Star Trek movie retrospective Part 5: the Final Frontier
Ah, the faint rotten egg smell of suck finally grows and permeates every pore of the hallowed Star Trek franchise. The movies prior to this one had their issues, but the faint whiffs of lame that wafted off them was nothing compared to the overpowering odor emanating from The Final Frontier. This thing reeked like a giant blender full of dead skunks (movie poster image courtesy, as always, of the Star Trek T shirts category).
To be honest, I couldn’t for the life of me remember anything from this dog. I had to Google Star Trek 5 to even figure out which title this was, and then watch the extended trailer to be reminded of what the damn thing was about. However, that two minutes was enough to unlock the repressed memories and like a recovered experience of childhood sexual molestation the horribleness flooded back into the crappy theater of my mind.
The biggest problem with this film was they let Shatner direct it, as well as having a hand in the so called writing. Honestly, would you take even the greatest NASCAR driver in the world and let him design a car from scratch? Sure, he might have some great ideas as to features you could use, but he just wouldn’t have the engineering skills to build a great car. Shatner’s influence is felt in every vomit inducing scene, with an attempt being made to make him look like he wasn’t a out of shape 58 year old.
Anyway, what was happening in 1989? I was personally in a weird place. You see, in 1987 I dropped out of UC Irvine to pursue a career as a lifetime ditchdigger. I got a job working graveyard shift in a medical lab that could be accurately described as hell. In 1989 I realized this sucked and reapplied to UCI. In June when this movie came out I was still working graveyard and looking for anything to help me escape the horrible life experience. This movie looked like a life preserver being tossed to a drowning man, but when it landed it turned out to me made of lead. That was also the year when I most completely misinterpreted a super hot girl’s interest in me, my family left the house I grew up in to live in a crappy mobile home in Fullerton, CA., and my sister went to live with her super hot friend (who had no interest in me, surprise surprise) in order to graduate high school.
In the world gas was $.97 a gallon, the USSR admitted defeat and left Afghanistan (good thing we were never in there. Oh, wait), apartheid starts to be dismantled in South Africa, free elections are happening in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Wall falls, the Chinese government runs over students in Tiananmen Square with tanks, the Exxon Valdez dumps 11 million barrels of oil into Prince William Sound, Bush Sr. is elected president, flag burning is legalized by the Supreme Court, Leona Helmsley goes to jail, Toyota launches Lexus, Ted Bundy was executed, Salman Rushdie is sentenced to death for writing a really boring book (some kind of religious thing too, but book critics were harsh in those days), the very first GPS satellites are put in orbit, Game Boy comes out in Japan, the Intel 486 chip comes out, Microsoft releases it’s first version of Office (which I just spent $120 on. Bastards), and the US Goverenment gives $150 billion to failing banks and savings and loans (ha ha ha. $150 billion. Amateurs).
In entertainment, it was mixed. The Simpsons aired for the first time with some episode that at the time ruled but in retrospect are literally painful to watch. Movies were Batman, When Harry Met Sally, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, My Left Foot, Dead Poets Society, Ghostbusters II, Twins (oh, Arnold), Honey I Shrunk the Kids (was this movie not kind of a death toll for children’s movies to come?), License to Kill, and the Little Mermaid. New Kids on the Block were killing American culture. Other popular music included Duran Duran, Erasure, Prince, Depeche Mode, and Paula Abdul.
Anyway, kind of an up year, in my opinion, if only because I got back into college. I don’t think this film contributed or denigrated the current cultural clime.
The story. Shatner starts off by trying to convince the audience that Kirk can free climb El Capitan in Yosemite, a cliff that is considered extremely challenging even for expert rock climbers. The scene is easily the worst rock climbing scene in cinema history (and yes, I have seen Cliffhanger), and Spocks “rescue” of Kirk when the inevitable happens and Kirk falls Wile E Coyote style suspended my disbelief so high that it if it had fallen it also would have needed a rocket boot powered Spock to save it.
By the way, I’m not kidding about this. I studied physics in college and rate of decent is a pretty simple equation. d=1/2gT(squared). d=distance, g=gravity (in this case, on earth, 32 feet per second, squared), T=Time. El Capitan is 3,000 feet tall. Assuming Kirk was near the top (he wasn’t, but we’ll let that slide). If we plug that in to the equation you end up with a T of 13.69 seconds. It took Spock at least 4 seconds to completely invert himself, and, theoretically, the same at the bottom, leaving 5.69 seconds of time to accelerate and decelerate. The g force for the 2.345 seconds he had to catch Kirk should have bent his spine in half.
Anyway, Spock saves Kirk, leading to a campfire scene so awkward I wanted to stick my head in the flames in order to have the sound of my flesh frying drown it out. Kirk does a bromance monolog about how he can never fail as long as Spock and Bones were around (I guess Scotty was off polishing his widgets or something). They get called to rescue some hostages on the planet Nimbus III (the Nimbus was Zap Brannigan’s ship on Futurama, by the way. Subtle). On Nimbus III they run into Spocks half brother (small universe) who is some kind of full blooded yet super emotional Vulcan (what the hell?) who is on some kind of religious quest to find God (no joke) on a planet at the exact center of the universe. The center of the universe is behind some kind of barrier (no danger there) and he needs a ship to make it happen.
Meanwhile they are being pursued by some Klingons for no apparent reason. I guess they are still pissed about Kirk stealing a ship in the Search for Spock? I really can’t remember. They land on the planet and meet a creature who is supposed to be God, but who needs a ship to escape. Not exactly Omnipotent. The creature goes nuts and Spocks brother has to combat him while the others escape. It’s all kind of a blur at that point. Enterprise shoots the creature, the Klingon ship attacks the Enterprise, Kirk beams to the Klingon ship, some kind of hostage thing happens, and somehow peace reigns once more, with Kirk, Spock, McCoy collecting ticks and chiggers in Yosemite once again.
What it had:
The stupidest looking guns in sci fi history (I’m not kidding on this either. Star Trek has always had guns that look like TV remote controls (or dumber. This is one of my few issues with Star Trek) but these guns look like you made them out of supplies from a plumbing store and based the design on a Super Soaker). Rocket boots. Slapstick (Scotty knocks himself out by walking into a beam. No danger of brain damage there). A really stupid prison break (Scotty “blows a hole in the wall” of the brig, which looks like it was made out of drywall and somehow doesn’t kill or injure the guys inside the very small room. Do the terms “compression” or “spalling” mean nothing?). An emotional Vulcan. A religious Vulcan. A stupid Vulcan. A Vulcan with a forehead big enough to land a shuttle craft on. (these are all the same Vulcan, by the way). The first signs of senility from DeForrest Kelley (watch him at the campfire). A couple of good lines (“Excuse me? What does God need with a space ship?”). In spite of the ego trip, Kirk acting more like Kirk from the series.
What it didn’t have:
A reason to keep me from killing myself. A coherent plot. A clear villain. A prop maker who didn’t ride to work in the short bus. Hot chicks of any kind. An executive producer, apparently.
So, with a couple of decent moments, overall a bust. We will see a ray of hope in the next film but at this point in my opinion the franchise is circling the drain. I need to run but that’s it for now.
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