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Yesterday I came across a pretty nifty VFX enhancement of one of the Star Trek movies, specifically the leaving spacedock scene from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country:
I tend not to like when fans do this—replace the visual effects in a famous scene—because the usually go overboard and it becomes ridiculous. (I’m thinking of a redo of the Ben and Vader lightsaber fight from Star Wars where somebody added a bunch of ninja backflips and it was just stupid. But it got 43 million views, so what do I know?)
This reimagining from Star Trek VI has some really tasteful, well-done VFX—and the whole thing has been rescored with James Horner’s “Genesis Destroyed” from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
I wouldn’t suggest this is better than the scene in the actual film or Cliff Eidelman’s cue—they’re both much shorter, befitting the scene’s relatively small importance in the narrative—but as a standalone exercise, I thought it was really well done.
I’ve always loved Horner’s music for the Star Trek features—even more than Goldsmith’s—and this is a reminder of how beautifully it works.
So congrats to the artist, Robert Wilde, on what must have been a labor of love.
Goldsmith is in a class by himself for me. He's #1. Always. I adore his ST scores.
But Horner's Trek 2 and Trek 3 scores are just wonderful, the very best of Horner, for me.
Eidelman's Trek 6 score is a beauty, and doesn't get enough credit. His theme, used in the drydock departure (I think), deserves a lot more love. It probably couldn't be reused much because of its inherent nostalic feel--it's the RIGHT theme for that movie.
Don't make me praise Horner over My Personal Music God Jerry again!
Sorry to keep this Star Wars centric but the fan edit of Ben v Vader was made due to the changes made to canon by Lucas with the prequels. He made the Jedi into Ninja Warrior Gods and the Death Star fight really didn’t make sense any more. I know that particular fan made sequence is divisive amongst fans but I kinda like it as it fits more with the (horrible) creative decisions Lucas made with the prequels.
And that Spacedock scene was clearly a labour of love. It looked great.
One of the things these fan driven FX redos have done is show how easy it would be to give STV a proper visual makeover and fix some very poor and dreadful effects shots.
Horner's music though was derivative of a lot of his past works (don't get me wrong, love a lot of his stuff), but Goldsmith's has a majesty that has yet to be matched in TREK. STAR TREK VI's ILM VFX were cut to the bone in budget, so every new shot in the film was a gift. This new fan sequence restores some of the shots that could have been with some extra money in 1991.