I remember on here an expert called 'Mr Stinky Pants' or someone? He would know all there is to know about TMP Should have done a poll, which version is the best: Theatrical, Extra Long Version or Directors Edition. Like I said I would assume it is whichever version people owned on VHS/Beta/Laserdisc back in the day and rewatched a lot!
Also known as The God Thing. A fellow fan from Sydney who moved to the USA. We passed in similar circles in the 80s, did the same weekly comic runs, remember the same bookshops, saw the same sneak previews, but never met. A true completist has each copy. I still own TMP theatrical in Beta, VHS scan & pan and VHS widescreen, plus the Special Longer Version on VHS, the DVD DE, and an iTunes download and Blu-Ray of the theatrical.
^^ ah yes, TGT. It is a while ago now I guess Also its a good thing I am not a completist or else I would be broke
Regarding Trumbull throwing away his TMP work, do we know what he threw away? Was it everything? Was Trumbull responsible for the Klingon segment & V'Ger transformation or was that Dykstra? (The two FX Elements that wound up in TNG remastered)
To perhaps half answer my own question... On the Trumbull & Dykstra thing my recollection is that everything from V'Ger flyover onward is Dykstra? Personally I thought that the FX scenes inside V'Ger (after they are tractored in) are the best FX in the movie.... but those matte paintings in the 'brain complex' are awful !
The Director's edition is vastly superior to the original. Its editing, special effects, sound effects, and that Wise was involved with it made it way better. I'm not busting the original format which I love as well. But when you look at the Enterprise at the end when they were walking on it and how it looks like it should have, while still fitting in to how the movie looked when it came out it just screams cool.
Dykstra is responsible for the opening klingon, the epsilon 9 stuff, a lot of viewscreen graphics, torpedoes and the EXTERIOR of the physical vger, including the first maw that opens up at the front end. He also got stuck with the terrible officer's lounge mess, where production in its infinite wisdom -- how wise & co didn't realize this ahead of time I can't imagine -- shot blue-grey uniforms against a bluescreen. Trumbull had the cloud (the super pretty stuff), all of the vger interiors (including the terrible wingwalk stuff, which in the theater was only really bad in the profile shot of the saucer, the one where the ship seems about the size of a barn ... the first shot where they come up on the lift, while awful on DVD and not great on laser, seemed fine in the theater.) And he had 98% of the Ent shots (Dykstra did a couple super long shots with a tiny E-A) and the travel pod and drydock and orbital station. Trumbull's people handled San Francisco and Vulcan, but don't blame them for the Vulcan establishing shots - somebody (katz?) pulled those and gave them to some other company to do, which is why they absolutely suck compared to the version there are many images of Matthew Yuricich painting. That's info from TGT, but I believe it completely. Rocco Gioffre might know more about all this, he was MY's apprentice, and he posts at the stopmotionanimation.com forum for matte paintings (or he did before they redesigned it, haven't been there in awhile.) That's off the top of my head, I'm sure I'm missing tons of stuff, there are something like 560 VFX shots in the movie. edit addon: as for why paramount didn't take back and preserve all of the effective elements ... well, that's just brain-dead to me, as in a no-brainer that they still screwed up. Then again, look at how they treated the quarter-million dollar drydock ... it got stuck in some storage facility for nearly 15 years and wasn't protected when shipped, so it was pretty much debris suspended by its internal wiring by the time ILM got it for GENERATIONS.
[/QUOTE] Thats funny, I thought the DE was the only thing that made rewatching TMP worthwhile.[/QUOTE] I will never watch the theatrical again in my lifetime. I will buy the DC if they release it on Blu-ray. By the way, no review of the TMP blu-ray claimed it had excessive DNR. Treks 3 & 4 had the excessive DNR. Trek 1 and 2 were praised for having the most film-like appearance of the 6.
That's what I'd heard too; I think some people mistook all of TMP's soft-focus shots to be the result of DNR. Some of the VI screencaps looked pretty awful, though...one of the shots of the final bridge sequence (under Kirk's last captain's log) looks like watercolor paintings as a still frame.
Wasn't "The Wrath Of Khan" the only one advertised on the blu-ray set as having been 'fully restored'? It's understandable in that case that TMP would be accidentally lumped in with the others, even if the actual restoration work that it underwent is more substantial than with any of the movies between III-VI.
IMHO, the Blu-ray transfer of The Motion Picture is in fact the best of the six original movies. Personally, I'd give the picture quality a very solid 8/10.
This. For some reason three, four and five all look like they've been shot on video-tape (and they've always looked this way).
The transfers on those films aren't great, but that's not what videotape looks like. Not even close. I think the second film has the best transfer of the six, although the color timing is bothersome.
We should be very careful when using and qualifying terms like "definitive" in this type of context, however -- "definitive," in this case, does not truly apply to the Theatrical Cut of TMP, since it was rushed through post-production in order to meet an artificially-imposed studio release deadline. For it to be a true "definitive" version of the film, it would have needed to have been finished according to Robert Wise's personal specifications back at the time (with a more sufficient editorial window allotted, with a proper final sound-mix, fully-completed visual FX, etc.), and without the rampant corner-cutting that resulted from the studio deadline looming over everything. Because none of these criteria were actually met back in 1979, and the picture rushed into wide release before it was truly finished, even Wise himself never considered the Theatrical Cut "definitive" in the strict dictionary sense of the term -- in later decades, use of the word is now more in the eye of the beholder, regarding which particular version you happen to personally prefer (theatrical, Director's Cut, or TV edition).
I'm a little weary of this "artificially imposed studio deadline" talk. TMP had a YEAR of post production, which is usually plenty, and that would have been longer had principle photography not run over schedule. The film got in trouble over the ASTRA issue, and the producer's apparent unwillingness to trim down the number of effects shots.
Essentially, every studio release-deadline is, by definition, "artificially-imposed," but by "artificially-imposed studio deadline," I was simply referring to the date set by Paramount for final receipt of what is known as the answer-print -- i.e., the print of the film right before the final visual effects, music, and sound-mix are "locked" for wider theatrical release. The December 7th deadline, as pointed out in the DVD supplements and various books written since the movie came out, was widely viewed by the production as monolithic and immovable, and resulted in the rushed post-production phase, which forced many of their grander plans to be revised.
One thing I wish the DE had included is the extended argument between Kirk and McCoy in Kirk's quarters ("And another thing..." "Get out of here, Bones."). It seems obvious that the extended version of this scene is the one that was intended: all other versions, such as the DE and the theatrical version, have a very awkward sort of dubbing and editing. And since this scene has absolutely no special effects of any kind, why did they cut it out of the theatrical and DE cuts?