I’ve heard accounts both ways. I’m not quite old enough to have seen it new, but I’ve known people who said it was fantastic and people who said it was never better than it is now.
It’s slow with bad pacing. There’s are things that are obviously supposed to look impressive but even if they ever did (for which there’s disagreement between the nerds old enough to remember) it absolutely did not age well. Those are the obvious ones off the top of my head without having watched it in a few years.
I guess I’ll have to give this HD director’s cut a shot but I’m pretty skeptical.
The soundtrack is probably the best part. I saw it in the theater a few months ago, and it blew my socks off. I only ever heard it on VHS with a mono tv speaker. I bought the vinyl a couple of weeks ago.
I had a 4 track reel to reel of Star Trek 2s soundtrack and I would play it on my dad’s kickass sound system. Still my favorite movie soundtrack followed closely by LOTR.