Posted by Sean O'Hara on 07/19/06 00:36

In the Year of the Dog, the Great and Powerful jayembee declared:
> AZ Nomad <aznomad@PmunOgeBOX.com> wrote:
>
>>Some extended movies worse than the original are the first Star Trek
>>movie, and the blues brothers.
>
> And I thought the longer version of ST:TMP was far, *far* better
> than the original theatrical version. It really fleshed out Spock's
> character vis a vis his epiphany that the pursuit of perfect logic
> was a hollow one, and that emotions were something that enhanced
> logic, not opposed it. At least one of the added scenes also
> encapsulated Kirk's character in a single line.
>

Well remember there are three versions of TMP.

1) The theatrical release, which was basically a rough cut that they
had to send to theaters because they ran over schedule. When Wise
and his team were editing the film, they made it 130 minutes long
and inserted all the expensive FX shots while leaving out
character-oriented scenes. They planned to go back and cut back on
the FX while replacing them with the character stuff, but never got
the chance.

2) The VHS release, which inserted all the character-oriented scenes
but didn't remove any of the FX. While it's superior in terms of
character development, the pacing issues are exasperated.

3) The director's cut DVD, where Wise finally got the chance to go
back on fix things. All the FX remain (except a few that have been
updated with CGI), but each shot has been trimmed by a few seconds
to liven up the pace. Most of the character stuff has been put in,
but Wise left a few scenes out. This is the best version (though
it's still not very good), but it's not really extended -- it's
about the same length as (1) and shorter than (2).

--
Sean O'Hara | http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com
The intervention of a 'California lawmaker' is almost always the
sign of a really, really dumb idea.
-Andrew Suttaford

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