Even though the first cost a fortune to make it more than made back its budget and turned in quite a profit so why scale back the budget as much as they did for the sequel? I've never heard of that being done for a sequel to a successful first feature before.
shareTMP was still a budgetary risk that could have failed, and even despite the financial success, it was slammed by critics. Paramount wasn't going to take chances with the sequel.
It's not the first time a sequel was made with a lower budget. BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES suffered lower costs (although that was probably due to 20th Century-Fox suffering some major financial problems from flops).
It's not the first time a sequel was made with a lower budget. BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES suffered lower costs (although that was probably due to 20th Century-Fox suffering some major financial problems from flops).
They knew from TMP what kind of money a Star Trek film could make. But they weren't about to bet that it could make more so their priority for II was to make it as profitable as they could. Particularly if they wanted to make more of them after II. And you cannot blame them for that.
As it happened there was a lot of material that could be reused effectively for II. The budget of TMP had in fact been swollen by costs of the aborted phase II show. And, Star Wars had been made for 13-15 Million. So there was clearly a way to do it successfully and Paramount and Harve Bennett certainly had the will.
Glasgow's FOREMOST authority.
Well, TMP budget includes the cost of development for the aborted Star Trek Phase 2 series in it. Still it went way over budget for the 70s.
Harve Bennett was specifically brought in to save money, so there was a lot of reused footage from TMP. The Kobayashi Maru scene is lifted from the Klingon assault on V'Ger and the leaving drydock scene is also lifted from TMP (right down to the guy in the space suit waving). The Regula One space station is the Starfleet HQ station turned upside down.
So while TWOK had a smaller box office take than TMP, percentage wise, it was more profitable.
Over 20,001 Tacos Returned...AS GARBAGE!
Why didn't they reuse footage of the warp effect (which was superior in TMP)? Why did they change it to a new effect?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APLxvcCfHok
.
The TMP warp effect was fantastic.
TMP is one of the most underrated movies ever made in Hollywood.
I'm just on my way up to Clavius.
Not sure what the complaint is, it seems to have had enough budget to tell the story it needed to tell and is arguably the best of the Trek films, not sure what more would have been done with more budget.
shareNot sure what the complaint is, it seems to have had enough budget to tell the story it needed to tell and is arguably the best of the Trek films, not sure what more would have been done with more budget.I'm not really making a complaint so much as questioning the motive behind the filmmakers insistence on sticking to budget by reusing stock footage, then creating new footage of a warp effect that was inferior to the effect seen in the first film. That makes no sense to me. Can you explain it?
TMP went ridiculously over budget. While being a box office success, it wasn't well received by critics. I don't think they wanted to take risks with this one. So they cut the budget and pushed Roddenberry out of direct control. The Enterprise sets were already standing, so they didn't have a lot to do there.
And really, they made it on the cheap. Most of the action takes place on the Enterprise, Reliant and Regula. Reliant is just a redressed Enterprise set. The biggest new sets were Regula (both the station and the cave). The few other sets were pretty small, corridors at Starfleet (the simulator was actually the enterprise set) and Kirks apartment.
And besides the main seven characters, there were only four major guest characters (Khan, Carol, David and Saavik, six if you count Terrell and Joachim), and only one of the was a really big name actor at the time.
Well as stated above, TMP was a flop critically, and even thought it was a box office success, anything called Star Trek at that time would have been.
However, there was a belief that this was the last film. Paramount had agreed to make two films, so they had to make this one. It is why it ends the way it does with Spock (who said he was done with trek and only came back for a cameo in 3 on condition that he got to direct ST films).
But then this film turned in to not just the best Trek film of all time (to this date IMO) but also a great film in general and a box office smash.
Had this film flopped, it is very likely that Trek would have died in 1982.
Also they spread the budget, so the difference between the two films in budget is partly an illusion. They kept the enterprise bridge set (the reason it looks different is simply that it is differently lighted, with lots of reds, to look like a submarine) and the superb Enterprise models made for the first film. They then kept all this intact for a sequel, so two of those most expensive ,onscreen at least, elements, set and models, were already paid for. Just to take one other small example the shot of Klingon ships is a direct lift from the first movie.
share