By Fellow humans, the day has come. William Shatner has shown some humility. Well, no, not really, but he has admitted that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier wasn’t actually all that great a movie. I mean, it’s great in all the ways it’s terrible and in all the ways it’s just so Shatner, but it’s not great in the way that a good movie is great. In fact the word bad comes to mind, and that’s coming from a guy who finds good in Enterprise.
When confronted with a feature in EW where actors promote their new project while apologizing for a past flub Shatner gives us the best apology for Star Trek V we’re ever going to see.
I got the chance to direct a several-million-dollar movie, Star Trek V, and I did not get the help I needed in allocating my budget, so when it came to shooting the ending — needing a good villain and lots of computer graphics — I had run out of money. Sorry about that. I had to use footage that I had already shot — and spit on it a lot. I wanted to give [the audience] earth-breaking granite monsters spewing rocks and fire. Instead, I had a few pebbles in my hand that I threw at the camera.
Errr, what about the rest of the movie, Mr. Shatner? You know where the screenplay is bungled all over the place and your direction basically turns every other character into not-Captain-Kirk? It wasn’t the crummy ending that didn’t make it a good movie. In fact the ending gives the best line of the whole movie, “What does god need with a star ship?” Then again that line is only good because the film leading up to it is as ridiculous as it is.
It’s always been clear to any fan that Star Trek V was Shatner’s vanity project. An attempt to show the world that he could do just as good as that pesky Leonard Nemoy at making a Star Trek movie. Instead we got Uhura fan dances, McCoy in a ascot and Spock in rocket boots. I simultaneously love and hate Shatner for it all.
