Differences between Director's Edition and original

[Tribble Threat]

I recently watched the Director's Edition of The Motion Picture. I'm wondering what the differences between this and the original theatrical version are. What are some things that were changed between the two versions?

 

[NCC-73515]

I think we only saw the ship itself without the cloud as it approaches Earth in the DE.

 

[Grant]

There are literally dozens of changes. Special effects things taking out other things put in, sound design, the credits, basically from the first shot to the last and many things in between.
If you want a visual comparison go to YouTube and type in Star Trek the motion picture director's cut vs. Theatrical

 

[NCC-73515]

Oh another big change is the dish when they leave the ship and walk towards the probe: The odd matte painting was replaced with a proper looking digital model, and the bridge formed piece by piece.

 

[Pauln6]

There are actually some YouTube videos that do comparisons with Theatrical and DE and Theatrical and SLV.

Edit: I see Grant already mentioned this!

 

[Kor]

Oh another big change is the dish when they leave the ship and walk towards the probe: The odd matte painting was replaced with a proper looking digital model, and the bridge formed piece by piece.

The perspective looks better, but it looks very much like a digital model. And the little CGI people make the whole thing look even more digital.

Kor

 

[David cgc]

There are literally dozens of changes.

Probably closer to hundreds, counting alternate takes, shots shortened or lengthened by as little as a frame or two, and the all-new sound mix.

 

[Tosk]

General comparison here:
https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=2400

 

[Grant]

That's the translation from the German website. So the language is sometimes odd and inaccurate. And there's a lot of other small changes besides those those are the major additions but there are literally dozens or hundreds of smaller ones

 

[Tosk]

Good point, shouldn't have used the word complete.

 

[Grant]

Yeah that covers all of the major additions I'm not sure if it's covered the chunks that were taken out of the clouds journey and the Voyager fly over.
Put on the YouTube comparison videos there so many changes that it's literally in three 15-minute minutes segments to watch them all!

 

[Tribble Threat]

From what you all have told me and what I read in the link Tosk provided, it sounds like there are no changes that affect the story. It sounds like there are changes that slightly improve the special effects, and spend a lot more time showing the special effects. And sounds like there are some changes with lines removed, that had a detrimental effect to the mood of the story. For example, when the transporter malfunctions early in the movie, Kirk shouted "Oh my god!" and this was removed, giving even less weight to the deaths on the transporters than the original version had. And at one point, Kirk says they can only hope there are creatures on board whose power of judgment is equal to ours, and this was removed from the Director's Edition.

Would you say my assessment is accurate?

 

[Pauln6]

From what you all have told me and what I read in the link Tosk provided, it sounds like there are no changes that affect the story. It sounds like there are changes that slightly improve the special effects, and spend a lot more time showing the special effects. And sounds like there are some changes with lines removed, that had a detrimental effect to the mood of the story. For example, when the transporter malfunctions early in the movie, Kirk shouted "Oh my god!" and this was removed, giving even less weight to the deaths on the transporters than the original version had. And at one point, Kirk says they can only hope there are creatures on board whose power of judgment is equal to ours, and this was removed from the Director's Edition.

Would you say my assessment is accurate?

Yeah. I generally like the time saving edits and I miss the dialogue so I'm working on a version where I'm adding the dialogue back. I couldn't squeeze in the oh my God but much of the rest fits ok.

 

[Grant]

They don't spend a lot more time in the director's cut showing special effects. The biggest cuts as far as time goes in the director's cut are special effects. Specifically the Voyager flyover and the cloud Journey have been edited down.

 

[Pauln6]

They don't spend a lot more time in the director's cut showing special effects. The biggest cuts as far as time goes in the director's cut are special effects. Specifically the Voyager flyover and the cloud Journey have been edited down.

I saw the Theatrical version last year and the final scene with Voyager VI really dragged. They must have trimmed it down quite a bit in the DE.

 

[Maurice]

Kirk didn’t shout “Oh my God,” but the line as delivered did not work.

 

[Maurice]

The perspective looks better, but it looks very much like a digital model. And the little CGI people make the whole thing look even more digital.

Kor

The mattes, poor as they are, have a mood to them that the CGI replacements do not.

 

[Tomalak]

Are there any more rumours about the supposed 4K anniversary release of TMP, including the Director's Cut?

I notice Bruce Botnick has let the cat out of the bag that he's produced a Dolby Atmos soundtrack for TMP...

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[arch101]

The “tear” scene is, to me, the most important change. It brings resolution to Spocks story where there wasn’t one in the original cut.

 

[Grant]

There's a lot of debate about what he was referring to in that video. He uses the word Atmos but he is not a soundtrack mixer he is a musical score mixer.
And he has in the past mixed musical albums into Atmos. He has not been involved in mixing the entire soundtrack of a movie into Atmos.
So the speculation is that he is referring to remixing the score of the movie into Atmos for yet another release of the Goldsmith score.
I'm still holding out hope that he is mixing the score into Atmos as part of a larger project tp remix the entire movie soundtrack into Atmos for the purpose of releasing the movie in 4k.
The really sad thing about that video is when he mentions it to the person interviewing him the guy absolutely could not care less about what he's talking about when it comes to Star Trek. All it would have taken was a couple of follow-up questions to clarify exactly what he was doing and exactly what the project was.