Movie Review: 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition'
Star Trek: The
Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition (2001)
Directed by Robert Wise
Written by Harold Livingston, based on a story by Alan Dean
Foster
Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley,
James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Stephen Collins,
Persis Khambatta
In December of 1979, more than a decade after NBC canceled
Gene Roddenberry’s now-classic Star Trek
television series, the crew of the Starship Enterprise set
forth on its first big screen adventure,
Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
When a powerful living machine destroys three Klingon battle
cruisers on the edge of the Neutral Zone and takes a direct course for Earth,
Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) returns to the recently refit USS Enterprise. Along
with his reluctant first officer, Commander Will Decker (Stephen Collins) and
the veteran officers who served with him during the Enterprise’s legendary
five-year mission (Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle
Nichols, Walter Koenig, and George Takei), Kirk must take his untried ship and
crew on a mission to stop the mysterious alien intruder before it reaches
Earth.
Captain James T. Kirk: Well, for a man who swore he'd
never return to the Starfleet...
Commander Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, M.D.: Just a moment,
Captain, sir. I'll explain what happened. Your revered Admiral Nogura invoked a
little-known, seldom-used "reserve activation clause." In simpler
language, Captain, they DRAFTED me!
Captain James T. Kirk: [In mock horror] They didn't.
Commander Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, M.D.: This was your
idea. This was your idea, wasn't it?
Captain James T. Kirk: Bones, there's a... thing... out
there.
Commander Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, M.D.: Why is any object
we don't understand always called "a thing"?
“Star Trek: The Motionless Picture” – Why the
1979 Version Has Issues
Produced by Roddenberry and directed by Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Day the Earth Stood
Still), the movie was an expensive ($46 million) project based on Alan Dean
Foster’s “In Thy Image.” This story originally was intended to be the 2-hour
pilot for Paramount’s aborted TV series Star
Trek: Phase II, but was quickly green-lit when the studio sought an epic
science fiction movie to rival 20th Century Fox’s Star Wars.
Although Roddenberry and his creative team had the story
idea of “In Thy Image” on hand, the writers had no finished script. Instead,
they wrote much of the screenplay even as Wise was in the midst of principal
photography. As a result, Harold Livingston, Roddenberry, and even the veteran Star Trek cast members were forced to do
hourly script revisions and rewrites while they were shooting the movie.
Paramount had set December 7, 1979 as the release date for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but the
studio did not take into account all the difficulties of making an epic
science fiction film with groundbreaking special effects. Not only was Wise
working from an unfinished script, but there were problems with the company
originally hired to do the special effects. As a result, a new visual effects
supervisor, Douglas Trumbull, had to take over.
As Wise wrote in a “Sub-Space Communication from the
Director”:
“Star Trek” was a prestigious film for Paramount, and
their support was unswerving. Unfortunately, even they couldn’t stop the clock
from ticking, and as we began to assess the ambitious technological
breakthroughs we were attempting, we gradually realized that it was going to be
a race. Thanks to a dedicated cast and crew who worked far beyond the call of
duty, we survived the chaos of our final weeks and delivered a movie on the
date promised…December 7, 1979. We had removed several key dialogue scenes in
order to accommodate our incoming special effect work, but no time remained to
work on properly balancing these two components.
Among other things, this lack of balance is why the original
theatrical version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture earned a mixed reaction
from Star Trek fans and film critics
alike. Its tone – inspired more by Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind rather than George Lucas’s Star Wars – was a good fit for
Roddenberry’s love of serious ideas wrapped in nifty science fiction concepts.
Yet its overdependence on special effects, a visually cold, mechanical look,
and the story’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
vibe also made the original cut so ponderous and pretentious. (Some
contemporary wags called it Star Trek:
The Motionless Picture and Spockalypse
Now.)
The Director’s Edition
Luckily for Paramount, Star
Trek: The Motion Picture earned $136 million at the box office and led the
studio to produce five more feature films starring the Original Series’ cast.
But the mixed reviews and the many problems that led to Paramount’s release of
a film that its director considered “unfinished” resulted in Roddenberry’s demotion
from producer to the figurehead role of “executive consultant” for the Star Trek films made before he died in
1991.
Over 20 years after the film’s release, David C. Fein and
Michael Mattesino, who worked for Robert Wise’s production company, lobbied the
director and the studio to revisit Star
Trek: The Motion Picture. Fein and Mattesino knew Wise was not
satisfied with what he considered to be a rough cut. They contacted Wise and Paramount to pitch the concept of a
re-edited version more in line with the director’s original vision.
Wise and Paramount agreed, and together with Fein and
Matessino, the legendary filmmaker used the original screenplay, storyboards,
and other archival materials to plan Star
Trek: The Motion Picture – The Director’s Edition. Various dialogue scenes
cut from the 1979 release were restored and the imbalance between
character-driven scenes and special effects sequences was addressed. Some of
the overlong sequences were shortened, and new computer generated effects shots
were carefully added to replace incomplete or aborted shots. As Wise wrote in
his “Sub-Space” message:
Thanks once again to Paramount’s support, we have been
able to complete the film….In addition to finding a new, and I feel, proper
editorial balance to the film, we have also completed those effects shots and
scenes which we had to abort in 1979, and have given the film a proper sound
mix.
Recommendation
Should you buy, rent or even watch this
movie? Despite its flaws, if you like science fiction movies that tell a story
about ideas rather than relying on space battles and zap guns, yes. Despite
bearing the burden of one of Roddenberry's pet themes (Kirk and the Enterprise confront
and thwart a god-like machine), Star
Trek: The Motion Picture is an interesting tale dealing with humanity's
positive traits, especially courage, friendship, loyalty and the need to
explore the unknown.
On DVD, the film looks good. The original special effects
hold up well, and the new CGI material fits seamlessly into the old
without really calling attention to itself. In addition, the text commentary by
Mike Okuda (as well as the audio commentary by director Bob Wise and other key
creative crew members) provides informative and sometimes humorous insights
into the film, its story and its characters.
Comments
Post a Comment