I went to the 2pm show, had to drive about an hour to get to a theater showing it. The place was about dead that time of day, about 20 people in the showing for Star Trek probably accounted the majority of the cars in the parking lot. Some rambling nerds behind me talking about ST:Discovery on some podcast, and laughing at every funny bit of Kirk, Spock, and Bones banter. A few kids and a vagina or two sprinkled about, I felt right at home amongst the crowd.
There was an intro with Shatner that ran about 20 minutes, a few interesting tidbits and the rest was just Shatner being Shatner.
One of the interesting bits was Ricardo Montalbán had been involved in a horse riding accident prior to Space Seed and back then he had been using a cane, then by time WoK came around, he was using a walker to get around. Montalbán had always been an athletic person and his usual workout along with carrying his weight around with his upper body to compensate for his legs gave him those great Khan pecks.
Another fact I had never given much thought to, Shatner pointed out that he and Montalbán didn't have much opportunity to mingle as the two were never filmed together and working on separate sets. Walter Koenig was the only regular cast member to work with Montalbán on the same set.
The Director's Cut presented was the version from the blu-ray and not the dvd, which was missing the scene where Kirk tells Spock and Savik that David is his son while climbing between the decks to get to the bridge. Not sure why they changed the Director's Cut between mediums.
Shatner points out that Nimoy wanted out of Trek, but then shooting came and Spock says "Remember" to Bones, and he's all like 'WTF is going on'? That it was not in the script, and the that the producers and studio ordered a second unit to shoot the bit with the torpedo casket on the surface of genesis that appears at the end, and that the director objected very strongly to it being included, and that Spock should remain dead. "Nimoy was always smarter than me," says Shatner, alleging Nimoy used it to the twist the producers' arms to get to direct Star Trek III if returned, and since him and Nimoy had an "equal nations" (favored nations) clause that neither would get better treatment than the other, he got to direct a film also, and that's how we got the best film of them all, Star Trek V jokes Shatner, unironically?
It's kind of confusing then why it's called a Director's Cut and it still has those casket scenes in at the end, I guess since Spock gets resurrected and the movie kicked off a trilogy you're stuck with including it.
The movie really didn't look all that great, many shots in WoK have always looked out of focus, but it was still great to see it on the large screen where it belongs, and many of the smaller details that go unnoticed clearly standout. I was more blown away by the sound design of the film presented in a theater, from the hisses and mechanical chirps of the bridge simulator, to sounds of fog horns and bells of the San Francisco bay outside the windows of Kirk's home, or the loose panels of the cargo containers rattling in the wind on Ceti Alpha V as Khan taunts Chekov and Terrell; there was a new dimension of background sound depth that had gone largely unnoticed by me in the past.
There were also small character bits that I don't think I had noticed, or didn't pay much attention to, like Christie Alley's Savik shedding a tear for Spock during Kirk's final words and the pipes play. Those damn indigenous creatures in Khan's aquarium just look all that more intimidating and creepy.
Overall a solid movie going experience. If you didn't get there this go around and it comes back to a screen in the future, you better get your ass there.