Another giant of the entertainment industry has died…and Robert Wise certainly was a giant.
Wise’s credits are a virtual history of Hollywood’s golden age: editing Citizen Kane, directing AND producing The Sand Pebbles, and directing classics ranging from The Day the Earth Stood Still to West Side Story to The Sound of Music. On the way, he picked up 4 Academy Awards, and the love and respect of everyone he ever worked with.
But to me, and all the other geeks and Trekkies around the world, Robert Wise (and I would say he tops Gene Roddenberry in this regard) is the man responsible for the resurrection of Star Trek back in 1979, with his helming of Star Trek - The Motion Picture — the first of what would be ten Star Trek movies spanning over 20 years…and helping to turn an old TV show into a cultural phenomenon!
Despite the horrendous behind the scenes problems, Wise was able to finally complete the definitive cut of the first Star Trek film for its special edition DVD release…and it is here that we see his mastery of the craft of movie making. Though most of its problems are at the script stage, they are very much smoothed over by the epic scope that Wise brings to the first Star Trek film.
It’s unlike any other movie in the canon — huge, sweeping vistas and images, giving the first glimpse of how big and wonderous the Star Trek universe truly was. From the giant swirling miasma that was V’ger to the unforgettable tour of the gorgeous new starship Enterprise in its spacedock, Wise created a series of scenes that brush over the inadequacies of the script, and turn the film into something special. It’s more Kubrick & 2001 than all the other films, and certainly in a different league to the first Star Wars, whose technical sophistication hides what is bascially a script that is a western fairy tale in space. Star Trek - The Motion Picture is Wise’s intelligent, spectacular stamp on the genre…and the success of the movie would ensure not only the survival of Star Trek, but formed the foundation of what would become Star Trek - The Next Generation, and its spin-offs.
But even in Star Trek - The Motion Picutre we see Wise’s thematic trademark as a director: the calm, gentle core present within people of integrity, trapped amidst wild, chaotic, explosive — even apocalypitc — events. Whether it be Nazis, or youth gangs, or a giant energy cloud…the antagonists in Wise’s movies are there to shed light on the core values of what makes us all human, and about the successes and failures we face in trying to live up to those values.
For that, we should all be grateful to Robert Wise: an extraordianry film maker who knew that film was nothing unless the emotions it stirred were as epic as the images on the screen. Thank you, Robert.
