Fathom events brought Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan back to the big screen on September 10th and 13th. Due to the popularity of the event and for fans that missed out due to Hurricane Irma, Fathom just announced another day of screenings in select theaters on Thursday, September 21st. So, you have another chance to check out the digitally remastered director’s cut of Wrath of Khan along with a bonus introductory interview with William Shatner
Tickets for the encore 35th anniversary screenings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan are available for purchase at www.FathomEvents.com or at participating theater box offices. For a complete list of theater locations visit the Fathom Events website (theaters and participants are subject to change).
Here is the original event trailer.
Did anyone on here go to a showing? I’m curious about the picture quality and whether venues were using a low-quality 1080i satellite signal and their advertising projectors, like so many Fathom events have done in the past.
I’ve got no idea how it was projected, but it looked simply fantastic where I saw it. A lot of giddiness in the audience!
It looked great at my theater. Amazing to see Wrath of Khan on the silver screen after so many years!
I did. It looked great, but the sound quality wasn’t up to modern blockbuster standards.
It was upscaled. The screen went wide once the feature started. There was no sign of mismatched boarders, false blacks, flickering or strobing. Two of the three theaters I saw it at had the movie on a proper 2.35 screen. The first theater had it on a 1.85 screen (though not the same one they use for Fathom’s cheaper TCM/Metropolitan events), and the pre-show content was windowboxed.
Also the bigger the screen got with each visit, the more noticeably Shatner was out of focus in most of his shots. This movie has now dropped to second place on my list of STs due to its somewhat shoddy production (the occasionally awkward edits I’ve always been mostly fine with, but I think the intentionally soft focus on Shatner just bumps the movie down that extra one-tenth of a notch).
I don’t think there was any intentionally soft focus on Shatner. Normally that would be done with diffusion filters. All the out of focus shots I saw looked like they were due to Shatner being off his mark, moving out of the shallow plane of focus or the focus puller not being exactly on the mark.
Also, even if they were using video assist back then, the monitors would’ve been just crappy low-res CRTs and they really wouldn’t have noticed the problem until they saw the film dailies.
Legend has it Shatner wanted to hide the fact he was aging since they decided not to let him use excessive makeup like he did in TMP. Cinematographers are very exact in what they do. They can intuitively roll focus on moving actors in a way that other never learn how. The one on this picture wasn’t the best (though his shots themselves were among the more dynamic of the ST film series). However Shatner’s the only one who was consistently out of focus.
For the most part it looked fine, but there were noticeable moments when scenes became blurry, as if the footage for those scenes were unavailable at higher resolution. I can’t really speak to the sound quality. Of course, it didn’t help that the two jackasses next to me were keeping a running commentary like they were conducting their own podcast…
I saw it at the AMC Burbank 16 in SoCal and it was a high-quality 2K DCP played from a hard drive on the cinema projector. It looked as good as a first run movie.
I saw it last Sunday and it never looked better. I absolutely loved it all over again. I wonder how much money it made, I couldn’t find it on Box Office Mojo.
I saw it Wednesday, and it was gorgeous. I don’t know the resolution, but you could tell that it was indeed Montalban’s chest; the pores, the nipples, the way it flexed as he moves, it’s all there.
I watched it with family at a fantastic movie house in NYC with electric reclining seats. I immediately realized the difference between the 1982 resolution (compared to todays standards). The picture was slightly blurry and the sound just a tad off (over-modulation). Still, I LOVED it, reliving how I felt during the original opening. And now with the added date, I’ll go and watch it again (blurry picture and all).
That’s because of the conversion from film to video. Film is so much richer, but we’ve quickly become accustomed to the clarity of digital.
It looked a little soft to me. Also, when Kirk killed the Ceti eel that wiggled out of Chekov’s ear, it was lost in muddy blackness.
(Southcenter, near Seattle, WA)
Saw it last Sunday and this 51 year old felt like a kid again. Highly recommended.
The print did look at little dark at the showing I went to and the audio levels were a bit low. But come on seeing this classic on the big screen for the first time was a real treat. I gathered up some old trek buddies and it really was a great evening. Wish I could make it out to a showing again today. Anyone know if the poster for this event is for sale?
The sound was phenomenal where I went to see it! U could hear everything crystal clear