Quote from: Immortan Jonesy on Apr 18, 2023, 05:32:50 PMhttps://twitter.com/Variety/status/1648342369530413056
Her Oscar win has nothing to do with the decision to turn it into a movie...of course.
Quote from: Prez on Mar 02, 2023, 12:09:48 PMWatched (again) the beautiful 4k Director's Edition of Star Trek The Motion Picture.
My fave Star Trek film has never looked or sounded better.
And the Enterprise refit is still my all time favourite starship.
Amen to that. The refit Enterprise still looks great to this day.
I remember falling asleep when I first watched the original theatrical cut of the Motion Picture. I saw there was a good movie somewhere in there, I saw they were trying to say something meaningful and interesting beyond the simple "Buck Rogers" style of sci-fi prevalent then. But it was all kinda hidden and jumbled by everything else. The languid pace in the middle section of the film was especially hard for me to get through. But the ending I always found was good.
Now realizing what a mess the production of the movie was, I guess you could say it could have been worse given the issues with making the movie. How the TMP was supposed to be Star Trek Phase II TV series, then switched to becoming a movie, then switched back again to a TV series before finally the executives decided on turning it into a movie given the success of Star Wars. How it didn't have a finished script when the shooting started. How the special effects were delayed and went
way over-budget. How Roddenberry (repeatedly) seem to want to sabotage the movie with his ill-conceived ideas (I don't know what happened to Roddenberry in the decade between the end of the TOS and TMP, but he developed some pretty wacky ideas...maybe he listened to too many fan worship during his convention attendances). Given all those problems behind-the-scenes, its a credit to Wise that he even managed to assembled a somewhat coherent movie at all.
And then watching the Director's Edition many years later, I can say...there was no argument that edition of the movie was a substantial improvement. The pacing was better, the little character moments that Wise put in helped to make them standout a little more than the mere passive background observers they were in the original cut. And of course the effects, sound and overall presentation were much improved (although to the credit of the TMP theatrical cut, some of the original 1979 effects looks good even to this day).
The Director Edition wasn't perfect though, parts of it still felt a little slow. And there was only so much Wise and his crew could do to paper over some of the inherent weaker moments of the film. Nevertheless, I will say in conclusion the Director's Edition help rescued the TMP from a badly flawed movie to become a flawed gem. Not perfect. Certainly not Wise's best film, but it is much more watchable and enjoyable than the theatrical version.
