Movie Review: 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition'

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 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. 
  

This version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is available only in the 2001 Director's Edition DVD.  The version currently available on Blu-ray is the 1979 theatrical version, which is a bit longer and is overloaded with special effects sequences that were included in the film because Paramount Pictures demanded it.  

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