Don't get me wrong, I actually like the strategy and scenes inside the ships during the battle. There was a fantastic level of tension throughout. It's just the shots of the ships firing at each other that looked pretty bad.
Wrath of Kahn vs first contact:which is better?
- Thread starter buckeyenation
- Start date
trevanian
Rear Admiral
I got NO clue what you mean.
I always found weird how the Reliant's nacelles shook during a certain hit. By the way, TWOK is the only Trek I have on DVD.
This. I had no issues when FC came out. I always had issues with the Genesis project, and how the nacelles shook when Reliant was hit, I never saw it happen before hand or afterwards.
It's pretty simple, actually. I was saying I like the way Kirk uses the nebula against Khan and I like the dialogue they exchange during the final battle. Khan's final hateful words and the makeup job on him as he's all burned up are cool. I just think the actual shots of the ships battling in space aren't very well rendered.
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I just realized from this statement that I may have a bias because of when I first saw the movie. It came out one year before I was born, and I didn't see it till about 2004/2005, so I'm judging it from the perspective of a modern audience. I suppose the effects would be considered quite impressive to some audiences in 1982, but even critic Roger Ebert was very derisive towards them in his review written at the time:
"There is a battle in outer space in this movie, a particularly inept one that owes more to "Captain Video" than to state-of-the-art special effects. I always love it when they give us spaceships capable of leaping across the universe, and then arm them with weapons so puny that a direct hit merely blows up a few control boards and knocks people off their feet. Somehow, though, I don't much care if the battles aren't that amazing, because the story doesn't depend on them."
While it may be unfair to compare 1996 effects to 1982 effects, I still think it's valid to argue that the best movies hold up well no matter how long ago they were made and no matter how primitive their visual effects are.
For example, "King Kong" in the 30s and "Metropolis" from the 20s are still visually stunning in terms of special effects, because while their effects were extremely limited compared to what's around today, they still had a timelessly unique and imaginative quality that makes them still captivating.
I know "The Wrath of Khan" was made on a low budget, but a movie can be made on a low budget and still look fantastic. It's a little jarring when the acting and writing are consistently so strong, but the movie looks so silly at times. "First Contact" on the other hand not only has a good story and great performances, but also looks tremendously slick.
heh??
This is the only film I've seen which actually gives one a sense of massive ships at battle.
Modern Trek just shows supposedly huge ships racing around like racecars.
Rendered, huh. hmm.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Sure you can, especially when the same tech -- in this case, mostly motion control -- is used. It is more about HOW the tech is employed and by whom.
TWOK's motion control work (which constitutes most of the vfx outside of the admittedly often-lame matte paintings) is very good. About the only significant dif in the eras is that optical compositing had given way to digital compositing, resulting in less obvious matting issues.
FC's miniature work was top of the line, but TWOK's was very fine as well. The occasional matte line or seethrough in TWOK is not as annoying as the cg coolant in FC, which is a big part of the film's climax and a visual letdown. TWOK's big finish is probably where ILM did their best work (which admittedly doesn't hold a candle to TMP's best stuff, done even EARLIER and putting to rest the idea that later work is going to be better automatically.)
trevanian
Rear Admiral
That's what I'm wondering about. I don't even need to put the disc in, I can look at trekcore and see how solid the exterior stuff is in screencap form; either way, most of the stuff is probably the visual highpoint. I've often wondered why the mutara battle wasn't bettered in later flicks (not just trek flicks), as the shot of E phasering the nacelle is just incredible (when the nacelle blows off it is too no-blur for my taste, but 13 frames out of a sequence is not much to bitch about.)
1. We have this little forum here called the Star Trek movies forum.
2. TWOK is 'the best of the original series cast movies' only in the estimation of some..
Nah, it just quotes Shakespeare all over the place - often misinterpretting it. Way too gratuitous.
TWOK was more literary without having to show off. Khan wasn't quoting Ahab, he WAS Ahab.
There's no movie called "The Wrath Of Kahn." Jesus.
Shouldn't that be Moses?
Good points, and I totally agree.
I could accept the Queen in a way, as the sort of emotional/psychic "release valve" of the Collective; I suspect she is an expression of what is repressed, at the same time as she too is subject to the Collective's programming. Destroying her destroys that release mechanism and the mini-Collective on the Enterprise imploded under the pressure. I'm not sure how to explain it better than that, though.
What I did not like was the way VOY handled the Borg--they were completely overdone, and it contradicted everything FC and prior.
These are probably my two favourite films. I love them both. I think that TWOK is the better film. I like the themes of aging and time passing. They neatly mirror the aging of the crew and the re-emergency of an enemy from the past. The themes of time passing, lost youth, death and re-birth are resonant for me and I think they mirror the plot well. While I love First Contact I can understand why people are critical of certain parts of it: the changed Borg, Zephram Cochrane, Picard the Action Hero. None of those things really bother me and don't detract from the film for me. But other than Picard's big speech, it doesn't really seem to have any themes running through it. There's a plot but it isn't enhanced by any recurring themes or motifs, so for that reason for me it's a poorer film. I still love it though.
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