Re: Star Trek films on Blu-Ray... what we know so far
For what it's worth, since we were talking about TMP and the different versions of it, I was inspired to watch the DVD of the Director's Edition a couple nights ago. Here are my impressions of it, post discussion:
I see what they were going for with this new edition in terms of making the film "warmer", between tweaking color timing, trimming some of the dialogue that seemed out of character or cold, removing computer voices, shortening effects, etc. And on one level, it's effective, in that the film does feel better paced and flow a little better in the Director's Edition than it had in any earlier versions. However, I don't think the film itself, the writing, the direction, the performances, were in any way "warm" so there's really only so much you can do.
But too many of the new special effects stuck out like a sore thumb for me to revise my criticism on that. It's really quite a shocking transition, to go from the incredible work of Trumbull, et al, to a shot that looks like it came out of TNG. I will say that the work on Vulcan isn't nearly as bad as I remember it being. I think if I had been watching it on a smaller TV instead of my projector, it would have been a lot less obvious. I don't think I need to rehash all of my critiques of the effects (it would just put everyone on here back to sleep), but I hope you'll indulge me for one more example:
The scene in the lounge or recreation deck or whatever that room is called... where Kirk, Spock and McCoy speak as a window looks out into space. I totally forgot about the nacelle being digitally added as part of the window view, so it's not a change I was looking for or prepared to critique. But the second it appeared onscreen, something about the shot just seemed very wrong to me, and it actually took me a moment to figure out why. That's the kind of change where, I don't think there was anything wrong that needed to be fixed in the first place, the new effect draws attention to itself when it's the least important thing in the scene, and to me it has that "digital" look where it just doesn't appear to have the same weight or consistency as the model work.
Some people will love those changes; that's their right, and I don't think there's a "right" or "wrong" opinion to have here. But given my choice, I think I would take a version without all of the changes. When I finished watching the DVD, my thoughts could basically be summed up as:
Yeah, that was maybe a little better paced than the original version, but it's still not a very good movie.
(but I love it anyway)