Held by conventional wisdom to be stultifying and pretentious, especially in comparison to its more militaristic sequel, 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture has always been anomalous in the world of mass-market sci-fi.
As far as ambition, the only possible point of comparison is 2001: A Space Odyssey. And though Robert Wise’s take on the material that Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon helped shape for three years on NBC — and that fans kept alive and nurtured for the intervening decade — can’t help but fall short of 2001’s visionary heights, it’s still the only work of science-fiction to aim that high. Visually stunning on a scale even today’s blockbusters would balk at, this new restoration of Wise’s 1999 director’s edition finally takes that work to the realm of high definition. But what makes this essential viewing is a new color grading that somehow feels more true to its own vision; like the director’s edition itself, it does not replace the original theatrical version, but rather merely provides a different perspective on the material that captivates on different levels.
Set five years after the conclusion of the original Trek’s mission, Star Trek: The Motion Picture finds now-Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner, at a midpoint level on the Shatner! Continuum) getting the crew back together after a massive cloud of uncertain origins starts data patterning everything that crosses its path. Being made close enough to Star Wars to get some big studio dollars but not so close as to rip off its narrative structure (that wouldn’t really happen until 2009’s J.J. Abrams version), this is the apotheosis of ’70s sci-fi, and it is glorious. To watch this film again is to see all sorts of possibilities that still remain to be explored, from the mysterious Deltans (subsumed in continuity by their community-college equivalents, the Betazoids) to the origins of the traveling cloud to just how exactly this film initially got a G rating despite containing the most upsetting technology malfunction in cinema up to that point. But more than that, to watch this film in a theater, with that transcendent Jerry Goldsmith score cranked up, is a magical experience. The presence of confessed sexual abuser Stephen Collins is a speed bump that derails the spell being cast, and you should trust your instincts accordingly. But Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a stone classic, best experienced on as large a scale as possible.
Catch screenings Sunday through Wednesday at Regal locations. Details are at fathomevents.com.
