Star Trek The Motion Picture: 10 Reasons It's Underrated
8. The Director Was Incredible
Robert Wise was the editor for Citizen Kane. That alone gives him great chops in the film industry. But then he went on to be a director, making such widely varied films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sand Pebbles, West Side Story and The Sound of Music. Why exactly Paramount thought hed be the best choice for the first Trek movie is beyond me, but Im glad that they picked him.
Wises name being attached to the project automatically gave it more credibility than it would have had otherwise, both inside Hollywood and out in the general public. People who werent necessarily Trek fans, but were movie fans, perked their ears up at the prospect of seeing what one of the great directors of the age could do with a sci-fi film.
Sadly, we know what the result was. Im not going to say, at any point, that TMP was a great film. But I will say that if you go back and look at the directors cut, its much, much better than the original. Thats what happens when you give a director like Wise more than three weeks to edit his movie together.