Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection comparison *PIX* + reviews - Page 43

I just watched Wrath Of Kahn and Star Trek The Motion Picture again (Original Blu-Ray releases). TMP was an amazing visual experience!

Also: I know everyone seems to love Kahn as the best Trek movie, but while it was pretty entertaining it was also too cheesy by half to fully engage me. I've been going through the original series Blu-Rays, watching the episodes with my kids,
and the movies just don't capture the ease and rhythm of the original shows. There's just something "off" about all of them, like a comedian who has lost his timing for jokes. It's like when it came to the movies, especially starting with Khan, they forgot that Kirk was actually cool in the series.

What I loved about TMP is that it was so monumental and epic a sci-fi movie. Yeah, slow by Star Trek "I wanna see Kirk shooting a phaser" standards, and it only capture one part of the feel of Star Trek - the earnest sci-fi portion, but left the swashbuckling behind. But accepting it as "not really a total start trek movie" but a sci-fi with the trek characters, it was a higher quality experience. For me, anyway.

I'd like to think Paramount will eventually get around to rectifying their mistakes by giving us proper transfers of TMP and movies 3-9. The longer cuts of 2 and 6 and the director's edition of TMP honestly aren't as important to me as getting high-quality transfers of the theatricals, but yes, I see those as inevitabilities as well. Maybe they could roll out special collector's blu-rays one at a time like they did on dvd. They could even keep milking the old transfers of the other movies in the meantime (again, just like they did on dvd).

The major difference between TOS and ST2 is that one is a 2h Movie. The TOS style wouldnt work in a movie. TOS has a very campy style. Thats entertaining for a 40min episode. But it doesnt give us much epic feel that a scifi movie needs. Kahn needs to be much more lethal and Kirk needs to be less thespian in his acting.

But what ST2 manage is to recreate the chemistry of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Something ST1 failed to do.

I guess the problem with ST1 besides the part I already mentioned is that it was developed as a TV pilot. The material wasnt there for the silver screen. Not to mentioned one of the most boring sets/costumes I have seen since THX. Also while many movies today are just to fast paced, this one is to slow paced for its own good.

Star Trek TMP basically only has starship porn and a somewhat interesting premise going for it. But the combination of being too slow for even a very serious attempt at science fiction in combination with the revelation of the mystery being pants on head retarded always ruined it for me. A more successful version of what TMP attempted is, for me, the Stephen Soderbergh version of Solaris (which is a very underated film, IMO).

are you kidding... STTMP is Science Fiction in it's purist form!
while pacing of some of the initial boarding sequences should have been shortened, the rest of the movie plays extremely well as is. all thought, little action.

Completely agree.

No you didn't. You would have seen on the box and in the credits it's spelled KHAN.

I agree as well. TMP has a little 2001-esque thing going on in it. The movie is true science fiction opposed to the other Trek films. (Not saying anything bad about the other films here, in fact, Khan is my favorite.)

I think you have to look at those extended boarding sequences in context. This movie had to re-introduce the characters to the audience when it was released. Those longer scenes do just that.

Its not the bording sequence that drags down ST1, its very enjoyable. Its the "drive through the cloud with Spielberg faces" that takes forever.

I love the boarding sequence. Sure, it's Enterprise porn, but I like the Enterprise and I like porn, so it's a win-win!...And the special effects and Goldsmith's score are so damn spectacular there. TMP gets a bad rap.

TMP plays out like a classic episode, just with great effects, music, and more of everything including more dialog and more gaping awe. All the other films have more action and I think are more entertaining in that sense, but TMP does a great job of bridging that gap between the series and the sequels. Maybe it's just me, but I like the extended score introduction.

Except in TOS everybody seems to have more fun. In ST1 there is no joy among the crew to be out there in space. Its like a 6 year old Pon Far reunion.

Yep. Agreed.

Although TOS is known as campy, I find a good number of it's episodes (especially 1st season and some 2nd season) to be quite serious, thoughtful, and "adult." It's been one of the joys in re-discovering the series
on Hi-Def that it's not all Gorn fights.

So I guess that since the more serious minded episodes of TOS turn my crank, that's why the more serious tone of STMP does the same. It also has the greatest production value. As I said, it didn't capture the whole
Star Trek gestalt - certainly missing some fun factor and character rapport - but I'll take those deficiencies. Even the following movies that attempted to bring in a lighter tone and more rapport between the main characters did it really
awkwardly, which was the point I was making before. Spock was often more subtle and more intelligent in a number of TOS episides than in the movies, and lots of the character rapport in Wrath Of Khan and subsequent movies I find more
cringe-inducing than anything else.

Cringe inducing is right. Remember how being a sci-fi fan used to be embarrassing? It was the 80's after all, a decade of mostly geek crap with low budgets making matters worse. Unlike today, there were hardly any serious movies not commercialized with half comedy, but us fans took what we could get when it came to sci-fi. Maybe this is why we hold the few not so crappy ones in such high regard.
Edited by AVfile - 2/12/13 at 8:18pm

I love STMP except for the fly over of VGER which takes too long. The music still gives me chills particularly the opening, ending and "The Enterprise" sequence. I watched this on Sunday and then Where No Man has Gone before immediately after. Why can't they have made the films look as good as the original episodes ?

Art

Are we talking PQ of the movie?

I don't know about anyone else but that is what I'm talking about. Where No Man has Gone Before , as an example, is jaw dropping.

Art

I really don't get the hate for TPM, it's my favorite followed by Voyage Home. I can't believe people find the entering of the cloud part too long and boring or the fly over Viger which to me are the absolute best parts it gives me chills every time. Wrath of Khan on the other hand I loathe....so sue me!!!!!

Yes you would think, that it would be easier to make good masters of 10 ST Movies then 3 seasons of TOS. But someone wanted to save some money.

Maybe the future 4K release will give us a new master.

I wouldnt open the mailbox the next couple of days.

I love the Director's Cut of TMP and hope that it will be released on Blu-Ray someday. But I like it not so much as a Star Trek flick as much as for the aspirations...it tried to reach for a 2001 vibe. And, of course, was/is subject to the same criticisms (too slow, boring, etc.) It was the last big-budget attempt to reach for that 2001 zeitgeist (Lord knows 2010 didn't!) And it also had the best FX as well. KHAN succeeds better as a Trek movie, but that doesn't preclude the pluses of TMP

Art I agree about the quality of the TOS HD transfers. They often look incredible - amazing clarity and detail, while also film-like. Have you watched the Twilight Zone season 1 or 2 on Blu-Ray? Jaw-dropping clarity and detail in a lot of those titles.
Although the occasional Twilight Zone was shot on video and it shows just how astounding the distance was between the resolution captures on film vs video. (Hard not to resist rising vomit with the video-shot episodes).

As for STMP, I always liked the Vger fly-over sequences. The scope of Vger especially impressed me when I saw that movie projected huge on an IMAX screen, in the 80's. Now that I have a projection set up it's wonderful to re-capture some of that feeling of bigger than life scale when viewing such movies. Though I would agree with everyone that the Vger sequences is compromised by the onslaught of silly looking and dramatically static cutaways to awed crew members over and over.

Yea,The Twilight Zone is often absolutely incredible also ( I have all of them). The fact that these look so great and the Star Trek films are so filtered just tells me that the wrong folks got their hands on the films.

Art

Paramount has done this to so many catalog titles (they are not much different than Universal). I recently watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - same kind of DNR issues. However, on the deleted scene it's not filtered and looks far better than the movie itself.

We should be very thankful CBS handled ST TOS.

Paramount has always had a love-hate relationship with Star Trek. It's their bread-n-butter series, but they often treat the films and the transfers in a very liaise fare way and since Star Trek IV have ever cheapened their budget for good scripts.

Unless the studio is willing to re-do the SFX of STTMP Director's Cut in 4k, you're not going to be seeing it for quite some time... if ever... in HD. The new SFX should have been at theatrical grade to begin with, not standard def!!

There is also a Director's Cut of ST: V that Shatner has wanted to produce for some time... supposedly it's far less cringe worthy and more serious with better visuals, but Paramount won't get off their butts to authorize the expenditure.

However, they will pony up hundreds of millions for hyper-active-drive ST reboots for teenie-boppers that play out more like crappy Transformers movies than quality sci-fi/adventure that the best of ST tries to deliver.

Even though KHAN is an amazing film, considering it's age and style points, I really do have a soft spot for TMP. I heard that the VFX crew worked on both KHAN and TMP, and they kept on saying in an interview that they really felt the VFX was really more rewarding for TMP. Interesting, but true for these guys, and I agree. The making of 'the mutara nebula' was pretty fun to watch too

Aww I like JJ Trek the worst Trek films were the last two Next Generation pictures bloody awful.

Agree 100%. Trek 09 felt like TOS to me, but on a bigger screen. Something none of the TOS movies, or later Trek ever did.

The best Trek was really never about technology, or the technobabble. It was about the characters, and their trials and tribblelations. JJ did a pretty good job, even if a few plot point were a tad too loose IMO.

And either way, he got the franchise off life support.

TMP was done by Apogee under John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull's crew from FGC.

TWOK was done by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) supervised by Ken Ralston.

There were some people who worked on both shows, like modelmakers and other technicians but the films were done by 2 different crews.

YES, there were people that worked on 'both shows'.....and I saw the interview. Point taken on the technicalities, but what I said in a 'nutshell' still stands....

The only thing I hate about the Director's cut of TMP is that it removes the mystique associated with Viger by revealing it being another stupid large alien ship apposed to it being something beyond human scope and comprehension.