?

"If you could just, I don't know, pretend this never happened?" -The Sci-Fi Community

Basically what I'm saying is that this suffers from the same premise issue as The Final Frontier. The closer you get, the worse it looks. But there are some key differences that make this an okay movie to watch.

And despite what the producers were probably hoping, she was not one of them. She's got lovely pajamas, though.

First, it was made not long after 2001: A Space Odyssey. That meant that they wanted to try and surf into some major profits on the success of that movie. Those of you who have seen 2001 would recognize this as less than a good idea. But it meant that instead of filling all of the endless boring moments of this plot with bad dialogue and a retarded message, they did like 2001 did and filled it with wide shots of space and music. So we don't have Kirk trying to be simultaneously funny and introspective, we don't have Sybok's extended treatise on pain, and we don't have whatever they were trying to say about God. Instead, it's all just space and music. Would some people call that boring? Sure. And I can see where you'd come from on that. But I'll take that over the other alternatives.

My second point is related to this. The music. There's lots of it. Extended scenes where all you have is the exterior of the ship, the occasional shot of the crew looking out a window, and my favorite score Jerry Goldsmith ever wrote. It's a symphony, and it's moving, beautiful, and passionate. The movie is none of those things, but that's okay. The music alone makes this movie worth watching. If you like listening to the occasional symphony, then you would probably enjoy this movie. Ignore the dialogue to the best of your ability. It's superfluous. The music is why you're really there.

Well, the music and that chin, of course.

And last, but not least, this movie was the starting point of something great. It seems slightly contrived to recognize a movie just because it led to another movie, but two of the five sequels to this film are in my top ten favorite movies list. So I'm grateful that this movie made enough money to justify the rest. Even if two of the rest are even worse than this one. So bear that in mind, ignore the plot, and you should be fine. Just let that score sweep you through the experience, and...

Okay, yeah. I'm gonna go listen to it right now.