The recycled footage of BOP exploding in Generations

95% of the movie-going public is not going to have any idea that the shot was recycled from TUC. And, as was observed above, a Bird of Prey exploding is not going to look that much different no matter how many different times you film it. If recycling a few shots from TUC enables them to save money and create better effects for things like the crashing of the saucer section, I'm all for it since that, and not the BoP explosion, was really the signature action moment and effects shot of the film.

All of the criticisms of the story, the ability of the BoP to defeat the Enterprise, and so forth are valid. But the re-use of previous effects shots is not the problem.

(And, BTW, if the Duras sisters have gained access to the technical information visible through Geordi's VISOR, I think they could have made it realistic for the BoP to defeat the Enterprise. I mean, they could penetrate the Enterprise's shields, thereby neutralizing it's primary defense. However, I think they should have added a line or two of dialog explaining that the first shot or two damaged the weapons systems. Thus, as in the battle with Khan in TWOK, the Enterprise is left with the ability to fire one or two shots at most, and have to make those count. Then it becomes plausible they hold their fire until Data implements his shield-dropping trick.)

 

I am MORE bothered that a BOP destroyed the Ent-D than I am that they reused the shot. Especially since they had already created new Klingon ships by then.

But I disagree that 95% of the people didn't notice. I'll bet a lot more noticed than that.

 

I disagree about the 95% too. I'd argue Star Trek has many more fanboys than any other franchise with the exception of Star Wars.

 

Fanboys are not who the Star Trek movies are made for, now or then. If they were the target audience, the Trek films would be very different. Even though Trek does, indeed, have a large number of fanboys, the moviegoing public consists of a much larger base of people who are either casual Star Trek fans, or not even Trek fans at all but just people looking for a good, entertaining film to go to. Those are the people the studios have always targeted. And those people don't care if you re-use a visual effects shot from a previous film.

 

I agree with CoveTom, the vast majority of the movie going public definitely would not notice something so trivial. General audiences. Not fanboys.

Out of the maybe 10% of the audience who are hardcore trekkies, probably only about 5% of them even noticed. I didn't notice for years until I read it on Trekbbs.

 

It would be hilarious if they re-used it again in Trek XII!

 

I thought it sucked for them to re-use a shot of the bird of prey from the previous movie, but I do have this to pose... Suppose they went with an old bird of prey because the idea of "a couple of renegade Klingons" having the most up to date Klingon ship would have be unreasonable. Yes? No?

 

Then they're still stuck with the fact that a BoP going up against a Galaxy-class ship should be patently ridiculous.

Then again, almost everything involving the combat-as-shown was patently ridiculous.

 

In "Yesterday's Enterprise," three Birds of Prey are able to mount an effective battle against the fully-powered and fully-shielded Enterprise-D, to the point where had the battle continued for about 30 more seconds, the Enterprise would have been destroyed. Why, then, is it unreasonable to think that a single Bird of Prey would be an effective match for the Enterprise if the advantage of its shields had been neutralized?

 

You're comparing three modern BoPs attacking an Enterprise that has to stay in one place (it's protecting the E-C) to one non-modern BoP attacking an Enterprise that has options in terms of maneuverability.

Additionally I believe the BoPs in "Yesterday's Enterprise" are considered the larger class, while I'm pretty sure the BoP in Generations is not meant to be that class.

In any case, the E-D could have rotated shield frequencies (randomly), it could have actually used all of its weapon systems, it could have gotten the hell out of orbit. The ship withstood prolonged attack by a Borg cube, but one old BoP takes it out? I don't buy it.

 

Yeah once shields are out of the picture, it doesn't matter what the matchup is,really... It's just another structure that can be destroyed with a few torpedoes. Of course there are exceptions, like a borg cube or something, but I think a galaxy class without shields is just as vulnerable as anything else.

Of course, it's still stupid for riker or geordi or data not to try and just change shield frequency.... again, bad writing.

 

It was only distracting in the sense that it was the climactic shot in the sequence, so that at the moment where you should be going YEAH! some members of the audience are going "Oh, I remember that shot." Otherwise it's no more distracting than all the reused drydock stuff in TWOK.

 

I actually didn't mind the recycle of the Bird of Prey explosion that much. How many angles do we need to see a ship blowing up from after all?

What annoyed me about the battle was their apparent need to technobabble a solution. Personally I thought it would be more exciting to see the Enterprise fight it's way out of this conventionally rather than do the whatever make them cloak thing. You only saw them fire at the Bird of Prey once before they turn around and start running away.

One assumes that the Bird of Prey is probably faster at sublight speeds so that seems a strategy doomed to failure. If they really wanted to reduce the BoP's rate of fire, they should have just flown Enterprise right at the BoP. It's have to turn aside to avoid being hit, and while it's doing so and remanuvering into another firing postion, it's not shooting at the E-D since it has no rear or side weaponry. The E-D could be pummeling it non-stop with phaser fire to eventually wear it down.

 

I don't think it was bad writing,*so much as an intentional desire to A - satisfy the producers' desire to blow up the ship, and B - minimize the technobabble so general audiences had a prayer of keeping up.

It's really a shame too. The E-D looked fantastic on the big screen -- even the recycled footage from the series. I really don't understand why they needed a longer ship because of the 16:9 ratio. I would have been very happy to see the E-D in First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis.

 

As good as ILM is, they seemed to have some limitations when it came to shooting the Enterprise models for Trek. Either that, or they just didn't like working with a model someone else designed.

In TMP, Doug Trumbull shot the Enterprise model in 50 different ways and made it look fantastic. From TWOK on, ILM was always complaining that the Enterprise model was near impossible to work with and could only be shot from 2 or 3 angles and look good. Similarly, the Enterprise-D was used on the television series for seven years and with good results, and looked good in Generations. Yet ILM claimed it wouldn't work for the big screen and that they needed a new model.

*shrug*

 

I always figured they just didn't want to overwhelm the movie audiences with unnecessary technobabble. It stands to reason if they tried, Geordi would be the one doing this, or at the very least would be looking now and again at the monitor with the new frequency, and the Klingons would adjust their weapons appropriately.

 

Perhaps, but they already set up the whole shield frequency thing earlier in the movie, so it wouldn't have been anything more for the audience to swallow. if anything, the plasma coil stuff was more uneccessary technobabble

 

I also find it very annoying and wonder how did they think they could sneak it by the fans?

 

First understand that while it was the producers desire to get rid of the D (as it was specifically designed for the 4:3 frame ratio that isn't going to be the case for films). It wasn't just about the exterior, it was completely and totally evident that the entire of the ship as built couldn't be legitimately used to look could for theatrical use. You see how much they changed the lighting scheme and changed sets to try and make it more suited for the big screen, it was just a huge issue for them and looking into the future (and I say this as someone who really doesn't like the exterior of the E, interior love though).

As for the use of the Bof Prey its all about budget, everything costs significantly more money when working on film. From set design, and dressing, to actors, to lighting, to effects. It was tough lesson for the writers of TNG as they had really hoped to expand what they could do, then to find out a single phaser fight with Soren, Riker and Worf was more expensive then a full episodes fx on TV.

Remember Trek was after The Motion Picture as a budget film project, that only changed with the current Trek film.

Khan was made for 12 million and was able to get to that degree due to the heavy reuse of sets (thus the same bridge for for both ships), and slight redressing of any new sets, not to mention the huge amount of reused FX shots from whats was initially filmed for the Motion Picture.

Generations isn't the same beast, they had almost no reusable footage that was filmed for theatrical release (save the bird of Prey), they cleaned up a few brief shots from Encounter at Farpoint, but those shots were ever filmed for theatrical release.

The Vorcha like wise was a nice model for TV, but it would never hold up at the theatre.

So for a new ship that means they would have to build a new hero level model, those can run 1/4 a million and higher.

The movie was made on relative low budget, where the bulk of the budget they did have was for casting.

Now they could have gone outside ILM (but at the time, the one time they did they were grossly disappointed by the fx work).

Of course they could have killed stellar Cartography. Though I loved that scene and the FX for the most part. Certainly a thousand times better then the set used in Lessons. OR changed other aspects of the script to remove other FX elements (like crashing into the planet). But to do what they chose to do, they were going to have to trade off with reused shots, redressed sets, ect.