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Posted: |
Apr 8, 2022 - 1:10 PM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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The color grading is all wonk as well, all blue moved into purples.
Eh? Before maligning the product, I'd suggest checking the colour settings of whatever display you are viewing it on (calibrate your red), because that's absolutely not what I am seeing.
Bill Hunt at The Digital Bits says the film was finally given a proper color grade (he watched a theatrical projection of this 4K release), and I'll trust what he says over some people here who may be watching on improperly calibrated televisions.
well, the key term there, "proper color grade" - because he likes how it looks, or because he knows that this is what Wise wanted it look like?
Exactly, I hate that argument. It still comes down to opinion and you're just assuming those criticizing the color balance and saturation all have improperly calibrated televisions or monitors.
Same argument was made for Game Of Thrones when a large battle sequence near the final was so dark you couldn't see anything on screen. It's not me, its you and your improperly calibrated televisions.
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Does anyone know why the final bars of Fred Steiner's "V'Ger Speaks" cue were dialed-out and replaced with a celeste passage from one of Goldsmith's rejected cues?
The moment in question occurs at at 2:00:48 in the theatrical cut, and at 2:04:29 in the "directors edition" -- when Decker says "To bring the creator here.."
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Posted: |
Apr 16, 2022 - 10:31 PM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Okay I saw the 2022 Directors Edition. I tried to have an open mind but most of the changes work against the film. Ive only seen the 2000 Directors Edition once so I don't know how much of this are additional changes or present in 2000.
First the positive. The soundtrack remains upfront and prominent in the mix (with one glaring exception*) For the most part the audio/video remastering was amazing. Though the quality of the photography varies from scene to scene. Some scenes are crisp and clear with vivid colors. Some are rather dark and grainy. Mostly during scenes that had in camera effects shots like the Worm Hole scene and Probe on the bridge.
Overall the video is extremely detailed, so much so you can see the stitches on the Starfleet uniform emblems. (Not sure that's a positive though!) Also Kirk's shirt shows details in its design Ive never noticed before. Spock's makeup is very unflattering though, he literately looks like a walking corpse.
The actual model work looks amazing, Ive never seen so much detail in the effects shots before. It's a real eye opener. I didn't notice any remarkable omissions from this edit of the film. Another positive, the scene of Spock and Kirk in sickbay after the space walk was reinstated.
Music editing wasn't as distracting as the 2000 Edition. There were only two scenes that sounded off, (1) when the Enterprise starts its voyage thru V'ger and (2) right before the Decker/Ilia joining.
Now the bad and for me this makes the Directors Edition unwatchable.
* Countless new sound effects are littered thru out the film which drowns out Jerry Goldsmith's score. Almost every exterior shot of the Enterprise, The Klingon Cruisers and V'ger are accompanied by a loud rumbling engine sound effect. It ruins practically every exterior effects shot where there is music. There's slight humming sounds of travel pods and workbees during the flyby of the Enterprise. (As was previously stated) More egregious was a very loud explosion sound effect added when V'ger vaporizes. It completely drowns out Jerry's climatic music.
They've added a lot more activity, people in EVA suites, travel pods and workbees during the tour of the Enterprise. It's sensory overload and distracts from what we're supposed to have our eyes on, THE ENTERPRISE! The scene is about Kirk and the Enterprise, not how many spacecrafts we can swoop around in one scene.
Edit: My mistake there are no new ships in the drydock sequence. I think the added sound effects just made them more noticeable for me. Though they did add a travel pod docked to the office complex.
Further more the new CGI shots are horrendous! They're soft and lack detail and cartoony looking. They don't fit with the detailed physical model work made for the film.
The new officers lounge scene has already been noted. Sure its only a few seconds of screen time but it really is hideous and unacceptable work. I'll also add the new opening credits glittering gold lettering is very tacky. This is a nitpick but the overture starts with a star-field moving away from the viewer, then the opening credits reverse the flow of stars movement. It's just not good visual form.
Most of these changes could be overlooked, but they ruined the audio mix with new intrusive sound effects. It destroys the musical flow of the film. Bottom line consciously or unconsciously the 2022 Edition suffers from being a product of its time, where we have to have visual and audio overload so it looks and sounds like a "modern" film. This is very different than the stated goal to "finish" and fine-tune a classic film.
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They've added a lot more activity, people in EVA suites, travel pods and workbees during the tour of the Enterprise. It's sensory overload and distracts from what we're supposed to have our eyes on, THE ENTERPRISE! The scene is about Kirk and the Enterprise, not how many spacecrafts we can swoop around in one scene. Further more the new CGI shots are horrendous! They're soft and lack detail and cartoony looking. They don't fit with the detailed physical model work made for the film.
I don't know which version has that overlapping cloud error I pointed out in the other thread but assuming it's the theatrical as was mentioned. If so, it doesn't seem like there is any new addition to the drydock flyby sequence. The only differences I noticed were the added reflection of the Enterprise in the window of one of the shots, which is funny because they don't add reflections in any of the other windows. Otherwise, it seems like all the ships and people floating by were originally there.
For me though the biggest disappointments were minor but mainly the color grading changes and the shot of V'ger flying towards earth, which as you point out, is really bad CG. Those ones really stand out as contemporary CGI-aesthetics towards visual effects as opposed to the in-camera optical mindset when the film was made. The best description I can give is contemporary CG is over-lit, particularly with sci-fi. The shot of V'ger flying towards earth has the sun behind the ship, flaring up and down as parts of the ship cross in front of it, yet despite the brightest object in the scene being behind the ship, they'll artificially brighten and darken V'ger in sync with the flare so you can see it. They also blur some of the lights on V'ger and not the others, which is another dead giveaway that these aren't following the optical mindset.
All the practitioners of optical effects back in the day would tell you to study real-world lighting. A good VFX supervisor would have known the difference and would know it's close to the #1 reason CG is given away as CG.
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All the various changes made to ST:TMP won’t remedy the simple fact that the story is a pile of shit.
A society so advanced they can build an amazing and invincible cloud ship to bring V’ger back to its creator, but too dumb to be able to clean up the faceplate to Voyager. Seriously? That sort of hack writing works in the Twilight Zone because it’s all about setting things up in 25 minutes. They might have even got away with it in TOS (and hell, they did - the story is basically just The Changeling, right?).
People harp on this but why would it care to wipe off a faceplate? V'Ger wasn't asking "what is my identity?" It was looking to contact its creator and join with it. It scanned the face place and took the name "V'Ger." The mystery was for the humans not the machine which wasn't strictly Voyager 6 anymore. It was something beyond that. For me, this is a non-issue.
ST:TMP is many things - some great production design, wonderful models, a fantastic score - but good story writing it ain’t. Gene Roddenberry was not a good writer. The fact it’s based on a treatment called “Robot’s Return” says it all. Rodenberry might as well have called his story “The Really Big Cloud From Outer Space”.
You're picking on the title of a story treatment? It wasn't final and would have probably been called something else if it got to production (it was part of the aborted "Genesis II" series. "The Planet Eater" became "The Doomsday Machine." Titles go through a lot of changes. What matters is the story itself, which was derivative but not just Roddenberry's story. Alan Dean Foster did a lot of the work as did Jon Povill and Harold Livingston. Roddenberry primarily did rewriting, which he WAS very good at.
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