Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Movie Review: "Star Trek: The Final Frontier" (1989)Screenwriter David Loughery, intrigued by the immense success of predecessor "Star Trek: The Voyage Home" directed by Leonard Nimoy in season 1985/1986 to excellence, comes "The Final Frontier" directed by William Shatner in technically-overthrown malpractice manners, this "Star Trek" picture is only able to convince in moments of complete harmony between Kirk, Bones and Spock singing campfire song "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in a mind-calming nursery rhythym for the harcore-nostalgic-fan of the original series, when story of substantial questions in a galaxy-multiplying constant-expanding universe get easy pushed away by potentially-misdirected Laurence Luckinbill playing Spock's halfbrother Sybok, who as Vulcan nemesis character had the all-too-missed opportunity alongside confronting actor Leonard Nimoy in another calmly-received Mr. Spock portrayal of already-inhabited wisdom from the written directing voyages "The Voyage Home" (1986) and "The Search For Mr. Spock" (1984).What "The Final Frontier" should have been with an epically-raised production budget by Paramount Pictures remains in the stars with visions of full-blown desert "Nimbus III" battles of wishful R-rated proportions with an following space race "Cannonball" run between at least three parties, preferably a high-jacked Starfleet "Enterprise" in metal-splintering stranglehold between a Klingon "Warbird" and Romulan "Capital D'deridex" pursuing in warp-speedways to the Center of the Universe, where a single stab of a bloody poisoned knife, while tribe of "The Dominion" takes the price of truthful simplicities away over an inner struggle of galactic faith, when Captain James T. Kirk denies a full-frontal fight-through, giving in to old republic religious believes that by the end of "The Final Frontier" the reputation of the "Star Trek" universe had been suffering substantially, which could only be rebound by a seemingly ongoing up-to-the-task "Next Generation" crew, led by actor Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who in the 1987 inceptions of a highly-accomplished television series with peaking Cliffhanger-Scenarios and new hostile introduction of constant-assimilating entity of "The Borg" receive all the glory with the audiences.Nevertheless Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) alongside out-going life-loving DeForest Kelley (1920-1999) alongside a traditional "Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004)" score compositions and some decent on-ship visual effect works, partially received by "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade" (1989) occupied industry primus Industrial, Light & Magic (ILM), when again the execution in producing as directing crawls up like an haunted picture entity to single moments of fully-accomplished shot work by cinematographer Andrew Laslo (1926-2011).© 2018 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Having been one of the shows that was part of my childhood and growing up, the original 'Star Trek' still holds up as great and ground-breaking, even if not perfect.The fifth film of the franchise, 'The Final Frontier', is often considered the worst of the films, and one can understand why. To me, it is nowhere near as bad as its reputation, and feel in some way that the film was doomed even before it was released. Whether it is the worst overall 'Star Trek' film is up for debate, it's a worthy contender. Is it the worst of the films based of the original series? Yes.It is not a bad film by all means. The cinematography is neat and very nicely done in the quieter scenes, and William Shatner's direction works well in these moments.Jerry Goldsmith's score is awesome personified, there is no bias intended as Goldsmith has always been one of my favourite composers, but the score here really rouses the spirits while touching the heart also.'Star Trek V: The Final Frontier' does have some good scenes, namely the camping fire scene, the inner/greater pain scene (very intense and moving) and Scotty knocking himself out (the one bit of humour that works).The chemistry between Kirk, Spock and McCoy is the film's driving force, and the interaction and interplay between them is the asset that comes off strongest.A few of the performances are good. Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley are very good, and Laurence Luckinbill does very well with what he's given, a villain that's both menacing and sympathetic. The rest of the crew mostly are very competently played.Unfortunately, they are underused and what they are given falls flat completely mostly, turning them into cartoonish parodies. The erotic dance was completely out of place and the getting lost stuff feels like filler to pad out a story that doesn't have an awful lot to it. Plus we have the most embarrassing rendition of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" you'll find anywhere.Generally the humour is as flat as a pancake, really overdone and juvenile. 'The Voyage Home' had humour too but it was actually entertaining and even when poking fun felt more like 'Star Trek'. Shatner's direction is incredibly chaotic in the action scenes, which sees production values that look unforgivably cheap even for the budget, with haphazard cinematography and editing and the worst of the uniformly shockingly shoddy special effects.Just for the record, as much as people would say that Shatner's ego has a lot to do with the problematic nature of the film (and yes having him trying to take on more than he could chew was excessive and most likely was not going to work from the start), the failure is much more at the door of budget limitations and studio interference, Shatner's original vision would have made for a much better and actually a fascinating film.On top of that, 'The Final Frontier' is filled with overripe dialogue with too much emphasis on the humour, which as said doesn't work, and less on heartfelt moments and thought-provoking conflicts. While there are a few good performances, the supporting cast are too underused to shine properly and Shatner's performance has more ham than the world's biggest pig farm.A big failure here is the story, which is dull and takes too long to get going with a plot too thin to sustain the running time. The whole stuff about god just confused the story and that for Sybok was a thrown in and unnecessary plot device done to presumably give more development to a character who was actually interesting and well developed already. The ending is convoluted and anti-climactic.Overall, hugely problematic but not without obvious merits. 5/10 Bethany Cox

The Final Frontier is the weakest movie out of the Star Trek Motion Picture-Saga, but not as bad as it's made out to be...The positive aspects first: The crew is as interesting and even funnier as always, and their are a few very good scenes like when McCoy, Kirk and Spock are on a camping trip together, or when they get their inner pain shown to get over it, which has the hardest effect on (and best performance from) McCoy (DeForest Kelley).The cinematography is pretty good and the movie has a neat look overall, the lighting could need more atmosphere and contrast, but that also works in it's favour in terms of the look of the new Enterprise which isn't nearly ready to go, and has many glitches and things that have to be fixed, so the bland lighting looks like the work lights on a construction site and give you the feeling, that everything's still broken.Even the theme of the movie isn't that bad, the search for our reason of existence, the fight for our believes, and to break frontiers no one ever broke before. But none of this themes get to be explored, or a satisfying conclusion so that you feel like you wasted your time to hear a story with no meaning.The soundtrack is very good and reuses, as the only Movie from the original series, Jerry Goldsmiths theme for the first film, which get to be used for all the next Generation films. Also the sound effects are really good.The movie has many problems, which is the reason why the positive section of the review already has negative points, but i think it's a solid entertaining Star Trek movie.Most of the problems are because of money restrains, which prevented William Shatner (who directed only this movie, but not a single one again) to get his full vision on screen, which could have been better, or worse, but it would have had a more satisfying ending.It's overall a pretty decent Sci-Fi-movie which is mostly for Star Trek-Fans, because the reason this movie works even with all the errors, is because of the crew which hold together the whole film...

Yeah "Nemisis" and "Insurrection" are mighty unpopular but, as all Star Trek's are not gems, this is a real stinker. Roger Ebert called it the worst. Some would argue that the first one wasn't so hot either. At the risk of "alienating" (good pun) all "Trekies", religion of any sort never works out in most sci-fi movies. Here an obscure half-brother of Spock pops into the Star Trek Universe. He appears to be a Nomad, which is laffable, now that we all know Leonard Nimoy's ethnic history. I have always respected the man. So here we have a very touchy subject in an uncomfortable movie. It turns out "It" is just an evil planet-sized Bogey Man and certainly not our idea of The Creator. All very disappointing and mean-spirited. I bet this was a bad midnight-hour desperate rewrite, and it failed. A bad or good ending can save or kill a movie. As shallow as a bad 45 minute "B" episode. Only "Lost in Space" is worse! It's a "mercy" "7" for the usual excellent special effects?