Now watching, Star Trek, The Motion Picture Blu Ray

I used to hate The Voyage Home, somewhere along the line I've really come to like it, a lot.

 

I guess it grew on you...I love the time travel theme...

 

I think the save the whale thing kind of rubbed me the wrong way the first viewing, honestly for no good reason though.

But once I got past that, man...I've watched it a dozen times or more in the last several years. As you said, love the time travel theme.

 

Whew. I was afraid you were going to say "The floors were too sticky."

 

some fun scenes as well...on the bus was one of them.

 

Nuclear Wessel

 

yep the director's cut dvd is the one i have. haven't seen the bd yet, though i do own wrath of khan on blu ray.

 

Probably my favorite Trek film. Definitely seen it more times than any of the others in the series.

Jerry Goldsmith's score is fantastic and I love the V'ger flyover as well.

I also like its slow pace and epic feel.

And, it has the best warp drive effect ever devised for the Enterprise. Whoever came up with that idea earned his pay for the week.

 

It's kind of annoying that a) the theatrical version of ST:TMP is only available on DVD in a box set, and b) that the "special extended version" has never been released on DVD at all. What they really should've done when the director's cut came out was make a nice deluxe edition that contains all 3 versions, like they did for Close Encounters.

 

Yes, it's horrible but I still love it. I wrote the review on it for my high school newspaper and tore it apart, referred to it as "The Motionless Picture". I saw it in Houston at a theater(whose name I can't recall) had it in 70MM and 6-track Dolby Stereo. I don't think it was but I do remember it looking and sounding glorious. I have it now on laserdisc which had the best sounding audio presentation until I got the blu-ray though the blu-ray exposes some of the production flaws like the dual focus shots.

 

Funny - I've had the opposite reaction. I used to really enjoy "Voyage Home" but every time I see it, I like it less. The humor is too cutesy/forced - and the Catherine Hicks character is arguably the most annoying character in the history of the movies!

 

I'm on. Never bought the blu-ray because of that. I like the Director's Cut version more. I'll buy the movie on blu-ray when they put out that version. It's my favorite of the series. Yeah, better than Khan!

 

Knowing the context of the original "Motion Picture" helps understand its dryness a bit. I try to transplant my mind back to 1979 and understand that fans hadn't had any Trek since the end of the TV series (apart from the animated series), so perhaps it was exciting in the theater to have a seemingly hour-long glory shot of the Enterprise at a docking station. So that helps understand it. But it's still *very* tedious, and I'm someone who enjoys seeing models and practical effects like that. But some of those shots simply tracking around the Enterprise are hard to get through.

The characters had also already started to do impressions of themselves a bit.

But I do enjoy all the Trek films. To me, the "original series" movies are more uneven with more ups and downs. On the other hand, I've never understood the heavy debates about the TNG films. To me, they're essentially just four extra long "reunion" episodes with a bigger budget and in widescreen. Better than the worst TV series episodes, but not as good as the best episodes.

Considering they've re-done the "Original Series" and "TNG" in HD with new special effects, I'm surprised they haven't undertaken the original "Motion Picture" extended version with new effects. If anything, they have a better guide for what to do on that one than they did with the TV series. They essentially would just have to re-do the SD special effects that the Robert Wise oversaw himself for the DVD "Director's Cut" in HD with better CGI.

 

Also interesting is the "Star Trek Phase II" book which I picked up several years ago, which chronicles the mid-late 70's abandoned reboot of the TV series, which later morphed into "The Motion Picture." I'm fascinated with abandoned, unfinished projects, so this was interesting for that reason beyond Star Trek.

It's also interesting to see how the abandoned reboot and the Motion Picture have some germs of ideas used in TNG, like the slightly similar "Decker" and "Riker" characters. They of course famously even re-used "Phase II" scripts on the second season of TNG during a writers strike.

 

When I bought the LD boxed set I mentioned earlier, I worked at a restaurant, and the bartender was a massive "Trek" fan. We discussed "ST:TMP" and I criticized the looooooong shots of the Enterprise as well as other pointless (IMO) visual effects elements. He defended the never-ending tour of the Enterprise because fans were so happy to see the ship with then-top-notch effects.

Which I understand, but that still didn't make it good filmmaking. The looooooong shot of the Enterprise was indulgent in a way that harmed the movie, IMO.

Leonard Nimoy wrote this:

"What do I remember of the movie that I saw? Incredible shots of the Enterprise, looking more massive and awesomely beautiful than she ever had.
And then more shots of the Enterprise, looking massive and beautiful.

And more shots…

Eventually, the special effects became downright tedious."

 

yes I agree, but that would have been too easy...I'm sure they will release it one day in ANOTHER BOX SET! LOL!

 

The ST the Motion Picture DVD has test footage from Phase 2.

 

I prefer the director's cut myself; it feels like the pace is quicker and I prefer the audio/effects. I've always felt ST:TMP was the closest thing to the original series. In the later movies, it seems that the characters so exaggerated....Scotty as the funny, bumbling engineer who walks into a girder, the whales/comedy bits, one liners, etc. I'd rate TMP as my favorite, then say II and/or VI, but they're far behind TMP. TMP would've been perfect if they'd have been able to light the bridge adequately and use more colorful, serious uniforms instead of light blue pajamas.

 

How is blu ray of this movie, going make a largely panned movie better.?

 

I did the transfer for Mr. Wise's personal cut, and it ran under 2 hours. I was told by Paramount that he did not like the long, long running time of the original film, and they cut all those scenes back in for the theatrical release against his wishes.

The term "director's cut" is thrown around many times, and the truth is that what you saw in the theater is generally (but not always) that cut. The truth is, what they should call it is "the longer version," which doesn't sound as hip.

I personally think it's a very, very boring movie with a really derivative story ("the Enterprise crew meets God!"), but it has some great moments. We nutty fans were delirious at having a new Star Trek adventure in 1979, after a 10-year-absence, so I think we were initially kind of deluded into thinking it was a good film. The second Trek film was a lot better and was far less bloated, and not boring at all.

 

For a science fiction fanatic, it would be similar to a music fan seeing John, Paul, George & Ringo reunite (John was still around back then, keeping a low profile, taking care of Sean). I was so transfixed that day, I did not notice how so slow the pacing was until I watched it years later on TV.

 

I remember being very excited about ST:TMP when it came out and it was amazing to see the show with modern special effects. I don't have any memories of being bored by it, I was so happy to see the crew again.

ST: TWoK was mind-blowing. The only other movie of the era that I can think of where I went in not knowing what to expect and being totally surprised with how good it was was Aliens.

 

I went through many of the same feelings when I saw it on the day of its release. The buildup in Starlog magazine had been going on for months prior to its release, and me and my old skool geek friends were going nuts for it to come out. I remember during the glamour shot of the Enterprise, the sold out audience exploded into applause, their faces frozen in rapture. To a kid who had yet to see a rock concert, it was the earliest I would feel that cathedral-like, shared experience of Oneness with the crowd. At the time, I had no problems with the movie because it was STAR TREK, and I was 14 years old. Star Wars had blown my young mind, and seeing Star Trek get the same big screen treatment was epic.

As the years have passed, all the other movies came out, and I've seen every version of TMP out there. I think that IV has become my favorite over the years, even with the terrible soundtrack. VI would be my second favorite, sharing a close affinity to the original series like IV. II has its charms, but it wasn't helmed by anyone in touch with the legacy of ST, and that comes out over time (Montalban created one of TOS's best characters in Space Seed, and they turned Khan into Ahab).

TMP stands out because the cast is closest to the age they were in TOS. It's got Robert Wise and Gene Rodenberry at the helm, and you can see the legacy and feel it in the film. Yes, it's overlong and slow. Yes, it's based on one of the sillier (but still enjoyable) episodes of TOS. But at its core, it was a high concept science fiction movie totally in the spirit of TOS. Rodenberry used his budget to fulfill the vision he'd had for the show denied him by NBC. Its pace was dictated by a man who felt so vindicated that he felt too assured of its success (the same mistake Lucas would make years later). It was made in that special time when Star Trek still belonged to the fans who had kept Trek alive more than the Paramount executives. It worked within the accumulated, collaborative canon of Trek, not the lazy, irrelevant, half-baked invention of efficient administrators. Star Trek The Motion Picture was a gift to fans, and unfortunately for the people who funded it, they were the only ones who enjoyed it.

I think the real tragedy of TMP was that it's failure at the box office led to the studio taking control away from Gene. Ultimately, it was probably a good idea for the franchise, but the crowdsourced, fan-based phase of the franchise's life came to an end with the big box office draw of ST II. And then the hacks gave us ST III.

What I love about this thread is that Star Trek The Motion Picture will be playing next week at one of the local art houses. They've been doing a month of Robert Wise films, and TMP is being played back to back with The Andromeda Strain.

 

Naw, that's not what happen. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was developed from a script Roddenberry had written for the new 1977 revival of the Star Trek TV show ("Star Trek II") that was going to launch the Paramount TV Network, but it never happened. Once Star Wars and Close Encounters exploded into theaters, Paramount realized they had to have a blockbuster sci-fi film to compete, so they upped the TV show idea to a theatrical feature.

The moment Robert Wise became involved, he basically said, "I'm the producer and director, and Roddenberry will just be a consultant." So they pushed Gene into a back room, the script got rewritten (several times), and that's what was shot. Gene lost control of the Star Trek franchise from the moment it went from TV to feature film.

This continued until Next Generation, and by then Roddenberry had renegotiated a generous contract that would make him showrunner, give him a percentage of the show, and keep him involved 100% of the time. This lasted until his health deteriorated in the early 1990s, when Rick Berman and others took control.

It's a sad and messy story, one well-covered in several books and biographies.