Mmk, here's my opinion on one of my favorite movies ever--
I'm a bit of a young'un...I first watched
The Motion Picture back when I was six or seven, which was around 1991 or 1992. The movie was so unbelievably epic to me. It invoked such a sense of awe into my childhood brain that I would recreate scenes from the movie using pillow forts, and scribble pencil recreations of the scenes from the film over and over in my school notebook. For what it's worth, you have to love the film's totally epic sense of size and wonder, if anything. V'ger is
huge--the cloud surrounding the entity is over 82 AU in diameter (or 2 AU, if you go by the Director's Cut). And, really, a lot of movies will describe big things, but this movie
shows you these big things, and really plugs it into your head how massive everything is using absolutely beautiful special effects for the time period (and now, even--I mean, the effects look good freakin'
now, and I can hardly say that about almost any other film from the Seventies). It's a masterpiece of mood and atmosphere crossed with the big ideas and human metaphors of the best of Star Trek. It's a little overly ponderous and meandering at times, but I almost appreciate the slow march of the narrative which really adds to the grandiose, epic sci-fi feel. Too much action would rob the film of its artistic grandeur. It's not an action film. People compare it to
The Wrath of Khan and complain about the lethargic pace. It's a thinking film. It's an idea film. It's not about space battles and good versus evil.
There's so many things this movie does right, from the David Cronenburg-esque brutality of the transporter malfunction ("Oh no! They're forming...") reminding us that Kirk isn't as "tried" and he believes he is (surrounded by new faces, redesigned and unfamiliar corridors, and experimental, unsafe equipment), to the wonderful species diversity of the crew shown in the first recreation room scene, to the incredible score, to the fascinating insights into V'ger's desires and goals as analyzed and described by the classic trio of Kirk, Bones, and Spock...that the pros outweigh the cons, in my humble little noob opinion. This movie left my jaw dropped to the floor when I was a kid, and it still does, to the extent that when I first bought the Director's Cut, I watched it three times in a row, twice for both commentaries and once without. Yeah, I'm that far gone.
That said, the movie is damned near perfect in my eyes, and cutting it up anymore would rob from the film. The faults in
The Motion Picture cannot be reconciled by trimming. There's scenes that
should have been filmed, that would have added some action, and made the idea of V'ger a bit more palatable and believable, such as the "Memory Wall" sequence in the original script. I really like Decker, and I think, given some more character development, he could have really shined. I only barely buy the idea that Decker would suddenly say that as much as Kirk wanted his command back, he wanted to join with V'ger and throw away his life work in Starfleet and as a human being in general. It's a cool idea, and again, halfways understandable--I just feel like his motives should have been developed a bit more. I don't mind the costumes as much as most people do, I just would have liked to see some continuity with the colors, and more uniformity with respect to the costume designs. Everyone seems to be wearing random shades of grey, brown, and white regardless of the department they're in, and there seems to be too many variations of outfit style going on.
Anyway, I'll wrap up this nonsensical ramble by saying that I'd like to watch your edit out of curiosity. I feel the best version of the film is indeed Robert Wise's Director's Cut, though. I think all of the faults that could have been fixed by trimming
were fixed in that version, and the added special effects are
perfect (and in one case, necessary for continuity--the removal of the moon
orbiting Vulcan in particular).
