Star Trek Vengeance

A labor of love for the editor, who took painstaking care of using everything at his disposal to transform an uneven and careless picture into a much tighter and interesting action adventure.

I personally was a bit skeptic on how much could be salvaged but was pleasantly surprised to discover the film becomes something else once so much junk and nonsense has been ejected.

I really recommend it as the definitive version of the film (forget the other one) and as a fix for those who felt that the original had something going but never got around to materialize it.

Belated review from myself, but nonethelass one which needed to be noted.

This is an outstanding polish to a movie which had many jarring moments originally. Having not watched it for quite some time, I'm now at pains to recall all of the issues I had coz this pretty much nails it.

There is no need for me to go into detail on the technicals, TM2YC is always spot on there.

The improvements to character, flow and pacing are spot on. You can feel the improvement in the relationships. My only issue (as noted by others) is the ending feeling a tad rushed but that's what you have to work with and it raises this from a 7 score (theatrical) to a 9 from my POV. I also miss Spock' cameo which I dont penalise this for omitting, but frankly, I'd be happy to watch Spock prepare Plomeek soup for Pike...no need for plot progression.

This has long been sitting in a blu ray case on my shelf, and after the recent review I felt the need to revisit; glad I did again (and not for the last time).
SUPERB!

Yet another TM2YC Star Trek edit that I've been meaning to watch for a long time (then again, given the source material, can you blame me?) Star Trek Into Darkness has a lot in it I don't like, from being a WoK rehash, injecting false-flag conspiracy politics into a supposedly Utopian-society, the stupid "let me hide all my friends in these super missiles" subplot, relying on fan-knowledge about Star Trek (Tribbles, the Eugenics Wars, etc.) without properly setting that up in the confines of the movie itself, etc. However, as stated in the summary, trying to remove all of this would leave us without a movie, so I won't hold that against TM2YC.

Instead, let me praise the miracle work done to all of these characters. I was worried that trying soften up Kirk while putting more of the blame on Spock would just make me hate the former more, but the edit finds a good balance, crafting a Kirk with a good head on his shoulders but still having a lot to learn. While I somewhat miss the scene where Spock explains why he mind-melded with Captain Pike (to explain why he's distancing himself from those closest to him), I understand cutting it to improve Uhura's character. Plus, I now believe that this Kirk & Spock are indeed friends by the time Spock chases Khan down for his blood to save Kirk's life (have I mentioned how stunning the technical work TM2YC accomplishes is?).

All that said, there's still one thing that bugs me that I felt could've been fixed: Pike saying that the device dropped in the Nibiru volcano was a "cold fusion reactor." I don't care how much times change or how lazy writers get, Star Trek is great when it tries to stick to scientific principles (even if they have to make them up for FTL travel), so saying that a "cold fusion reactor" can "make things cold" is just asinine to the Nth degree.

Still, if you are a fan of the Kelvin Timeline Trilogy & want to give it a watch, I recommend this edit whole-heartedly. Star Trek Vengeance isn't a masterpiece (again, hard to be, given the source material), but it's great, dumb, pulpy fun.

Definitely better than the original. Better I'd say even than the first one. It looks better, the pacing is better, there is less filler, the story is tighter. It looks great too. The color here definitely is better than the original's; it pretty much reminded me of the original Trek movies a lot. The influence from the Trek movies definitely helps.

Minor issues affect the edit: namely the very ending. Everything straight from the beginning was top-notch, but the very ending seems a bit flat. The original's choice to keep the fight between Khan and Spock suspenseful by revealing the necessity for Khan's survival a little later was good. This edit bypasses that suspense and because of that, the final fight isn't as cathartic. Leaving that part in would've surely tied the edit together thematically in connection with the title: Vengeance. Actually, I do have an issue with the title because thematically, vengeance isn't a very big aspect of the story. I get that the reference to the USS Vengeance is a bigger reason for the title being that way, but Star Trek has always been neat in titling its movies. The Wrath of Khan is very poetic and spot-on. Generations, Nemesis, etc. Vengeance being the title here isn't very strong. Finally, the edit tried a little too hard to end the film in a more isolated manner, but it ends up being too rushed. It needed the lengthier ending of the original. Kirk's speech in particular at the end is very awkwardly cut, straight into the Final Frontier speech.

Overall, the visuals are great, and the visual editing is too. The audio just kinda suffers a bit with the awkward cutting at the very end. Nitpicky and anal? Perhaps, but that awkwardness right at the very end kind of breaks the spell that the film holds on you, especially after such a masterful experience beforehand. Another auditory badness is the mixing. I wish something could be done for the mixing because it still has that theater-intended mix that sounds terrible on TV. Finally, the narrative is just a little iffy, as in the examples I've stated above. Overall, as the edit is now, I'd give it a solid 6.5/10, while the original was a 4. It'd be a 7 if the ending was fixed.

TM2YC has produced a wonderful edit. The biggest difference maker to me was the color correction. Unfortunately, there is some color speckling here and there where the color correction wasn't 100%. Despite that slight issue, I thought this worked really well. I felt this was a fantastic improvement over the original. I will note that, having watched it with people who had seen Into Darkness, but not Wrath of Khan, some individuals felt there was a particular scene missing from the edit. As a long time Star Trek fan, I disagree with them. :)