The Motion Picture and Amazon
- Thread starter Thanos007
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The one you want is subtitled The Director's Edition.
No, the ABC cut is generally called the "Special Longer Version."
Slv is vhs only I think. iTunes includes the directors cut as an extra on the normal version of TMP (and Khan)
Amazon...is good for when you want something esoteric only they have, or want more options for streaming, but generally iTunes seems to be better overall.
The DE was the work of David Fein and Michael Mattesino, but according to the interview with them in Star Trek: The Magazine Vol. 2 #8 (Dec. 2001), p. 24-26, they consulted closely with Robert Wise on every step and were guided by his wishes and recommendations. Also, most of what they did was based on Wise's and Roddenberry's 1979 notes of what they wanted to do in the first place but were unable to do because of the time constraints that required them to release an unfinished cut to theaters.
The Director's Edition was much different from the ABC cut. The ABC cut just threw in stuff that had been rightfully excised from the theatrical version. The Director's Edition is edited for tighter pacing, and has various audio effects added, not to mention brand new (for the time) CGI special effects shots including a new opening credits sequence with gold letters on a moving starfield.
Kor
Right. The movie was too long to fit in a 2-hour TV-movie time slot, so they padded it out to fit a 3-hour slot by putting a lot of cut material back in, whether it worked in the story or not. They even put back in the alternate spacewalk sequence that used completely different spacesuits than the final version, including some matte shots that were never completed because the sequence was cut before post-production, so there are shots of Kirk spacewalking outside the ship where you can see the wooden scaffolding holding up the piece of the ship's hull behind him.
Although the CGI was meant to approximate the look of what could've been done in 1979 using conventional miniatures and 2D animation. They even scanned some blank film frames from the same stock as the original master print so they could recreate the film grain digitally. And the shots were based on the original 1979 storyboards for the unfinished FX scenes. They weren't trying to snazz things up to look more modern, but to try to reconstruct the film that Robert Wise would've made in 1979 if he'd been allowed to complete editing and post-production as he'd intended, rather than being forced to release a rushed, unfinished cut to theaters due to post-production delays and an inflexible release date.
Filmed scenes are cut during post-production, not "before post-production". Before post-production is production, when things are being filmed. It would be more accurate to say this version was abandoned.
Here's The Director's Edition on Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Picture-Directors-Remastered/dp/B000S95KTY/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1HUT1NM8B93N3&keywords=star+trek+the+motion+picture&qid=1555425289&s=instant-video&sprefix=star+trek+the+motion+pict,aps,187&sr=1-2
Neil
Yes, that's what I meant to say. The original spacewalk sequence was never completed because they decided it didn't work and gave up on it.
So there's 3 versions of the film, right? Original, Extended and Director's Cut?
Yes.
1979 theatrical cut (132 minutes)
1983 Special Longer Version (144 minutes)
2001 Director's Edition (136 minutes)
Neil
I didn't realise the directors edition was longer than the theatrical cut? Why is that? I thought it was shorter to tighten the pacing? Surely the added FX shots don't add up to much.
A few of the character moments from the SLV are back in too. 4 mins isn’t a ton.
Didn't realise that I haven't seen the SLV in years.
Yes, they did tighten up some of the FX scenes that ran too long in the rough cut (a casualty of the film being rushed to theaters before they had time to decide which parts of those scenes to trim out), but they also restored some character material that was missing from the theatrical cut -- like the scene of Uhura telling the young Rhaandarite crewman that their chances have doubled with Kirk in command, the scene where the yeoman tells Kirk that McCoy is refusing to beam aboard, and some significant scenes with Ilia or her probe. People today always focus on the FX scenes running too long, and they forget that the theatrical cut was also criticized for having too little focus on the characters. For all its problems, the ABC-TV version was considered a better story because of the extra character development scenes it included. So the DE restored a lot of that character material too, along with trimming the excess from the FX scenes.
Also, I think the running time given for the theatrical cut is for the home video release of same which omits the "Ilia's Theme" overture at the start of the film (TMP was one of the last films to have an overture played before the film to give the audience time to be seated, in place of the ads and trailers we have today), while the DE includes the overture. That's a bit over 3 minutes, so really the TE and DE are almost identical in length.
Here's a site that covers the differences scene by scene:
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=2400
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