Over the summer, I decided to watch (most) of the original Star Trek films (okay, I skipped VI--sorry, Shatner). I started with The Motion Picture. I saw it years ago and remembered it as sort of a waste of time, but hey, sometimes, my memory plays tricks on me.
It didn't.
That is one incredibly boring film.
Because The Motion Picture is trying so hard to be something else, it doesn't invite a celebration of that universe. In sum, it fails to have fun. The costumes are boring. The ship is boring. The many, many shots of the ship going places or people approaching the ship or people approaching the entity or characters watching all this happen are boring.
Ultimately, there's nothing there. 
None of this nothingness is helped by The Motion Picture's plot. It is based around a classic Star Trek/sci-fi trope (object in space has supposedly mysterious origins and a mission of death) but the problem seems almost entirely disconnected from the characters. The plot relies instead on unnecessary complications to lend the trope profundity it doesn't deserve ("The Doomsday Machine" is not one of my favorite original episodes; it is still better than The Motion Picture).
When I tried to give my TOS fan-fiction characters things to do during The Motion Picture
mission, I couldn't come up with much. I finally put one of my
characters to work performing autopsies on the officers who get killed
in the transporter accident--uh, I guess the tissue got rebeamed to the
Enterprise. Not technically, but I had to give the folks in the medical
bay some work as opposed to them staring at the instruments in awe: Look at the color scheme!
In comparison, my characters had TONS to do in Wrath of Khan: investigating possible sabotage of the Genesis Project, search and rescue attempts, triage, duties on the bridge.
My characters had so much to do in Wrath of Khan, not because Wrath is complicated. Its plot is quite simple, being neither strained nor complex. One could even argue that it is less complex than The Motion Picture. Guy known to the crew wants revenge. He quotes great lines from the nineteenth century while starships behave like sea ships from the nineteenth century (with the additional three-dimensional stuff, so I guess Das Boot crept in there). Crafty maneuvers. Heroic sacrifices. Hey, where's Ioan Gruffudd!?
Yet despite its deceptive simplicity, Wrath of Khan--unlike The Motion Picture--is fully invested in its universe. My characters had things to do because Starfleet and its friends and enemies were no longer observers but participants.
Thank you, Nicholas Meyer.
The lesson: stories do best when they are written by people who love the genre/series/franchise/world AS CREATIVE FANS, not as star-struck overly awed sycophants. --I added the last phrase based on comments :)
3 comments:
I think it was Shatner who said that the main problem with Star Trek movie #1 was that (many) people involved were so reverential and awed. "Look, the Enterprise! Let's slowly examine it for 5 minutes!" etc.
Plinkett argues that Star Wars I, II, and III suffered from a similar problem. People were in so much awe of Lucas that no one dared criticize any of his choices!
It's a very boring movie.
As to the broader point--the awe problem--I've noticed this with books. I read my first, and last, Steven King book years ago. It started out slow, but good, but then kept on going and went completely off the rails. I wondered aloud; "Where is your editor?"
Frankly, the same thing happened with Harry Potter, Unfortunate Events and many other books. Happens in movies too, not just with directors, but a "famous" actor shows up and isn't directed. (I'm reminded of a statement by one of the top dogs who made Blade Runner; he said that everyone was making one movie and Ridley Scott was making another.)
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