Watching the 4k Directors Edition of The Motion Picture.
Watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture : Director’s Edition after only really knowing the Theatrical Cut, and honestly, it’s far better than I remember.
I feel it doesn’t really feel like a normal film, but like a huge, expensive, upscale episode of the original series. But also weirdly like the missing bridge between TOS and TNG.
Starfleet as mature, ordered and exploratory and not just action and space battles. That whole “what is this intelligence and how do we understand it?” thing is very TNG before TNG. And that’s the shame of it.
People knock TMP for being slow, cold, too ponderous, not “proper” Trek. But TOS was full of this stuff. It was always metaphysical. Godlike beings, machine intelligence, fate, and the crew bumping into things they can barely comprehend.
“The Cage”, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, “The Changeling”, “The Immunity Syndrome”, “City on the Edge of Forever” feel like a template for TMP that takes that strand and gives it full 70s cinema scale.
V’Ger is basically Nomad as a god, shot like 2001.
I get why people wanted more pace after Star Wars. But watching the Director’s Edition now, it feels far more deliberate. Less a failed blockbuster and more cosmic Trek in the big screen. Kirk still has that twinkle now and again too… Transmit now Spock!
And a wink to Chekov.
It may not be the most fun of the Trek films but I wonder if it might be one of the purest Trek films.