Would a TOS remaster job work for the Trek movies?

[Johnny Rico]

Take the "remaster job" that they did with TOS with the exterior shots and viewscreen shots, and apply that to the first, say 5 Trek films.

These are the pre-CG anything Trek movies. They used some CG in Trek VI I believe. Or at the very least the compositing was better in VI than anything prior.

Anyway, I'm watching Star Trek II now on my new HDTV for the first time and I'm just now noticing just how bad the compositing of the ships look in the exterior space shots. I mean, they're not bad as say the original TOS stuff, but for the eventual HD releases of these movies, something is gonna need to be done. Just like the justification for doing TOS.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Personally I dont feel the TOS movies are that bad, the graphics are still quite good compared to modern CG and i'd sooner leave them as they are.

 

[Son_of_Soong]

Redo them anyway. Those who dont like the changes can keep the original versions, those who do can rebuy them.

 

[Johnny Rico]

The Reliant vs Enterprise battle looks really bad during their first encounter. Haven't seen the nebula battle yet.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

The movies look fine the way they are. For that matter, so did the original series. If you want a show/movie with modern CGI effects I recommend not watching 1960s TV shows and 1980s movies.

 

[mswood]

Well for the most part Trek films special effects are rather lackluster. After the motion Picture (which visual I have no real problems with as a whole, there are a few scenes that needed more work, but), Trek really didn't spend a vast amount of budget (at least in comparison to other effects heavy shows) of FX.

For the good work ILM did for example, it was never their A list talent, hell for VI, they brought in their C list group due to budget and it really shows.

Not to mention the incredible poor visual effects for Final Frontier.

But am I up for them redoing them, I don't know.

Unlike TOS, and modern Trek (with the possible exception of some of Voyager and all ENT) the upgrade is needed to combat the fact that the shows weren't shot (especially effects wise) for higher then Standard tv reception.

But all the films are shot both live footage and fx for the even higher resolution of a theatre then what we get in the typical 1080 HDTV set.

So that arguement doesn't apply to any new form of viewing the material. The only reason to update would then be to try and make it better with more modern equipment and for the most part, while it is certainly possible to improve many if not all of those shots, it wouldn't be cheap (were talking millions of dollars for each film. And unlike TOS (or most of the TV shows in modern Trek) you are going to have to employee either better talent (Don't want to judge) or be willing (if they do have the talent) the time, resources, and budget to improve those shots which is going to be far more difficult then improving shots designed for tv.

 

[EnsignRicky]

The remastered original series is a cool novelty; But I hope, as so often is done in Science fiction land, they don't go to the well fourty three times too many. Thier pretty nifty by todays standards, but what about tomorrow's? Are they going to forever update these things to"current standards"? An Idea that I'm sure would appeal to the fine people of Paramount. Infact, I sometimes wonder if Lucas has it in his estate that the Star Wars Hexology will be updated every twenty years until the end of time. The point is, like I said, it's a fun novelty, but it should never become the rule. As A brave man once said, "We Must Draw The Line Heaah!!"

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I would seriously accept any attempt to revamp the SFX of TWOK and TFF. Especially the latter.

That said, I believe the SFX for the rest of the films (III, IV, VI and the TNG ones) hold up pretty well.

 

[Turbo]

I think that the movies hold up pretty well, with the exception of Generations. You want to talk about a low budget? With the exception of the well-done crash sequence, the movie's SFX ia a horrid mishmash of new footage, Encounter at Farpoint stock footage, Star Trek VI stock footage, and poor CGI.

 

[Johnny Rico]

OK, I finished the movie [TWOK], and the nebula battle looks pretty good. Couldn't really detect any major compositing issues. But the initial encounter really needs some new work. Especially the Reliant as it makes it pass by the port side of the Enterprise.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Not to mention the horribly dated font in the retinal scan scene in TWOK.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

TMP still needs to be cleaned up a bit (especially in the 'cloud' scenes), and the D.E. has at least one glaring error that I'm aware of: when the airtram shuttle approaches Starfleet Command, it is heading for a spot that's about a hundred feet up from the water, but when we see this from the inside, it's level with the water's edge.

 

[Trevacious]

I would be interested in seeing virtually all of the FX work in Star Trek V replaced with all-new visuals that will notch it up to match or exceed the looks of Treks 1-4.

With a little extra cash, it would even be possible to finally bring that rock man army to life for the climax. That'd be some nice extra target practice for Spock when the Bird of Prey swoops in to make the rescue.

Oh, and though I'd rather forget all about Generations and the latter movies, Generations could use a major fixing up as well. It was pathetic that they recycled the exploding BOP from Trek 6. That BOP explosion was weak in the first place. I never did like the look of it in Trek 6. It screamed "low budget" to me.

Back to Trek V -- by giving it a revamp and allowing the director to come back and finish his movie, it would certainly be a handy excuse to bring Shatner in on their Trek marketing for 2009.

I'm thinking we might see a major box set upgrade akin to what WB did for the Superman series, which included a facsimile "Donner cut" of Superman II that fans had been waiting to see for many years. (They couldn't truly go back and finish that movie the way it would've been, but it was still an exciting thing to have a small taste of what Donner had in mind.)

 

[StolenThunder]

Gonna move this to Trek Movies.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Emperor-Tiberius said:
Not to mention the horribly dated font in the retinal scan scene in TWOK.

If you dislike dated effects I would recommend not watching 25 year old movies.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I find the scenes like that interesting. It's like watching Transformers the Movie 1986 and seeing what they all thought 2005 would look like.

 

[Tomalak]

TOS was redone because the effects wouldn't stand up to high definition. The movies were explicitly designed to be seen on a cinema screen - higher resolution than HD video. I don't really see the point.

 

[Michael]

EliyahuQeoni said:

Emperor-Tiberius said:
Not to mention the horribly dated font in the retinal scan scene in TWOK.

If you dislike dated effects I would recommend not watching 25 year old movies.

Spot-on.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Only if they digitally replace the MacIntosh that Scotty uses in Star Trek IV for the transparent aluminum formula with some sort of state of the art computer workstation. That part always brings me out of the movie.

 

[Holytomato]

"The Reliant vs Enterprise battle looks really bad during their first encounter. Haven't seen the nebula battle yet."

The Flashback, Star Trek:Encounters, and Star Trek:Legacy nebula scenes are better. :thumbsup:

Change the shield flares, phasers, photon torpedoes, planets (genesis wave), asteroids, and exterior/interior warp bubble shots to Star Trek Legacy quality.

"The movies look fine the way they are. For that matter, so did the original series. If you want a show/movie with modern CGI effects I recommend not watching 1960s TV shows and 1980s movies."

If you want a show/movie without modern CGI effects I recommend not watching 2000s TV shows, and movies.