Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan Redux - Fan VFX Replacement Showcase

For me, this is a "watch once". It is not going to be my go-to version by any means.

However, it was WORTH watching. Go to youtube, you see a million disjointed CGI VFX replacement clips. Wraith has managed it integrate some very intriguing VFX shots into the existing narrative, sometimes replacing conventional FX shots, sometimes adding additional material. The effort is hampered somewhat by the varying quality of the source material, but Wraith sitll manages to pull it all together into a very watchable package.

Will it replace my DC BluRay? No. Was it a fun way to spend two hours? Absolutely.

9.5/10, would recommend.

The joke is on us. I'm sure that Wraith is sitting somewhere in the rolling English countryside gnoshing on some Asiago cheese, laughing because we didn't get it. Even after, he made it clear that the edit was a narrative experiment in which he compiled a myriad of special effects from a myriad of sources together to showcase as many fanmade vfx as possible. Wraith was also very clear about the edit not being perfect and not being to everyone's taste. So many of us came into the edit with the wrong eyes.

Many of us decided that given Wraith's success recently with so many other franchises, that this was his would be "Star Trek II Opus" and many watched it as such. We fooled ourselves by not reading the fine print. That would come later. This edit was an expository satire as much as anything.

I think we can safely assume that Wraith never intended for this edit to be mistaken for his actual integral release. It seems obvious that he knew that it would instigate a wide range of opinions. Wraith found some intriguing fanmade vfx that he was interested in using. Then he found more...then like the proverbial kid visiting the candy store, rabbit trailed into so many of these fan made vfx, that his mind began to race in wonder as it usually does. This is Wraith at a brilliant moment. So he assembled all the zillions of effects to showcase these little curiosities that set his mind to wonder because he could...as he said...a "what if".

And although not perfect, they seemed to go together well and mainly worked. So he polished it up the best that he could and shared it. But it needed to be watched with the right eyes. Eyes that understood that this edit was not meant to be mistaken for a definitive work. It was meant to be seen as an expository experiment. It is.

Wraith is probably still laughing.

When he released the actual definitive version, Wraith said,

"This is my original edit and intention for Recycled VFX Replacement for ST 2, again based on the material created by VFX fanartists on the web.

The original edit replaced ONLY the recycled VFX and had just 4 new establishing or enhancing shots very carefully selected and placed.. Similarly there were a handful of minor scoring enhancements applied to the Theatrical Cut so as not to alter the pacing of Director’s intention or the tone of the film.

It was while re-rendering this for preview, that I realised there were enough VFX to virtually replace every shot. So I did this to the expanded Director’s Cut, my previous submission.

As I expected and noted, there were inherent limitations and issues, and the departure from the Theatrical Cut and wholesale carpet bombing of ILM’s astonishing work risked a “Special Edition” reaction. Better that than we not play, experiment and push the boundaries I say.

For this original version, the VFX shots are nearly all NOT the VFX used in the Expanded Director’s Cut, and are visually and tonally very much like the shots they replaced.

A few have seen this edit some time ago so I hope you now can ALL enjoy this more respectful AND my original edit of ST 2 circa 2018."

I feel like this edit was excellent in the fact that it accomplished that which it set out to do...

Bravo! Well Done. My friend!

There have have several reviews of Wraith's fanedit of the CGI-enhanced Star Trek II: The Director's Cut, and not all of them have been charitable. What the various FanEdit members do not realise is that Wraith's creation is not actually a film made for entertainment purposes: it is one of the educational films. In much the same way that Wraith had created fanedits of The Alamo and A Star is Born for their historical and cultural value, he has created this fanedit of Star Trek II as a means of exploring the different ways in which CGI could be created by other devotees of Star Trek.

After searching through various Youtube video files from other contributors and combining their footage together, he managed to create a film that utilises CGI as much as possible to replace the conventional (analogue) visual effects from the early 1980s. Wraith's video and audio editing is flawless, as per usual, but the various CGI film clips that have been provided from the myriad number of other sources have not been created with a uniform degree of quality or style.

The most notable difference in the quality was in the duration of the film clips. Back in the late 1970s and early '80s, it was typical of the film makers to create visual effects sequences that would last for 5-to-6 seconds, giving the audience sufficient time to observe and mentally interpret what they were seeing. The Youtube contributors to Wraith's fanedit have created a number of film clips that have durations of only 2-seconds, being shown and then cutting to another clip of equally short length. The audience is left struggling to mentally process the visual input while still being able to concentrate on the actual storyline itself. This was particularly noticeable during the scene where Kirk, Sulu, McCoy and Uhura travel to the spacedock in the little transport pod.

Another problem with trying to coordinate multiple Youtube clips to a single fanedit is that the CGI visuals that are produced might not necessarily be synchronised with the original soundtrack. In this fanedit of Star Trek II, when the crew of the Enterprise are preparing for battle (while the starship is orbiting a planetoid), the inspirational music of James Horner rises progressively higher and becomes louder, eventually reaching a crescendo, but instead of reaching the climax at the exact moment when the Enterprise accelerates out of the orbit of the planetoid and heads toward the Mutara Nebula, as in the original cinema cut, this fanedit has the crescendo take place when the Reliant is shown on the screen. When the Enterprise is shown, only a few seconds later, the ominous theme music for the Reliant is then heard.

Unlike my previous reviews of Wraith fanedits, this one is not universally graded as 10 in every category (audio/video quality, etc). This was due to the haphazard nature of the various film clips that were obtained by Wraith. Wraith's own video and audio editing were just as good as they have ever been, but the narrative, audio/video quality and, ultimately, the enjoyment, were less than the original cinema cut, or the directors cut for that matter.

Regardless of the quality of the finished fanedit, the creation of this CGI-enhanced movie was necessary. While most fanedit movies can be created by a single, dedicated editor, occasionally there will be movies that will require the combined efforts of whole teams of faneditors. Wraith's attempt at practicing and working with a variety of different video/audio clips from multiple Youtube sources shows that, at some point in the future, the members of the fanedit community could (or indeed should) be able to combine their efforts to create these future fanedit movies.

As the character of Admiral Kirk stated to Lieutenant Saavik in the film, "We learn by doing."

Once again, Wraith has done his part in advancing the work of the FanEdit website, and the FanEdit community as well.

Well done Wraith!

This edit is a delight. I have seen this movie countless times by now, so the opportunity to watch it again with a fresh coat of paint was a wonderful gift.

However, I'd warn my fellow nerds that such extreme familiarity can also hurt the experience, as certain additions might feel strange or jarring because you are so used to the brisk pace of the original film. There are also certain minor additions, such as the new introduction of the Reliant, that feel wholely unnecessary, and there are one or two VFX additions that are demonstrably worse than what was first created back in the early 1980s.

That said, I don't think the intention of this edit was necessarily to craft the "best" version of this film, but rather to give a showcase to the dozens of fan-made VFX done over the years. In that respect, I think Wrath of Khan Redux is a complete success. And it will no doubt be used as the jumping off point for further fan edits that might chip away at some of the more awkward or superfluous additions to create an even more refined version of what is still the greatest Star Trek film to date.

I cannot recommend this edit enough to fans of Star Trek. It was clearly made with love and affection. The final battle in the nebula is the true stand-out here. My jaw was on the floor for a lot of it. Again, being able to see something so familar with fresh eyes is such a gift.

My sincere thanks to Wrath and all involved. Excellent work!

"The Wrath of Khan" was the first Star Trek I ever saw and it remains one of my favourite films, but I still thought that certain bits and pieces in both official versions could be improved on. What Wraith has done far exceeds anything I had imagined, the near perfect film (to borrow a phrase) is now that bit more polished, the new CGI scenes (amazing what length these fans go to) blended in seamlessly with the existing aesthetic, unlike the official "enhancements" featured in a certain sci-fi franchise of a similar era!

The mere replacement of the recycled footage from The Motion Picture would have been sufficient reason for me to consider this my go-to version, with all the other tweaks (some little and others large) making it so that I think going back to the original would feel like a retrograde step. Thanks again Wraith, both for having the idea to make the edit and for letting me help out in some small way.