Recently the one and only William Shatner talked with The Hollywood Reporter (via SFFGazette.com), about how he felt about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. In 1989, the actor stepped behind the camera to helm Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, an entry widely considered a let-down (some hardcore fans have since found reasons to love it).
Mr. Shatner admitted he has some serious regrets about the project and remains disappointed by its failure to live up to fan expectations.
“I wish that I’d had the backing and the courage to do the things I felt I needed to do. My concept was, ‘Star Trek goes in search of God,’ and management said, ‘Well, who’s God? We’ll alienate the nonbeliever, so, no, we can’t do God.’ And then somebody said, ‘What about an alien who thinks they’re God?’ Then it was a series of my inabilities to deal with the management and the budget.”
“I failed. In my mind, I failed horribly. When I’m asked, ‘What do you regret the most?,’ I regret not being equipped emotionally to deal with a large motion picture,” Shatner confesses. “So in the absence of my power, the power vacuum filled with
people that didn’t make the decisions I would’ve made.”
When the The Hollywood Reporter put it to the actor that Star Trek V had the odds stacked against it (including a shockingly small budget for a sci-fi movie), Shatner made it clear he still takes the blame but acknowledges that it was a challenging production.
“It is on me. [In the finale,] I wanted granite [rock creatures] to explode out of the mountain. The special effects guy said, ‘I can build you a suit that’s on fire and smoke comes out.’ I said, ‘Great, how much will that cost?’ They said, ‘$250,000 a suit.’ Can you make 10 suits? He said, ‘Yeah. That’s $2.5 million. You’ve got a $30 million budget. You sure you want to spend [it on that]?'”
So, as you can see Mr. Shatner has some pretty large regrets about his beyond the camera work with 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
