Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Art and Visual Effects Coming in 2020

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The film that brought Star Trek back to life returned to theaters for a limited time. Soon fans can celebrate further with a new guide from Titan Books. ComicBook.com can reveal that Titan Books will publish Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Art and Visual Effects, the official guide to the film. Published in collaboration with CBS, the book promises to explore the film by showcasing its special effects, concept art, scale models, matte paintings, and more of the work that went into making the film a visual spectacle, featuring work by Robert Abel, Syd Mead, Ralph McQuarrie, Andrew Probert, and Ken Adams.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Art and Visual Effects is written by Jeff Bond and Gene Kozicki. Bond’s previous works include The Music of Star Trek.

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, after an unidentified alien destroys three Klingon cruisers, James T. Kirk (William Shatner) returns to take command of an upgraded U.S.S. Enterprise to try to prevent the entity from reaching Earth. The film sees other members of the original Star Trek cast return as well, including Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan.

Ahead of the film’s return to theaters in September, ComicBook.com spoke to legendary visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull about his work Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In the interview, he reflected on the power of the film’s special effects.

“I’m really very proud of the whole arrival at the Enterprise in the dry dock,” Trumball said. “That was a sequence that I directed and supervised the building design. That’s kind of my ethos in film directing, is to stop talking and just start looking and watching, and let the music and the images carry the day. I think that really stands out in my mind in the same way that the Star Gate sequence stands out in 2001, and other sequences that I’ve done, like for Close Encounters where you just let the mothership speak for itself, for example. You stop indulging in what I derisively call melodrama.

“The visual, epic spectacle of movies on giant screens and theaters, I think, is very important. I think people love it, and I think people seek it and crave it. And I think that’s really what virtual reality is about these days, is people are seeking some kind of alternate reality that can transcend the limitations of our physical reality, or television or anything else. But it doesn’t deliver, virtual reality, in my opinion, doesn’t deliver. But giant screen movies can, on big, what they call premium large-format theaters or IMAX theaters. So this movie plays particularly well on those big screens.”

Star Trek: The Motion Picture – The Art and Visual Effects goes on sale on May 12, 2020, with a retail price of $39.95.