That Green-Blooded Son of a Bitch!
My fascination with the Star Trek series endures. The previous movie in the series has long been called the greatest Star Trek movie, and I found it to be good, but perhaps a bit overhyped and spoiled. But that doesn’t really bode well for the rest of the series. Especially for today’s movie. I have heard director Edgar Wright say that every odd numbered Star Trek movie is crap, and we’re coming upon number three. Perhaps Mr. Wright was exaggerating as Rotten Tomatoes rates this movie pretty well. We’ll just have to find out as I review Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, written by Harve Bennett, directed by Leonard Nimoy, and starring William Shatner, Christopher Lloyd, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Merritt Butrick, Robin Curtis, Mark Lenard, and Judith Anderson.
After their battle with Khan Noonien Singh in the previous movie, the Starship Enterprise is fucked up. It limps back to Starfleet for repairs, only to find that the ship is to be decommissioned, much to the chagrin of her Captain, James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Even more chagrining (I just found out that was a word!) to Captain Kirk is that he lost his First Officer and friend, Spock (Leonard Nimoy), in the battle with Khan. Hope comes when Spock’s father, Sarek (Mark Lenard), tells Kirk that Spock would have transferred his spirit to someone to be revived later, and that someone turns out to be the Enterprises Chief Medical Officer, Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Kirk and his crew decide to hijack the Enterprise and take it to find Lieutenant Saavik (Robin Curtis) and Kirk’s son, David Marcus (Merritt Butrick), who are investigating a planet created by the Genesis device, where Spock’s body landed and has started to regenerate as a child. But they will have to be fast as a Klingon ship, led by Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd), are way ahead of them.
It would appear that Edgar Wright is prone to exaggeration. Even though this was an odd numbered Star Trek movie, I thought it was a strong enough offering. Perhaps not quite as good as the Wrath of Khan, but a decent enough effort. I found Wrath of Khan unsurprising because everything within the story had already been spoiled for me. The Search for Spock was spoiled because the story was in the title. The Search for Spock basically covers the story of the movie, but I wouldn’t say that was necessarily a bad thing. It did attempt a few emotional surprises, possibly because of the success they had in the previous movie with them, but they were hit and miss in this one. For instance, I felt absolutely nothing when Kirk’s son died. Perhaps I had not had time enough to get attached to him as he only appeared as a fairly insignificant part of the previous movie where I was only half sure I heard them mention the guy was Kirk’s son. Then he never really did anything awesome to adhere himself to me. He was just kind of in the background. So when he died, I know they wanted it to be sad for me, but I couldn’t muster that. Strangely enough, I did feel a twang of shock and sadness when the Enterprise blew up. I had 80+ episodes and 3 movies to get attached to that thing. And, even though I now fully expect there to be some convoluted way of bringing it back in ensuing movies, I did not expect to see it blow up. So, to sum that up: I don’t care that the hero’s son died, but I do care that his spaceship did. Probably not what they were going for.
The movie still looks good. Things typically don’t get worse as movies progress and they’re given more money. I should probably not bother even talking about it in the future Star Trek movie reviews unless I think of jokes to make about it. Uh…that green spaceship sure looked stupid, eh? …Okay, moving on…
Not a whole lot of changes made to the cast, so not a whole lot to add to it. Because of Back to the Future, I will probably always be excited to see Christopher Lloyd. Although I’ve seen him in a few bad movies, I’ve never seen him do badly. He’s always really compelling to watch. I also got to wondering how much pussy the 8 people that played Spock tried to get by bragging that they played Spock. Or do you think they just got their asses kicked for it?
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock did alright by me. Perhaps not living up to Wrath of Khan and just as easy to predict, but I found it satisfying and entertaining. Some of the shocks they attempted work, and some did not, mainly because I care more about a starship than I do about the hero’s permed son, but it worked, it looked good, and the cast did a good job. And they had Christopher Lloyd. That’s alright by me. I’ll still recommend this one for a watch. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock gets “Scotty, you’re as good as your word” out of “Come, come, Mr. Scott. Young minds, fresh ideas. Be tolerant.”
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