@CWO:
I once heard that one referred to as “Star Trek: The Motionless Picture.”
The other major problem when assessing the first Star Trek movie is that it is in the unfortunate position of having to be compared to The Wrath of Khan. In that light TMP can only look bad, especially when you consider that Wrath has the famous “death” of Mr. Spock. I’m sure when compared to other Sci-fi films of its era, like Odessy it;s a good film, that dosn’t make it any less boring, but objectively i’m sure it will hold up.
The other thing to remember is that Star Trek TMP, wasn’t given the go ahead by Paramount not to be another “hard” sci-fi film, but to capitalize on the bump in popularity sci-fi was having because of the release of Star Wars. Now thinking on that we can see just how much of a failure TMP really was, because compared to Star Wars, TMP is like a dead dog nailed to an armchair. TMP nearly ruined the franchise where as ANH (that’s A New Hope) was the birth of one of the biggest and most profitable Science fiction series in history.
Another thing I’d like to hear opinions on; J.J. Abrams has been taped to direct the new Star Wars movies that Disney will be putting out and is also the director of the relaunch, or reboot or rewhatever, of the Star Trek series. What do you guys think of one man holding the directors chair on two of the biggest and most influential Science fiction series in our history?