Woody Falstaff Kubrick

I voted no (my long ass post is a few pages back) but this is the best argument for a yes that I've seen and your thematic description actually makes me want to re-evaluate it. And yeah, Star Trek (especially the movies and TNG era) is really heavy-handed with the rather obvious and basic literary references. Sherlock Holmes, Moby Dick, Shakespeare, etc.. not that those aren't great works (they are!) but they're just the most cliched idea of "grrrrreat LIT-reh-CHAHHHH". Self-indulgent TNG sidenote since we're talking about Trek anyway- why on earth didn't they just make Picard a Brit? Patrick Stewart is just SOOO British that the conceit that he was playing a Frenchman just always felt like a thing the writers should've dispensed with once he was cast.

Voted no. I love Star Trek, but we're not discussing placing the Star Trek phenomenon into the Canon, we're talking about this one movie. It's a decently plotted and written story, but it is a bit clumsy and campy. I do love this movie, but objectively I can see how silly it all is and figure I love it because I grew up with these characters and they move me. When Spock dies and I cry my head off, it's not just because of the way this movie told Spock's story.. it's because of all the HISTORY I have with the character of Spock and Kirk. It's not bad, it's a good movie! But is it a "great film"? There is just too much bizarro not-thought-out filmmaking going on here for that. Bones's hamfisted opposition to Genesis (and for all the overacting Shatner's accused of, really it's Kelley who takes the cake with the hammy acting here). I have to ask.. why on earth did Scotty bring the dying man to the bridge? You'd think he'd be desperate to get to Sick Bay first. It was just to drive home this weird theme of Kirk having been guilty of something. That's the other thing that feels forced in this movie. The movie seems to basically agree with Khan that Kirk has all these sins, that making decisions that can get people killed is a moral failing when it's actually his JOB! The idea that Kirk has never dealt with loss or no-win situations.. I mean, my memory could be faulty but I seem to remember Kirk being fully willing to die in some of the old episodes, fully willing to sacrifice himself and his ship to save a species or a loved one and luck (and the sponsors, haha) coming through and saving the day in the nick of time. I can see where this is the post-Vietnam malaise and self-doubt creeping in, but Amy is right that there are far better movies for that and it's kind of clumsy here. There is no sub-text and the themes are spelled out in the dialogue. All that said, Nimoy and Shatner transcend the material. Nimoy always has been truly the best performance in Trek (yes, along with Patrick Stewart who is fantastic), and Shatner also really rises to the occasion. Ok let's talk Khan. Khan was far more interesting as a character in Space Seed. No comparison. You actually saw the "superior intellect" at work there. You saw how he seduced a woman to give up everything she was for him. You saw how he played Kirk like a fiddle and got the upper hand. You could even see the value in his existence in the end and why it was better for Kirk to drop him off on a new uninhabited world to conquer rather than just hand him to a Federation prison or kill him. In this movie, he's just a bumbling revenge monster. I'm ok with the revenge theme, but a little complexity and reflection would've been interesting to see in him. Montalban gave a great performance with the material he had, so no complaints about him. Anyway, I feel like I'm overbashing it to make a point. Truthfully I enjoy this movie very much but I recognize that it's the nostalgia and love for the characters that I'm feeling. It's just not a "great film" and I think so much of what works in it works in the context of Star Trek as a whole rather than standing alone as a brilliant work of art. So, it's a "no", but a "no" that hurts me more than it hurts the movie. Just a side-note about the "mansplaining". I'm not generally a fan of that term, as I think it's often used to just tell guys who don't agree with you to shut up. But in this case, it really felt like I was listening to a movie critic (Amy) trying to discuss the merits of a film on its own terms and the guys were all Ain't-It-Cooling in their corner, assuring her that she just doesn't get it because she's not a Trekkie. And I think the fact that she's not a Trekkie gave her response to the film a certain purity that I would've taken more seriously if I were them. They're just too in love with the genre and their own childhoods to see the flaws in the movie.