14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
1. Squandered Sybok
When concocting the story for The Final Frontier director/star William Shatner was reportedly struck by televangelists and how they built cult-like followings, and thus conceived of a religious fanatic as the antagonist of the movie.
It’s an interesting notion; if someone could come along and magically erase all the emotional pains that hold you back it’s logical you’d want to share that with everyone. It’s rather like the euphoria of feeling “born again.”
What could have been a powerful analogy to cults and how they turn converts against their families and societies through brainwashing and use them to advance the cult’s goal isn’t explored at all. Seeing how even the Enterprise crew “family” might be influenced by a charismatic figure who can hit each in their emotional core held the promise of a terrific drama. What does it take to break their bonds and make each member of the crew decide to follow Sybok instead of Kirk — and by extension, Starfleet — and the mission they’ve spent decades on?
But the problem is that the movie is not actually interested in its core premise. The plotting is a textbook amateurish mess that gets lost in the weeds and loses focus on what it should be about. It ends up as a fetch quest to find (a false) “god”; pointless Klingon krap; lame would-be comedy; utterly missing that its primary antagonist's core power should make moot much of what happens when — in almost every circumstance — he could have just strolled in and brainwashed everyone into “willingly” helping him.
It’s a movie stuffed full of elements with the potential for a truly compelling adventure into the final frontier, but it’s unfocused and episodic and fails to come together.
What a waste.
Waste, my friends… waste is dumb.