Star Trek - The Motion Picture DIRECTOR'S EDITION UHD/BD Release; Limited Set Includes 1983 TV Version!

[AndyDursin]

Rear projection inside of models was the only way to do it in those days. Certainly think it looked better than the shot of Arnold gazing through the train window in Total Recall -- 11 years later!

I don't think there was another expensive sci-fi blockbuster that cost as much -- and looked as shoddy -- as TOTAL RECALL. Beyond the tepid FX and make-up work, add in the cheapness of the sets and claustrophobic staging of the action scenes, and it's one instance where the money was definitely NOT all up on-screen. Maybe they blew it all on narcotics down in Mexico?

[Paul MacLean]

[AndyDursin]

The FX work is being retooled again -- I'm sure it'll be better than the DVD, but I'm just not a fan of the practice and would rather have the deleted scenes worked back into the theatrical cut.

Note as announced previously, this will be "exclusively" on Paramount+ so it may be a long time before it gets a physical release.

[AndyDursin]

So THIS is being changed for this cut? the hell??

https://www.missionlogpodcast.com/the-o ... id-c-fein/

How are we going to communicate that the film is different right away? And I thought about that horrifying [transporter accident] scene and I went to my sound team... 'I need you to do something, I need the transporter accident to be pumped up so much that it gives you goosebumps and chills down your spine, nails on a chalkboard. When you listen to this now it should be terrifying and frightening.' And then I explained to them that there were two points in that: Number 1, it is terrifying and frightening, and I think the way I summed it up was I said 'Imagine if you're somebody who's in the worst pain of your life and you don't have any way to scream and suddenly some part of you is there to let you scream. That's horror, just some part of you comes together than you can finally utter some sound. What would it be?' And that's kind of what we ended up with.

[Edmund Kattak]

All in Dolby ATMOS.

[AndyDursin]

Project update with some new screen shots -- which apparently use some original FX materials reincorporated into the mix.

https://www.startrek.com/gallery/update ... on-picture











This thread has some comparisons with the old Directors Edition DVD:

[AndyDursin]

April 5th is apparently the date this debuts on Paramount+ -- apparently a trailer went up online yesterday prematurely and the Trek site that posted it had to take it down. But I've seen some posters on a couple of sites already lamenting the color changes and some other things.

We'll find out soon!

[AndyDursin]

Here's the trailer with some new FX shots on tap....not sure about all of them still, but I'll reserve judgment until I see the whole thing in proper 4K!

[AndyDursin]

Paramount just put out a press release confirming this for 4/5 on Paramount+ and a 4K UHD (as well as digital; no note of a Blu-Ray) for September.

Trailer is officially online:



Here's a good interview with David C. Fein just posted -- the 4K UHD will include some deleted scenes, newly discovered, that people will see for the first time:

For fans of the film, Fein also has another big surprise he revealed during the interview. “There's a deleted scene that we wanted to have back 20 years ago,” he said. “This was Ilia and Scotty and Decker in engineering. We found some of the footage 20 years ago, but there was no audio, so there was really no point in showing the scene. But it's three or four scenes that people have wanted to see forever. So we re-transferred that footage… and we found out that Bob looped the dialogue for the scene. Now that scene's going to be included in the physical media release and others, because he looped a few. And we found other key scenes that are just fantastic.”

https://www.startrek.com/news/david-c-f ... rs-edition

[AndyDursin]

This is now live on Paramount+ though I had to do a specific search for it as it didn't just immediately pop up.

Some quick impressions: I think this is going to be a little more controversial with some fans than people expect. I watched about the first 20 minutes. The color scheme especially when we go inside the Klingon ship at the beginning (much of the red has been removed, it plays "blacker" in hue) appears to have been heavily tweaked, especially after I watched the TMP 4K theatrical cut on UHD a week ago. It may be personal taste, but other scenes seem darker overall (Could also be the Dolby Vision HDR that Paramount+ puts out -- in fact I might have to reassess this once I see it on disc itself).

I'm also not sure I'm onboard with some of the audio alterations. The mix itself -- and it could be the streaming element and compression at play -- seemed a little "brittle" to me. Again, I'll wait for the disc to cast judgment there.

Yet some subtle but noticeable FX were added at times. Was it really necessary to add effects going over some of Goldsmith's score when Kirk and Scotty are in the shuttlecraft seeing the ship for the first time? Or when the Enterprise is ready to leave drydrock? I don't want anyone thinking these effects are overwhelming to the score or seem out of place -- but I never thought these scenes ever needed them before. The music carried it completely, which is all you needed.

Some of the remixed ADR is a mixed bag too. When Kirk gets off the shuttle in the San Francisco docking station, you can now hear the dialogue much clearer between Kirk and Sonak, but there's now next to no crowd noise in the backdrop at all. It makes it sound like they're in a confined space. Even some of the effects that didn't need tweaking -- like the sound of the transporter room accident -- have also been changed...and I don't really understand why.

Visually, the new effects work seems to be fine, but I've never had a problem with the old FX work. When the Kirk shuttle lands in SF, again, they added another shuttle on the right hand side of the screen -- but does it make the scene look more attractive? I went back to the original theatrical cut and felt that untouched matte painting functioned fine as it was. Still I haven't gone in far enough to see what else was reworked in the meat of the film, so again, I'll offer some more thoughts later.

I do like the extra footage and always have -- most of it anyway -- but the bit where Kirk asks why the yet-to-beam-up McCoy was having a "problem" to the yeoman getting off the transporter seems grossly inappropriate given the accident that just killed 2 people. That was probably taken out for a reason to begin with.

Overall, though -- and maybe I'll change my mind once I finish -- but at this point I'm once again fine with the theatrical version. I don't need the "talking computer" removed, I don't need the various old beeps and blips that "date" the movie as a product of 1979 taken out -- because in the end, it is still is a product of 1979. Warts and all, the theatrical version seems a little more "alive" to me, rougher around the edges, but many of these changes -- subtle as most of them are -- seem arbitrary and don't enhance what was on-screen to begin with.

[AndyDursin]

Is this an improvement?

https://forum.blu-ray.com/attachment.ph ... 1649183587

[Paul MacLean]

I do like the extra footage and always have -- most of it anyway -- but the bit where Kirk asks why the yet-to-beam-up McCoy was having a "problem" to the yeoman getting off the transporter seems grossly inappropriate given the accident that just killed 2 people. That was probably taken out for a reason to begin with.

I think the whole "Commander Sonak" subplot should have been cut from the movie. I'd have segued from Spock on Vulcan to the space station, and cut-out the whole (frankly distasteful) transporter malfunction scene.

Anyway, a lot of the changes made for the "Directors Edition" seemed arbitrary to me -- except for the the scene with Spock's tear, which I consider a pivotal moment, without which the film is weaker. I find all of the other "additional footage" to be superfluous.

But I'm sure wiser heads prevailed...

[AndyDursin]

As much as I agree that the movie needs that scene, it's also a dealbreaker for me having to put up with all these drawbacks just to see it in the context of the film. Hopefully someone does a fan edit and puts it back into the non-touched original version.

Seeing a lot of mixed reactions online which don't surprise me. A few other things bugged me:

The newly redone (amateurish looking) opening credits with their "glistening gold" CGI look like a game show.

That "opened up" shot above with Kirk and Spock talking looks rough. So too does the bit when Captain Kirk first gets off the shuttle in the Starfleet transportation hub as I like to call it.

The "V'Ger" bricks coming to the ship, which I felt was one of the weakest FX sequences in the old Director's Cut, have been re-done again -- but once again, it's awkward. I realize what they're trying to do, but they frankly still look silly.

But it's really the "buzzing spaceship" sounds laid over Goldsmith's music that irked me the most. Just no need.

[John Johnson]

https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/board/ ... &archive=0

[AndyDursin]