The first Star Trek film of 1979 is an exciting, expansive and rather tense first foray into feature length filmmaking for the popular franchise - a bold going where very few, if any, television shows had gone before. There's a polished sense of spectacle, adventure and smarts all wrapped up into one about it; a sheen of precision and careful planning about the production – a sense of craft to it. Indeed, "The Motion Picture" rather than "the movie", or anything else for that matter, is a perfect subtitle for something that has a swagger about it; a piece that has pretensions to be something a little more than your average space adventure blast 'em up, without possessing much in the way of arrogance that comes with a self-conscious knowledge that it's heading down this respective route. The film is set in a distant future further still within deepest of deep space, and yet its chief source of spectacle arrives in the form of the speaking; reasoning and communication between a number of its characters, most notably its protagonist and new-found antagonist during the final act.
The film follows a relatively familiar, if unspectacular, singular line framework, for sure - in that regular battles must be conquered along the way to ending where they do and that the individual misunderstandings crew members have with each other need to be resolved, but it is remarkable how by the time the final act as arrived, the piece is willing to abstain from conventional conclusion. We begin with the focusing on what will come to form as the film's primary source for plight: a huge energy cloud thousands of miles away from an Earth, whose own measurements of time has seen it reach the 23rd century. We observe some spaceships passing by, our eye unsure on what to focus on as lingering shots of the crafts and the distinct turrets that stick up out of them capture our gaze more than anything. A cut inside reveals some ugly looking creatures using an alien language and distinct technology, technology they use to attack the large purple energy cloud before it itself wipes them out with relative ease. The desired effect of lingering on space ships we have never before encountered, and therefore require time so a to become familiarised with them, before cutting inside to reveal the ugly creatures said edit reveals and concluding the process by having those creatures killed off, is an effective procedure establishing distinct hierarchy within this new world and immediately implements this glowing energy cloud at the centre of all the film's tension and wonder.
Director Robert Wise has effectively blended a slow-burning approach to telling a space adventure with an overall narrative framework of race-against-time. The cloud is heading for Earth; it's unstoppable; nobody knows what it is or what it wants and thus far, has only reacted aggressively to what it's encountered. Luckily for Earth based space programme organisation Starfleet, the one ship nearby and able to head on out to intercept and investigate is the famed U.S.S. Enterprise harboured at its sunny, welcoming, radiant and busy-bodied San Fransisco headquarters; far away from the large, open, gloomy, ominous locales of the previous sequences. Said ship is, of course, headed up by its chief: a certain Admiral named James Kirk played, as in the TV show of the 1960s, by William Shatner, somebody whom storms in unopposed and assumes control from acting captain Willard Decker (Collins) thus nicely teeing up the friction existing between the two of them thereafter. The film also makes decent use of a back-burning item in the form of The Enterprise's overall physical state, its potential to malfunction ominous when we recall what the energy cloud is capable of to fully functioning ships; the death of two people trying to use the transporter beams rather-a stark forcing home of this.
The crew will eventually come to be made up of varying people of varying ethnicities, in that an African American; a Hmong man; a young Aryan; etc. will form the nucleus of the ship's diverse operators, successfully getting across a sense of the whole thing being a multicultural effort. Also along for the ride is Indian actress Persis Khambatta's alien life-form named Ilia, who's given a Lieutenant rank and shares a romantic history with the demoted Decker. Of the original crew, a foil arrives for Kirk in the form of the ship's doctor named Bones McCoy (Kelley), whereas male specimen of the Vulcan race variety Mr. Spock (Nimoy) comes aboard when he is drawn to the cloud due to the effect it had on his usually transparent emotional state. Wise shoots the unveiling of The Enterprise, as it undergoes repair work in a series of longing close ups. Kirk and one of his engineers very slowly veer up to it in a transport pod, the reaction on Kirk's face and a general sense of awe is inferred onto the audience, namely the die hard fans of the show, so as to help along the reaction as The Enterprise is revealed on the big screen for the very first time. Wise shoots what feels like all corners of the ship, from all possible angles and compositions, as people stand around it on apparatus seeing to it: a literal repair job for what's happening within the film, a metaphorical preparation/revealing job as the final touches are made and the big reveal is made.
The film is a surprisingly remarkable piece of drama, with Wise wedging great peril out of the simplest of ideas such as the being on collision course with a small but devastatingly effective asteroid as well as some uncanny happenings during other encounters which are instead helped along by the special effects that greatly enhance the ominous predicaments, rather than just cruelly ageing film and sapping out drama. The film is engaging and workmanlike enough in equal measure to work as both decent escapism and as smart, brooding science fiction.
The film follows a relatively familiar, if unspectacular, singular line framework, for sure - in that regular battles must be conquered along the way to ending where they do and that the individual misunderstandings crew members have with each other need to be resolved, but it is remarkable how by the time the final act as arrived, the piece is willing to abstain from conventional conclusion. We begin with the focusing on what will come to form as the film's primary source for plight: a huge energy cloud thousands of miles away from an Earth, whose own measurements of time has seen it reach the 23rd century. We observe some spaceships passing by, our eye unsure on what to focus on as lingering shots of the crafts and the distinct turrets that stick up out of them capture our gaze more than anything. A cut inside reveals some ugly looking creatures using an alien language and distinct technology, technology they use to attack the large purple energy cloud before it itself wipes them out with relative ease. The desired effect of lingering on space ships we have never before encountered, and therefore require time so a to become familiarised with them, before cutting inside to reveal the ugly creatures said edit reveals and concluding the process by having those creatures killed off, is an effective procedure establishing distinct hierarchy within this new world and immediately implements this glowing energy cloud at the centre of all the film's tension and wonder.
Director Robert Wise has effectively blended a slow-burning approach to telling a space adventure with an overall narrative framework of race-against-time. The cloud is heading for Earth; it's unstoppable; nobody knows what it is or what it wants and thus far, has only reacted aggressively to what it's encountered. Luckily for Earth based space programme organisation Starfleet, the one ship nearby and able to head on out to intercept and investigate is the famed U.S.S. Enterprise harboured at its sunny, welcoming, radiant and busy-bodied San Fransisco headquarters; far away from the large, open, gloomy, ominous locales of the previous sequences. Said ship is, of course, headed up by its chief: a certain Admiral named James Kirk played, as in the TV show of the 1960s, by William Shatner, somebody whom storms in unopposed and assumes control from acting captain Willard Decker (Collins) thus nicely teeing up the friction existing between the two of them thereafter. The film also makes decent use of a back-burning item in the form of The Enterprise's overall physical state, its potential to malfunction ominous when we recall what the energy cloud is capable of to fully functioning ships; the death of two people trying to use the transporter beams rather-a stark forcing home of this.
The crew will eventually come to be made up of varying people of varying ethnicities, in that an African American; a Hmong man; a young Aryan; etc. will form the nucleus of the ship's diverse operators, successfully getting across a sense of the whole thing being a multicultural effort. Also along for the ride is Indian actress Persis Khambatta's alien life-form named Ilia, who's given a Lieutenant rank and shares a romantic history with the demoted Decker. Of the original crew, a foil arrives for Kirk in the form of the ship's doctor named Bones McCoy (Kelley), whereas male specimen of the Vulcan race variety Mr. Spock (Nimoy) comes aboard when he is drawn to the cloud due to the effect it had on his usually transparent emotional state. Wise shoots the unveiling of The Enterprise, as it undergoes repair work in a series of longing close ups. Kirk and one of his engineers very slowly veer up to it in a transport pod, the reaction on Kirk's face and a general sense of awe is inferred onto the audience, namely the die hard fans of the show, so as to help along the reaction as The Enterprise is revealed on the big screen for the very first time. Wise shoots what feels like all corners of the ship, from all possible angles and compositions, as people stand around it on apparatus seeing to it: a literal repair job for what's happening within the film, a metaphorical preparation/revealing job as the final touches are made and the big reveal is made.
The film is a surprisingly remarkable piece of drama, with Wise wedging great peril out of the simplest of ideas such as the being on collision course with a small but devastatingly effective asteroid as well as some uncanny happenings during other encounters which are instead helped along by the special effects that greatly enhance the ominous predicaments, rather than just cruelly ageing film and sapping out drama. The film is engaging and workmanlike enough in equal measure to work as both decent escapism and as smart, brooding science fiction.