^My impression is that they had the original master audio elements to work from, so everything would've been separate. I'd have to check my sources to be sure, though, and I don't have time at the moment.
cool that there are so many TMP threads
- Thread starter JT Perfecthair
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I don't remember it all offhand, but there was a lot of detail in pre-release DE publicity regarding all the unfinished aspects of the film. Stuff that hadn't bothered me watching the theatrical version many times, but now that I know they're there....Regarding the soundtrack, there was a complete lack of intended ambient sound effects, like doors making noise, because they didn't have time to put them in. Other noteworthy items are black viewports in the rec room scene with Decker and Ilia (where the DE inserts effects of V'ger's interior) and a really long shot of the Starfleet HQ logo in Kirk's first scene that was only there as a placeholder for an intended shuttle effect.
So in a way SW was the anomaly as in the 70s the norm for SF flicks then was the thoughtful, intellectual dystopian stuff. Star Trek had already advanced to that road for its Phase 2 before SW popped up.
Then after SW brought back the feel good action SF people were wondering why Star Trek TMP wasn’t like that as that’s what they remembered from the tv show. So in a way Star Trek got there late to its own party
It was a worthwhile effort to have Star Trek go into the movies trying to do its own thing, rather than trying to be a Star Wars clone.
And that glitch where V'Ger's energy bolt disappears after Spock sends the signal, but part of the sound effect of the energy bolt persists for another 10-15 seconds.
Plus there are the matte-painting goofs. The Vulcan establishing shot shows a night sky even though the scene was shot in the day, and though they darkened the live-action plate, you can still see clear shadows. And then there's the shot at the start of the walk to V'Ger's core where they emerge onto the hull of the saucer and the matte painting of the saucer is all wrong, with the module around the bridge dome missing and the saucer bulge unnaturally high.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. Some of the genre movies of the '70s were intellectual, but there were also plenty of cheesy monster movies like Beware the Blob or The Thing With Two Heads or Kingdom of the Spiders, plenty of imported Godzilla movies, lowbrow adventure films like The Land that Time Forgot or At the Earth's Core, and so forth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_science_fiction_films_of_the_1970s
I'd say that what Star Wars did was to take a subgenre that had been the purview of low-budget B-movies and raise it to a blockbuster level that studios subsequently sought to emulate, so that the more slow-paced, intellectual variety of SF film was largely crowded out.
You shouldn't assume that movie audiences back then were just like they are today. The action/effects blockbuster had been established, but it had not become a formula that studios dared not stray from. A broader cross-section of the population went to movies regularly and the lists of top-grossing films in the late '70s show a much wider variety of genres and styles than we see now. The year TMP came out Kramer vs. Kramer and Manhattan were making huge box-office.
As Christopher said, the science fiction genre had also had considerable variety. The year before Star Wars, the earth-bound, dystopian Logan's Run had been very successful, as had the present-day horror/sci-fi Invasion of the Body Snatchers in '78.
TMP was one of the budget-nearly-out-of-contol films that really made the studios nervous and, after Heaven's Gate, very reluctant to stray from a proven template. The competition from home video and increasingly corporate and profit-driven studios in the '80s moved the industry away from the "director's medium" of the '70s.
Were some people disappointed with TMP? Sure. But the idea that TMP would be a Star Trek-ized version of Star Wars was not the way most people thought of it, it was not universally reviled, and it did respectable business at the box office. Its negative reputation is something that has grown in the telling over the years.
What version of TV Trek? The lightly comedic? The character dramas? The parables? There were 79 episodes out there (plus TAS which was not as accessible) and the idea that Star Trek equals action-adventure was not set in stone.
Better than respectable. Corrected for inflation, TMP is the second-most successful Trek movie of all time, surpassed in box-office returns only by the 2009 film:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchises/chart/?id=startrek.htm
Although that's probably partly because movies were kept in release far longer back then, often staying in theaters for a year or more.
I think a lot of TMP's negative reputation owes to the TV/home video releases over the years. The process used at the time to transfer film to video washed out the colors, creating the perception of TMP as a blander film than it actually was in theaters. And the extended visual sequences like the Enterprise and V'Ger flyovers were no doubt more impressive on the big screen and in the immersive environment of the theater, so people who only saw them on their TV sets probably had less patience for them.
Agreed. TMP always had its detractors, but I still think if there was a single moment that broke its reputation it was when it was broadcast as the "ABC Sunday Night Movie" in 1983. With the added footage and all the commercial breaks it dragged on for what seemed like all night. You'd come back from a commercial for a few minutes of V'Ger fly-by, and then more commercials, and then back to more V'Ger, but nothing had happened. The contrast to recent memories of TWOK's action was devastating. It was a long time before I heard a good word said about TMP, after that.
FWIW...I was not yet a Trek fan, and had seen precious little of the TV series, when I first watched TMP on cable about a year after its theatrical release. It held my interest well enough.
Has any film since been referred to as a "motion picture" as part of its title? That seems odd that they felt the need to point that out, by 1979 nobody really needed to be told that it was a talkie or in color either.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
That doesn't sound too likely, because the doors opening & closing would have been in even the earliest assemblies, preVFX, so those would have had the most time for sounds to be assembled & developed.
Not too sure about how much of the DE relied on original unused tracks either ... the mix on the DE is just so boring (the wormhole alert is a good example, an alarm that puts you to sleep instead of, well, alarming you) it sounds like a quickie assembly.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
[/QUOTE]
This is one of the strangest things about the theatrical. There is a picture of Matt Yuricich painting a really nice orange matte painting for this Vulcan shot with Spock, and next to it is the concept painting which is a close match ... and yet in the film, there is this ridiculous THIRD ROCK looking thing. THE GOD THING had a source who indicated that the shot was pulled from Trumbull's group and Yuricich and given to another vendor (NOT Apogee, they didn't even have a matte painter) to finish, which makes precious little sense, except that it explains how crappy it looks. That's a big WHY? for me, one among many.
Still hoping that Preston Neal Jones gets to publish some or all of his 1600 page transcript of TMP interviews that were supposed to run in CFQ's never-printed double issue on TMP.
The point was, "Hey, this TV series is now a movie!" As stated, Superman: The Movie was titled along the same lines, as was The Muppet Movie, Transformers: The Movie, Twilight Zone: The Movie, etc. It's like calling a musical play adaptation of a work X: The Musical, or a cartoon version X: The Animated Series. It's to call attention to the fact that it's in a different medium than people are used to seeing it in, and to help distinguish it in advertising and coverage so that people will know which version you're discussing. It's different now that there are a dozen Trek movies and it's one of the longest-running movie franchises of all time; but back then, Star Trek had never been a motion picture before, so that was something worth calling attention to.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Decker is the one character Wise cast, and Collins' deal was only for the feature, so his performance or potential performance shouldn't be considered as part of any possible p2 equation. He probably wouldn't have even considered doing TV at that point; he had done the RHEINEMAN EXCHANGE (and been quite good in it) but was considered a feature actor, in an early Danielle Steele movie and a good part in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.
I think if you look at the list of other actors who auditioned for Decker, you might have seen a couple who would have been considered for the TV version. While Frederick Forest was already too big for TV (and man, he could have mixed it up with Shatner in TMP, a real misses op there, though he does have a contemporary vibe), folks like Andy Robinson (yeah, Scorpio from DIRTY HARRY and Garak from DS9) and Tim Thomerson (both of whom had come off the QUARK series) who came in to read would have been good contenders.
Was Collins that much of a "feature actor," even at that point? Before TMP, Collins did six guest spots on TV series, two TV movies, and a miniseries. Of the four features he was in prior to TMP, he was the lead in one, and supporting in the others.
After TMP, he went back to doing TV guest spots, and starred in his own series (Tales of the Gold Monkey) during the 1982-1983 season.
Looking at his IMDB page he seems to have done a mixture of TV and film work prior to TMP. And following TMP did the same,.
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