The newly released Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition on Paramount+ has been garnering positive reviews around the web. This new version practically demands to be seen on a large screen. So it’s not surprising that we have an update on the Fathom Events showings of film, and a few other little bits of TMP love as well.
Fathom Events adds a third day
Initially the showings were scheduled for only two days: Sunday May 22, and Wednesday May 25. Now Monday May 23 has now been added. Tickets are on sale now at fathomevents.com. Fathom also put out their own version of the DE trailer, included below.
Showings should be high quality
More good news about the Fathom showing comes from a fan asking producer David Fein on Twitter about the quality of the showings (hat tip to @StarTrekVisComp for calling attention to the interaction). Fathom events uses a variety of delivery mechanisms, including what is effectively just a special Dish Network satellite feed, so these events can have a wide variety of quality levels depending on the delivery mechanism.
Fein responded that he is expecting Fathom to use a Digital Cinema Package, which is the industry standard method for delivering feature films to movie theaters. So the quality is expected to be as good as any other current film distributed to theaters.
This is good news! This isn’t going to a stream shown on a big screen, it’s an actual Digital Cinema Package! https://t.co/fuKr4IU8ot
— Star Trek TMP Visual Comparisons (@StarTrekVisComp) April 13, 2022
The Director’s Edition team talks Trek and Robert Wise
Last week Paramount+ released a fun video that features the Director’s Edition team discussing their fandom and their mission to bring director Robert Wise’s preferred cut of the film into the modern era.
4K Theatrical and Director’s Editions Compared
YouTube movie fan My moonization has already grabbed a few scenes from the 4K/HDR versions of the theatrical version of TMP that was released in 2021 and the new Director’s Edition to compare.
The video is available on YouTube in 4K and HDR with compatible displays, and is best viewed on such equipment.
Find more news about Star Trek: The Motion Picture at TrekMovie.com.
I hope some one goes back to fix that god awful rotoscope meeting with Kirk, Spock and McCoy, it’s like watching 1970’s Doctor who effects. I appreciate what the effects artist wanted to put right but it is so jarring that I suggest putting the original shot back in.
If it’s the lounge scene you’re talking about – I think the only way to fix that sequence is to add some closed shutters over the windows and just color-correct the hell out of the costumes, hair, and makeup! I would prefer a weathered wood shutter – – or perhaps some Hello Kitty! or Peppa Pig curtains to appeal to a younger crowd…
I would also like to suggest some laser hair removal on Kirk’s arms – – Paramount’s 4K transfer without a remaster of the camera original has not been kind to William Shatner…
Funny you mention Shatner’s arms. When I first saw the movie back in 1979, one of the (many) things that bothered me was that Roddenberry had made him shave his arms (and chest!) for the cheapie TV show but NOT for the multimillion-dollar Motion Picture!
Yes, on the Director’s Edition I streamed with friends last week, I couldn’t not see the hair on his very light skin in places it shouldn’t have been (and a couple of shots where the applied foundation and powder was obvious) – – I saw this once in a theater when I was in school and never noticed that.
I kinda feel bad for him – I feel like Mr. Wise would have taken better care of the actors supervising the 4k transfer than Paramount has…
As long as they remove the matte lines around Shatner’s toupee, I am fine with it…
brilliant, I’m going to steal it and claim it as my own with my friends!
I agree, that scene takes one completely out of the experience – the rotoscoping especially and those terrible window frames which look as if it was done by a Photoshop newbie. Even the SD Directors Cut version of this shot will suffice.
Otherwise, this release is just superb!
Exactly. It’s too distracting.
It’s kinda crackin’ me up that the comparison YouTube video wastes time comparing the unsalvageable rear screen with Kirk and Scotty in the shuttle pod!
And the V’ger cloud as well.
One is an affront WTF moment and the latter is a steaming-pile-of-poop at any resolution WTF moment! : )
I wonder if we’ll be able to sneak cocktail into the movie theater for a drink every time Spock’s uniform changes color!!!
Just the color correction alone makes me want to see the new version.
Nice video on the comparisons between the Directors edition and 4K version.
1st time I think I ever saw Jerry Goldsmith’s pic.
There is some great music in that video.
This would be something if there were still some good theaters left. I’m in a pretty large metro area and there are exactly ZERO good theaters here. None. Nada. It’s why I rarely go to movies anymore. All the theaters are in malls now. Ugh. And the largest auditorium in most of those is 1/3 the size of the old giant screen theaters of just 10 years ago. This would be something to go see but alas… Nowhere good to see it. I’ll just have to be content with waiting for the disc to arrive this fall.
One reason to see it at the mall is the theatre probably has a better sound system than you have at home.
Can’t argue there. What they lack in size they make up for in sound quality. But I still like large auditoriums. Even the IMAX they have here don’t feel all that big. Hence the term “Lie-Max”. When I hear about IMAX I still think of the 4 story high screen at the first IMAX screen I ever saw. The Pictorium at a local amusement park. IMAX at the multiplex aren’t even the size at the two largest screens at the old Century Domes that were torn down recently. (Where I saw TMP back in 1979!)
Yes, people generally assume that all IMAX screens are the same but they are not. By the way, I first saw ST TMP in 1979 at the KB Macarthur Theatre in DC, which had the world premiere (where most of the cast and crew first saw it).
TMP is the gift that keeps on giving. There are more articles for it than any other Trek Film.
I don’t get it, honestly. I thought it was a really bad film and I don’t want to watch it again. I saw someone say it represented what Trek is really about and I thought it was a sick burn, but they meant it as a *positive*…
Some of us simply love it. I get that it’s imperfect, sure, but I deeply admire its ambition, as well as an awful lot about its execution.
Hell, Jerry Goldsmith’s score alone would have it high in my own personal rankings even if I hated everything else about it, and I love much else about it, so…
I don’t really understand it either. It seems to be a lot of nostalgia by people who saw it when it was first released after waiting for years, and many false starts, to see live-action Trek revived.
I’m trying to get through it but I can only take about thirty minutes at a time.
That is how I am tackling it too.
I saw the ‘original’ version last year for my grand rewatch of the franchise. It’s probably been 20 years since I watched it. I saw the whole thing, but after watching it, I could wait another 20 years until I watch it again. ;)
But since everyone was talking so much about the Director’s Edition and being on Paramount+, I thought the new effects alone would make it more interesting and tried watching it again. It doesn’t. I got through 30 minutes of that before I gave up again and ended up watching First Contact instead (on First Contact day). It’s just too dry for me.
It’s historic whether you like the film or not. Every Trek since then (up to the present moment) uses the aesthetic those designers created in that movie.
I sure hope this event comes to Canada. So far, no sign of it. ☹️
I watched the 4K version yesterday. It is a visual and audio masterpiece. The story is still a little dry, but the 4K version has helped me appreciate it more. Plus, I never caught on in the theatrical version that the Vyger cloud dissipated and the ship orbited the Earth. That was cool!
I’m there for it.
I like how at 7:19 in the comparison video they switched the deflector dish color from blue to yellow/orange. The rule was supposed to be yellow/orange at impulse and blue at warp. This was just calling for continuity errors that occurred throughout the movie. In the following movies, they just left it blue at all times, which was easier to manage.
I think that kind of thing is more reliable in the later films where ILM was in charge/involved. TMP was chaos in motion.
I’ve heard stories from guys in post (unfortunately NOT confirmed by Mr. Wise who had no recolection) that they weren’t getting workprint of a lot of the effects footage and some of the camera original so they were literally examining the negative for action and color match and logging it for the negative cutters!
If that doesn’t mean anything to you – all of the color registration and value is some degree of opposite, add exhaustion to that and I’m sure light burnt orange vs light blue looked similar enough!
I’ve never worked under conditions like those for people involved with TMP – so many really bad decisions beforehand, contractors with big promises that never delivered, and management at every level at Paramount that really had no idea what they were doing. In many ways, I still feel it was unfair of the DGA to refuse to force Paramount to take Mr. Wise’s name off the film.
It’s unfortunate that most of the VFX, post, and principle department heads remained silent in public in order to be good little Hollywood film workers. It really is a miracle that anything at all cogent made it to the screen. That’s a testament to the incredible talents of the below the line crews and managers – and, honestly, they’re love of Star Trek. So many of the contractors ended up making far less than minimum wage with all the hours and the taxes, at that time on overtime and overtime penalties. But, that and the silence is the old school Hollywood way.
Nonetheless, it is one of my very favorite movies to play drinking games with – soooooo many opportunites to spot a DRINK moment packed into one movie!! Great to see with friends. I wish there were talk out loud screening of the film to have that kind of fun – – I have a feeling, at $20 a pop, these screenings will be full of shhhh-ing and kicking of seats. : (
I’m really starting to wonder what your bona fides actually are. The crew I’ve talked with about TMP (about 25 or so, spread out over the last 30 years) have never voiced any kind of complaint about the money — in fact, guys like one of the Apogee folks who did the transporter, Mike Fink, told me that not having a day off for something like 7 or 8 months was one of the best things that happened to him financially.
Still not seeing you cite anything like a source for the ‘Wise wanting his name off the film’ thing, which you’ve now repeated in at least two threads. Again, if that were the case, why would he have pushed so hard to finish on time? Would Paramount have gone after him with lawsuits? The backlash over that would have been worse than even missing the release date.
There have been plenty of outspoken vets of TMP, dating back to even before the film came out. So the idea that folks were seriously circumspect about certain matters — outside of Yuricich, who clearly considered being a company man was just part and parcel of his professionalism — just doesn’t hold water.
I’ve read a lot too on TMP, and his comments just don’t add up to anything that I have come across? I would of course be extremely reticent to accuse someone of just “making shit up,” so I am willing to be swayed differently if this dude ever cites any sources.
My feelings about TMP these days pretty much boil down to this: while it certainly has its share of significant flaws, it’s probably a better movie, better science fiction, and better Star Trek than many give it credit for. (Interestingly enough, my opinion on TWOK is precisely the reverse.)
Unlike you, I prefer the 2001 Director’s Cut to the original theatrical version, and am very much looking forward to seeing this latest souped-up re-release on a big screen, since I don’t have Paramoynt +. In anticipation I’ve finally started to read Neal Preston Jones’ RETURN TO TOMORROW, which I had purchased at Loscon years ago but had never cracked open until this week.
I’m really glad you are getting into RtT … while there are some errors or misremembrances from interviewees (confusing Steve Bochco with Bill Norton, thinking Dennis Lynton Clark wrote part of SILENT RUNNING when that was in fact Bochco), and the book has a significant amount of redundancy (sort of like TMP’s near-constant reminders that the thing is x-hours away). this tome is just an awesome achievement and a very useful reference.
You may hit a wall in the VFX section, which lives in the weeds for awhile, but stick with it.
Well, you could have asked Mr. Wise or any of the other department heads or Execs, with all your years of interviewing experience of all the people that worked on the film… or perhaps your “inside knowledge” speaks to what all of these people thought of you and the press junket interviews they provided you.
A researcher that actually works in the industry, of course, could just ask the DGA, or actually look it up (which seems all you do) in ANY of the industry trades. You do know how to look up a DGA dispute, don’t you? Research Hollywood Reporter? Documents and memos in the AMPAS holdings?
Or perhaps you’re just a Paramount tool trying to whitewash the history of the film… that would surprise me least of all. Ditto to your minions on this site and you and their conspicuous lack of citations and disclosure.
‘Minions,’ really?! Perhaps your research time would be well-spent assessing why Daren Dochterman didn’t bother rotoscoping-out those arm hairs on Bill Shatner that Robert Wise put on film for all the world to see back in 1979. Now that would be hard-hitting film journalism!
Looks like they didn’t approve my lengthy and detailed reply to BEEDEE — it has been many hours now and my other posts made since then have appeared. If that one doesn’t show up, it’ll be an indicator about whether I’ll continue posting here, so either way, thanks for calling him on the ‘minions’ nuttiness, Michael. We’ll probably never see exactly eye-to-eye on the merits of the TMP reworkings, but there’s definitely respect that is maintained anyway.
No hidden message there. Extra long posts get flagged for moderation. I approved it earlier today.
Still bringing the fun, I see!
Though I have written and sold nearly 400 articles on film production, I have never been on a ‘press junket’ in my life. About the closest I ever came to that kind of travesty was a group phone call with several other journalists where each got to ask Patrick Stewart a single question. Even the rare set visits were solo, and I’ve never written PR-style flack, even on the occasions (always declined) when an interviewee offered to augment the wages I was getting from an outlet. I got started writing for CINEFEX, which pretty much always tried for a ‘just the facts’ approach, so that should give you an idea of my headspace with respect to spin. That’s not to say you don’t face RASHOMON-type situations, but you do follow basic journalism tenets to confirm which viewpoint seems to be supported by evidence, and when the need arises, you either omit the dubious passage or put in a qualifier, so as to not become part of an incorrect record that will then be repeated as fact ad infinitum.
Shoot, just the fact that I have run afoul of ILM, resulting in a near-total ban for the better part of a decade, for daring to call one of their PR folk on an outright falsehood about TREK 09 (something that was already documented here and elsewhere), should speak volumes to my integrity, and if you can’t be bothered to ask or do research, that speaks volumes to your lack of same, and points to a lack of credibility.
As to ‘my minions’ … it is to collapse in giggles at the very thought. If I have any minions, they clearly utilize advanced stealth technology. If most of my views aren’t generally considered to be minority opinions (from STV to The Craig Monster infesting 007), I don’t know whose might be.
It seems like you are taking a Trump-like position of attacking based on the opposite of truth — suggesting I’m a Paramount stooge really is a scream, given how many times I dismissed a certain senior trekbbs poster’s deliriously pro-studio comments for the same reason. (Though I still feel justified about that.) Plus I’m the guy who for years was practically the only person on Earth refuting all that crap about Klingon blood color being ratings-related, and that is specifically because I don’t believe in ‘printing the legend’ just because Rick Berman said something on the record without any basis in fact.
By the way, consider occasionally answering a question instead of covering by asking other questions. That would also speak to credibility. The other alternative would be for you to ignore my question, which you did in the other thread. Of course if you do that enough times it will also suggest you’re posting to run your mouth instead of to actually offer data.
I’m not in L.A and so can’t just go down to check the archives like some other folks (at least one of whom seems to make a living by paraphrasing what he finds and then making up a bunch of stuff that enhances the narrative in a series of books that make a travesty of real journalism), but if you would point to any SPECIFIC record supporting your Wise/DGA thing, I would welcome being corrected. Unless of course that is too much trouble for you to go to …
The one point we do both agree on is how much Paramount still seems to be intent on spinning the facts about TMP. That they were still attempting to censor stories about it in the 00s — I helped Ross Plesset with his FILMFAX piece on P2 and TMP and that ran into this head-on … Paramount wouldn’t provide images till they saw the article, and then after seeing it still wouldn’t provide images, even though it was far from a hit piece, just honest) and then wouldn’t provide images for RtT in the 10s is ample evidence of that.
Note that I’m not trying to end on a conciliatory note on that matter upon which we do seem to agree. I’m just acknowledging the validity of the statements you’ve made with which I concur. Now if you’d actually provide a bit of support for your other positions instead of coming to ludicrous conclusions about me, maybe we’d both be starting to get somewhere. Until that time, I may have to consider the bulk of your output to be, as the ship’s computer says in DARK STAR, “False data.”
hey kmart, you and I have had our disagreements here, but I have never criticized the journalistic level of info that you have brought to the table over time on this site, and you frequently cover the sources of your info as well.
I find it very telling that this dude, when asked to provide some citations for his unusual information which none of us have heard of before, instead responds with a personal attack on you.
His response is not at all helpful into me giving any credence to this kind of alternate info he claims to know on the making of TMP. And yes, you are correct to point out the analogy of the Trump-like behavior he is exhibiting here.
Memo to Bee Dee: “Where’s the beef?”
thread closed
If this Wise/DGA and TMP VFX salary issues come up in yet another thread (this was the second one with the Wise wants his name off the film claim), will the discussion be allowed to play out or will that be an instant thread-closer?
Am asking because I already got a friend to ask:
a film scholar who did a research book on TMP about Wise
and
a TREK TMP jr VFX person about the wages.
I would just LOVE to drop those reply-bombs onto BEE DEE’s next missive.
So instead of providing some citations for your information which no one apparently has heard of before, you go all personal attack on kmart? Seriously?
Well you just answered my concern on whether you might be “making shit up.”
Thanks for clarifying that.
Am I the only one who thinks that this “color fixing” they did in many cases washes out the intended colors of the scenes? And the Starfleet shuttle station in SF — the original looked a hell of a lot better than the replacement CGI scene…why replace that awesome background?
Excellent question. Of course, the whole decision to invent new shots for San Fran and Vulcan when there were finished but not included ones available from 1979 seems very curious to me, both decades back with the DVD DE and now again today. Also, for San Fran, they could have gone back to the original early evening warmth color scheme that we never got to see, because in ’79 the color timing folk at MGM wrecked those paintings in the theatrical by cooling the color down, effectively making excellent matte paintings into things that looked like, well, just paintings, with bleak and unconvincing skies.
Along with an establishing view of Vulcan that wasn’t tarted up, there were at least two SF shots that didn’t make it into the theatrical, a side view of the bridge and a close view of the shuttle going by overhead (the latter is seen in the long unreleased theatrical trailer, the former glimpsed in still form in an old ENTERPRISE INCIDENTS magazine), so swapping from those high-rez images and the theatrical originals to the low-rent 2001 CG (and now the to-my-eye very flawed 2022 CG) makes no sense … unless these efforts were more about putting a new stamp on the film than fulfilling the mandate to make it as much like the theatrical would have been if they’d had the time back then.
Here’s one of those completed but not included shots:
Hey, I remember seeing that unused shot back in the day, probably from that issue of E.I. that you mention. Nostalgia is cool! But I still prefer the modern take on 23rd century San Fran, and the new Vulcan matte over Yurichich’s original, sorry.
Yeah, we definitely have differing tastes in this case. I’m a huge admirer of Yurichich, but don’t consider the TMP shots to be amongst his best work, and only wish they could have done a complete reworking of the SF tram station while they were at it.
I think the best matte shots in TMP are Rocco’s: the closer view of the tram station in the Sonak/Kirk two-shot (though I still can’t find the Coke can he put in there somewhere) and that unbelievably good close shot of the top of the saucer when Spock’s shuttle does the flipover prior to docking.
I think Y’s best shots were the discarded ones, his first attempt at Vulcan, plus the side shot of the bridge I linked to in one of these TMP threads yesterday (I thought it was this one, but I don’t see it today, so maybe not.) The wide tram interior was DOA just from the design, there’s no way you just paint people standing there and leave them static for such a long stretch without blowing the game in a pretty embarrassing way. In particular I was very disappointed with the Enterprise cargo interior, which might as well be a painted backing from GREEN ACRES THE MOTION PICTURE for all the credibility it carries. Then again, I always thought they should have done that shot as a miniature, and only used a bit of matte painting to tie it into the live-action.
Which ‘original’ – 1979 or 2001? Not that I’d agree in either case.
Seeing movies in a movie theater is always the best way to see them. I saw a washed out pink print of the theatrical release of this and as bad as the print was, this movie played slightly better on a big screen. Can’t wait to see this beautiful remaster on a huge screen.
And I just noticed the weird titling up front — like it’s some cheap “bronzing” of the great looking original efficient white look…Why???
The original white was all because of the rush to get the movie out to avoid lawsuits that would bankrupt Paramount. Wise didn’t like them!
I have to agree about the ‘bronzing,’ myself, which comes across as a little cheesy, a case of literally gilding -the-lily. But it’s not a deal-killer.
I think it’s so corny and bad
So is it as bad as the 2001 DE version? Cuz that, along with FIRST CONTACT, rank as the worst ones I’ve seen to date, though GENERATION’s also have an inappropriate feel IMO.
I saw a pink-to-red faded TWOK at a revival house 15 years ago and it was ghastly — went home and rewatched the thing on DVD just to wash the bad impression from mine (though part of the bad experience was the theater playing ‘in old monterrey’ on their speaker system over and over for 20 minutes before the movie started — it was like that early scene in THE WEDDING SINGER, but not funny.)
I can honestly say that from the early 2000s up through 2012, digital projection was so bad it pretty much killed the whole moviegoing experience for me (I did see 35mm prints of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and 2001 during that period, and those were excellent as ever.) After that I found a theater that played GRAVITY properly, but since then, the only time I’ve seen a movie projected properly — and the last time I set foot in a movie theater — was SEBERG, and that was at a press screening where nobody but me showed up.
That’s pretty massive disillusionmant from somebody who for nearly 20 years regularly saw at least 150 movies per year in the theater. There’s nothing like seeing a great movie projected properly with a good crowd (opening night for CE#K was incredible!), but I don’t consider it likely that those aspects will ever all line up again in a way that is worth the trouble at this point, short of LARRY o’ ARABIA in 70mm turning up locally.
In general, I agree with you. But I have seen some very good theater presentations in legitimate IMAX theaters in the past decade, including TENET, the las two MI’s, The Last Jedi, Interstellar, Dune and Dunkirk (note, I am not commenting on the quality of these movies, just the theatrical presentation of them).
I watched DUNE on my phone, my pretty decent home theatre, and in IMAX, and was bitterly disappointed in each and every format.
Michael, it sure sounds like you gave it a really good try. Did your disappointment stem from the same factors, regardless of presentation type? I’m asking as somebody who really likes the new version, even the parts I don’t agree with in terms of approach and execution. And I’ve only seen it on my decent-sized TV.
I’m also thinking that some of the anomalies in part 1 will pay off in part 2, but that’s my read based on talking with the editor, who was very open about most stuff but honest in noting he couldn’t go there about certain other aspects that I’m guessing will resolve in the next film. It does have a certain arid quality (perhaps intentional? the movie-experience equivalent of actually being IN a desert?), almost a Kubrick-like detachment that seems totally at odds with the Lynch version (which I love regardless of defects … I sometimes think of that as SF’s equivalent to ACTION JACKSON, where you wind up laughing when you realize the smoke levels on indoor scenes is so high even in night scenes that the moon must be perched 10 feet above a mansion’s skylight to give this kind of illumination.)
I have tried to watch Mann’s HEAT so many times but just can’t get past the first 45min or so. Keep thinking the next time I will just jump to the big gunfight everybody talks about to get myself hooked, then back up and try again. That’s how I finally got into Herbert’s novel, I jumped up to the banquet scene about 140 pages in, finally found some passages I dug, and then went back. Took me from 1972 till summer 84 to manage that!
Oh God, where to start? Though I’m not a Dunatic, I had high hopes for this adaptation based solely on Villenueve’s ARRIVAL, which I consider to be one of the very best SF films of this century, and (with the possible exception of 2001) the best film about first contact with aliens ever made.
Instead, I’m bemused to find myself in the “kmart contrarian Trek 5” ™ position of stating that, for all of its excesses and narrative flaws, I vastly prefer the 1984 Lynch version. For one thing, it has much better production design, in my opinion, clearly delineating the various planetary environments and the aesthetic preferences of their inhabitants. In the current version, it’s all just Brutalist architecture that doesn’t distinguish anybody. And this leads into another issue: the utter lack of what your former boss Fred Clarke referred to as that “sense of wonder.” For all its technical polish, there’s nothing in the 2021 DUNE to compare with the image of thousands of Atreides frigates rising up to dock with the massive Guild ship, or the navigator using his spice-enhanced powers to tie two distant realties together. (If Villenueve meant the frigates rising from the ocean, which made about as much sense as it did in INTO DARKNESS, to have that kind of impact, from where I sat it was a poor substitute.)
Most perplexing and frustrating of all, though, is how little the current DUNE accomplishes narratively in its running time as compared to its predecessor. I watched the film three times, and just a few months later am hard-pressed to think of any major scenes or plot point that Lynch didn’t also address with almost twice as much ground to cover. Both versions suffer greatly from omitting scenes, character moments and other connective tissue that helps to explain who these people are and why they do the seemingly outrageous things that they do. (Just one example: the dinner scene, which not only codifies the Atreides’ sense of noblesse oblige but gives the audience some insight into Arakeen society that can’t be found anywhere else in the story, it all being pretty much about the Atreides, their enemies, and the Fremen.)
Sure, there were things I liked better this time around: dropping the turgid voice-overs, the technical polish of the cinematography and effects (though I liked the design of the ’84 sandworms better), the more sophisticated approach to Paul’s visions, and a few other things. But overall, I found the whole movie to be a two-star, emotionally joyless experience, and given my expectations the biggest genre letdown since Tim Burton’s remake of PLANET OF THE APES.
If we had a legit IMAX theater up here, I might have nibbled, but I don’t know that there is one less than several hours’ drive distant, except for OMSI, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t show narrative feature films. Just realized I haven’t seen anything in IMAX since the late 80s!
“Just realized I haven’t seen anything in IMAX since the late 80s!”
Well there you have it. Yea, you do need to find a legitimate IMAX theater, not a pretender, before you can conclude your comparisons here. Here in CA, there are several in SoCal and two in the Bay Area that I like, plus I have been to a couple Collider special screening invites to the IMAX corporate theater near LMU in LA.
Oh, I live in LA, and it’s one of the few remaining perks of the place is the generally above average quality of projection. Audience experience can fluctuate, but usually, sight and sound is in the area of peak performance.
Every time I pass the defunct Cinerama Dome on Sunset, where I was privileged to see ‘2001’ in all its glory a million years ago, I give a silent salute.
Are they trying for landmark status? I’m wondering why if it is shuttered that they haven’t torn it down, be keeping with how progress winds up trashing all the nice architectural art in the world.
Pretty sure that is where I saw 2001 in 68 as well. My mom took me down for a short vacation to go to Universal Studios and I talked her into taking my picture in front of some grand theater playing 2001, in front of the moonbase poster. After that it was easy to get her to take me in to see the movie, but I was such a mess afterwards (it blew my 7 year old mind as well as my soul, didn’t know what to make of the last section, though the rest of the movie probably played like a NASA recruitment film the way TOP GUN did for other kinds of people decades later), we held off on Universal and only did a partial day there. Really wish she had coughed up the photo albums at some point in the decades that passed, because there was a great pic of me standing next to a life-size statue of the Phantom of the Opera. Just as she took the picture, the ‘statue’ reached out and touched my shoulder, and in the still, I’m like a vertical blur, practically leaping out of my skin!
I saw 2001 there not in ‘68, but more like ‘74 or ‘75, on a field trip from Huntington Beach High School. My English teacher, Betty Needhoff, was a huge fan of the film. I remember enjoying the screening well enough—hey, it was a day off school—though it wasn’t my first time seeing it, and I never had any trouble following the plot as I’d read Clarke’s novel many times by then. But of course my passion for that movie has grown by leaps and bounds in the decades since, and I’d kill for the chance to see it in Cinerama again.
It’s the only star trek I’ve never seen, and I’m going to watch it today on my new 13 foot screen and 4k digital projector. Hope I’m not let down
and again, Canada is left out in the cold. Getting really sick of this crap from Fathom.
Some of the effects and color changes are very welcome. But why have they deleted some of the background sounds and voices?! There is no more computer voice announcing “travel pod available at cargo 6. Travel pod available, cargo 6.” And that computer voice is now 100% missing from this new cut. It was also heard in engineering during a pre-warp checklist. Kirk also doesn’t tell Uhura “ viewer off” twice in the rec deck after the horror of watching the destruction of the Epsilon 9 station. This underscored her shock and the magnitude of the moment. How are these changes improvements that are aligned with the director’s vision when Wise himself could have made these changes when he was still alive for the 2000 cut. It all looks great minus the cheesy Babylon 5-looking cheap CG shot of Vger at the end. That shot is worse than something a high school kid with a laptop could have done.
The 2nd ‘viewer off’ WAS eliminated for the 2001 version.
Got to admit, that one was pretty inexplicable to me — it was an interesting character moment in a film that isn’t exactly overflowing with them.
I think they just didn’t want Kirk to have to yell at Uhura.
That’s very probably true — I even recall the “Director’s Cut” producer touting that Kirk is more likable in the current cut. I don’t see that necessarily as a plus, myself. But I still think it’s a better, more polished product overall.
A lot of fans were critical of Kay Anderson’s CFQ review of TMP where she claimed Kirk comes off like a finalist in a ‘prick of the century’ contest (which ain’t far off the mark, to be honest.) I think Kirk’s weakness in the film comes from some of Shatner’s eccentric choices. His ‘no’ when denying ilia probe’s demand isn’ the ‘no’ voiced in the novelization (a spot that GR got right), where Kirk says it flatly, hard, not in this cutesy self-conscious way. Having said all that, I really do like how he does the ‘out there’ part, it feels like real Kirk again, one of the only times in the whole films series where that happens for me.
Roddenberry’s TMP novelization is a fascinating ’70s curio, showcasing his strengths and weaknesses as a writer/futurist/guru. There are some details that the movie frankly would have benefited mightily from, such as Will Decker’s background, which helps his willingness to merge with V’Ger at the end of the film to actually make some sense.
I think it’s possibly that, possibly just wanting to shave a second off the new cut
I take it you’re not familiar with the 2001 Director’s Edition. All of those are changes Wise wanted and approved in the 2001 version of the DE.
I found that I missed the deep baritone computer voice saying a pod was available. If I recall, the announcement is still there on the Director’s Cut DVD but it’s a different voice.
I miss the computer voice, too and the original Klaxon alarm. In the theater, it (klaxon alarm) scared the heck out of me but it delivers on the alert status and then some. The new one is less, much less. In Susan Sackett’s ‘Making of’ book, there’s notation of the actual Roddenberry memo to insert the alarm and voice that was in the original ’79 cut.
I’m just thinking,to myself, when Wise did the DE, he never liked the dramatic tone of the alert and since Roddenberry had died 8 years or so prior, he (Wise) would have the now final say. Oh well.
I’m looking forward to the actual theatrical showings in DCinema. Perhaps, it will play better with the updated sound. However, to me, I felt mass and movement in the theater sitting close to the front of the screen. When your field of vision is wide as the screen with no disturbance and you take in that stereo sound, you move with the action. The warp drive jump is a good example. When they make that first jump, I literally felt the urge to move back in my seat viewing the colorburst, ship warping and sound effects. Upon subsequent viewings, I turned to observe several audience members movement, too, during the same scene.
On my subsequent viewings of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS in the theater, I made a point of watching the opening at the very back of the theater, so I could see all the seats ahead of me rock backwards during the initial explosion of light and sound at the end of the brief opening credits. Then I’d go take a seat further up front to take in the splendors seen in the rest of the film.
Reminds me of The Simpsons gag where the THX logo causes eyeglasses to shatter, heads to explode, etc.
I hate the sound mix of Christopher Nolan’s films for precisely that reason. You don’t have to listen to APOCALYPSE NOW at a level where the explosions or the music will damage your hearing to understand the dialogue or have a great immersive experience. Why is that so hard?
I ‘hear’ you … we’re getting used to using the subtitles and keeping the volume down low, as my wife’s tinnitus (she has two kinds, one in each ear) has probably been caused by 13+ years on plaquenyl (which is also probably why she went from fine hearing to 80% loss in the last year.)
I’ve always had a hard time understanding different dialects (and don’t even get me started on Bane!), but the last few years of shows on the tube seem to have gotten more problematic, maybe because the voices are mixed lower than the sound effects, which in movies seems to have been a problem from around LETHAL WEAPON 2 onward for me. Sometimes I’ll spend 20 minutes playing with the settings just to see if I can find something that works for me before I really embark on watching a new series, but I don’t fancy myself as Harry Caul in THE CONVERSATION and so I have to feel my way to a sound that works rather than just knowing the magic switch to throw.
One more thought about being at the back to watch audiences in front of you react to the movie: once upon a time there was a parody movie called THE GROOVE TUBE, and in one skit on venereal disease, there is an odd looking puppet giving the PSA. Gradually, audiences realize that the thing talking is not a puppet, but is in fact male genitalia. That is where I first noticed the wave effect, because people up front seemed to figure it out before people further back, but it was like a slow-motion shockwave in a well-filled theater. I saw the movie again on dvd a couple years ago, and the effect, while anticipated and therefore not shockingly funny anymore, is what I can only characterize as a ballsy bit of filmmaking.
I don’t know why but I miss that too. The Klaxon was superior for sure. The computer voice, well, I can see why you would change it for a human crew, but for some reason I just miss the comp voice. Maybe they could have kept the comp voice for some automatic functions (like the travel pod being available). Or the emergency alerts.
The wide shot of Vger is way better than the one from 2001, I can live with it.
Hope this post of mine doesn’t get the whole thread closed, but the quality of the work this person doing the comparisons produces is and has been very much in question: https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=341664&page=40
Not taking a side here, just reporting.
Oof. Well I wouldn’t use any YT video for anything definitive anyway. But yikes, sounds like that person has a history of poorly produced videos.
So, I have the Blu-Ray of the updated 2001 version, and now the streaming version of this on Paramount+, and a pretty good TV plus sound system at home, and I will probably buy the new Blu-Ray as well, will I still spend the $14 to see it in the theater in May?
Yes, yes I will.
Still my favorite Trek film. The DE is the definitive version. Now when do we get the Special Longer (TV) Version in HD?
I finished watching the movie on Paramount+. It’s definitely a huge improvement over the original. I can finally see what V’Ger’s ship looks like behind the cloud and the editing helps improve the pacing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that the crew spent a majority of the time on the bridge staring at a screen in amazement and the story itself is too surreal and philosophical for mainstream audiences.
If I could make my own cut, I would. I think I would keep the theatrical credits – those stupid glinting titles are really distracting and corny. I liked the original red alert. There are just little things that I feel like need touching up, and I was hoping this new DE would take care of it all. I guess only in my headcanon does the “true” TMP exist.
Same here. I have to think that in some universe, saner minds prevail and that stupid shot of the tiny astronaut figure fleeing ep9 would have never made it into any cut of the film. It may be that ILM made a 3ft Star Destroyer look like it was miles long in STAR WARS, but here some of those same folks (now at Apogee) took a two foot miniature guy and made him look even tinier (and wholly not-credible) in that coming-to-camera shots, which ends with a jittery move that reads like a toy falling off its guide wire. Dykstra said they did various shots of the death wave chasing the astronaut that didn’t get into the film… could those have been any worse?
Multiple that issue — which has to do with just a few seconds of film, times about 30 other things, and you’ll get the idea of what my ‘notes’ would be for fixing TMP, and almost none of them coincide with what has actually been done, or if they have, not the way they were done.
Well, if I had my druthers for its 40th anniversary we’d have gotten a peek at the version of APOLCALYPSE NOW that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1979, instead of another, slightly less-bloated and unnecessary rework by an artist-turned-winemaker once again second-guessing his decades-younger self. And we’d also be getting a Blu-Ray theatrical cut of AMADEUS, so I could throw out or give away the execrable “Director’s Cut” that Milos Forman inexplicably saddled us with.
That said, at the end of the day they’re just movies, not to be confused with anything of cosmic significance. And unlike the two works mentioned above, TMP would still have the mix of virtues and flaws that make it a problematic watch, even if you agreed with every single upgrade that had been made to it.
Yeah, to solve some of the biggest problems I will always have with it, you’d need to do more than tweaking, you’d need to create new material. For me, I loved the Bob Collins idea that Jon Povill hated — the idea that everything on the voyager laserdisc would be seen and heard all around them during the fusion/transcendence, sort of like a lightshow version of EG Robinson’s SOYLENT GREEN death.
The other big dramatic miss for me is the vger overflight. Everybody has retconned that passage into this technobabble biz of matching warpfields, but to me, this scene should have been about Sulu matching speeds at warp 7.6whateverPLUS0000001 to creep over the intruder — so that stuff about 500 meters REALLY means something. You could have had the spectacle of the overflight balanced by and intercut with Sulu really struggling, probably calling for power so Engineering gets involved … it would also be a nice ‘proving’ moment for the rebuilt ship. Also then when Sulu pauses to wipe his brow after they finally pass the front end, boom, THAT’s when they get hit with the tractor beam.
Also, and this goes back to what Abel wanted to do with the warp fx, you’d have had various field effects around the ship, so the cloud passage would have been a lot more exciting. You’d still have wonderful vistas, but then suddenly you’d have foreground activity where the wisps interact with the ship’s fields.
No matter what you change, you’re still stuck with that dread ‘2nd half of act 2 dropoff’ that kills so many movies for me, where it is basically Kirk watching Decker and Ilia fail to connect. Maybe the way to have fixed THAT would be to have Ilia get snatched as soon as they break through the cloud and see vger’s butt-end. That would augment Sulu’s difficulties, since he’d be the only guy up front briefly till Ilia’s replacement arrives. It would also push the Kirk/Decker friction, then release it, so there’s a breather before Decker questions Spock about getting shot down on the phaser idea and gets no reply.
Yeah, reshuffling things would help, but it’s still a band-aid on a neutron detonation. Everything looks the same, but seriously irradiated.
See, that’s funny, ‘cause to me the first half of TMP is its weakest by far. For all the complaints I have no problem with the extended V’Ger overflight, and it’s only when the story starts to grapple with its central mystery, Decker being forced to deal with the simulacrum of his dead lover, and the wonder of Spock’s internal and external journey that the movie achieves any liftoff at all.
Robert Wise may not have been a brilliant auteur, but he was always a solid craftsman, and it’s always been my theory that he was just overwhelmed by the unprecedented challenge of dealing with the “living legend” (his words) cast of a failed, funny little TV space opera that had improbably become a cultural phenomenon. And I think for their part the cast members were rattled, too. I can’t imagine any other reason for his failure to get decent performances out of them — particularly in the early reunion scenes, which are just plain embarrassing.