by Preston on December 7th, 2008, 8:17 pm
At first,I thought this thread was meant for only theatrical movies, but I notice that Lunk included a couple of OUTER LIMITS episodes, so I thought I would include Star Trek TOS because the local station is re-running TOS on the weekends. This is the version where some scenes are RE-DONE with new fx. As I recall, somebody else on this form had frowned on these Re-done scenes. And my response to that is Both yes and no. That is, some of the re-done spoils it for me, but some have improved on the episodes. Let me first take the Spoiled scenes. They Re-did the Enterprise itself, and now the Enterprise does Not look as realistic as it used to look. This UNrealistic look reminds me of the episode THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE when Commodore Decker's starship was shown. The way the fx were done for Decker's ship was that the fx-artists used an actual model kit from Aurora. That can be especially noticed when there is a close-up of the ship with its damaged nacelles (pods). Now coming back to the current re-runs, the Re-done Enterprise fx look as bad as the fx for Decker's ship. That is, it now looks like a model kit, as compared to the Enterprise from the original video. So I'm glad I still have my VHS tapes! (See, it pays to keep those ancient tapes!)
But on the PLUS side, in the re-done fx from the planet Pollux episode where they encountered the demi-god APOLLO, the re-done fx added to the enjoyment of the scene where Apollo's projected image of a giant hand came to grasp the starship. In the redone fx, the Giant Hand is now seen from a side-view and slowly rising up from the planet below. What makes it an improvement is that now the Hand is Not just an enlarged hand but instead looks distorted and therefore looks more weird. It looks like an energy field which is fluctuating between intangibility and solidity. That is a good idea because Spock's sensors had determined that it IS an energy field instead of an actual hand.
So that's my reaction. Lunk or anybody else , if you've seen these re-done fx, I would be interested in your reactions.